Each species in the community plays a part in the stabilization of the forest as a whole. Trees do this in a very big way. An  individual tree's role in the forest is vital to the community and ultimately to the whole earth. Trees hold the land and prevent the erosion of fertile top soil which the trees themselves help to create by shedding their leaves every year. If the trees were removed from a hill side then the nutrients and soil once trapped by a large network of roots and shielded by extensive canopies would quickly be washed down stream by rains. Not only does this action eliminate a thriving ecosystem, it then greatly reduces the possibility that we will be able to grow any forced crops that we decide to deposit there. In his book titled "Our Changing Planet" Fred Mackenzie writes, "In the last 45 years, almost one-third of the world's arable land has been lost by erosion, contamination, and for other reasons related to human activity." He also states that crop land is being presently lost at an alarming rate of 10 million hectares every year. Unfortunately, this forces us to concentrate our efforts on less and less land to make them produce more even though it is painfully obvious that the more effort we put into maintaining the land with today's procedures, the faster we lose it. The problem has a simple solution. Present agricultural practices will have to be changed to a system that includes trees. We must use a method that involves non-till farming of small patches of land, thus preserving the very root structures that hold the soil in place.

The forests are important in maintaining the carbon dioxide balance of the atmosphere. Carbon is stored in the biomass of trees and in the organic matter of the soil beneath them. The total carbon in the trees themselves is about 600 billion metric tons. The atmosphere contains about 750 billion metric tons. There is a dynamic equilibrium between these two quantities that must be maintained to avoid significant and catastrophic change to the earth's climate. Carbon dioxide is a good absorber of heat and it's agreed by scientists that an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide would cause a global increase in temperature, changes in annual precipitation, and a general rise in sea level. Nearly 120 billion metric tons of carbon is taken out of the air each year by plants in the process of photosynthesis and the same amount is returned through the respiration of plants, animals, and microbes. A small amount is released in the dissolution of carbonate rocks such as limestone and dolomite. Also, modern day industry involves the burning of fossil fuels which in itself returns a considerable amount of carbon to the atmosphere much more quickly than it would return under natural processes. This modern trend toward higher releases of carbon dioxide makes the role of trees in the uptake of Carbon even more important in maintaining this balance.