science

Team Trees

Team Trees is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Team Trees rather than just read about it. In short: Team Trees (stylized as #TEAMTREES) is a collaborative fundraiser that raised 20 million U.S. dollars before the start of 2020 to plant 20 million trees. The initiative was started by American YouTubers MrBeast and Mark Rober, and was mostly supported by YouTubers.

Key takeaways

Team Trees belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Team Trees to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Team Trees from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Team Trees (stylized as #TEAMTREES) is a collaborative fundraiser that raised 20 million U.S. dollars before the start of 2020 to plant 20 million trees. The initiative was started by American YouTubers MrBeast and Mark Rober, and was mostly supported by YouTubers. All donations go to the Arbor Day Foundation, a tree planting organization that pledges to plant one tree for every U.S. dollar donated. The Arbor Day Foundation began planting in January 2020 with plans to end "no later than December 2022". It is estimated that 23 million trees would take up 210 km2 (81 sq mi) of land, absorb around 1.6 million tons of carbon and remove 116 thousand tons of pollutants from the atmosphere.

Background The idea started on May 24, 2019, when a fan suggested on Reddit that MrBeast (Jimmy Donaldson) should plant 20 million trees to celebrate reaching 20 million subscribers on YouTube. The idea spread across YouTube, Reddit, and Twitter, mostly in the form of memes. The idea may have been related to the 2019 Amazon rainforest wildfires. American YouTuber, engineer, and inventor Mark Rober partnered directly with Donaldson to launch the fundraiser. On October 25, 2019, Donaldson uploaded a YouTube video explaining his plan, which claimed the top spot on YouTube's trending page, and caused numerous YouTubers to join the movement. The trees will be planted "in a variety of forests on public and private lands in areas of great need" starting in January 2020. The goal is to have them planted "no later than December 2022". As of March 23, 2026, the project has raised over $24,966,001, exceeding the fundraiser's goal to plant 20 million trees. As anticipated, more than 20 million trees have been planted.

Efficacy As of April 2025, only 6% of the original 2,000 trees planted in one area were extant.

Responses Many YouTubers created content to capitalize on the growing trend of Team Trees; despite the Arbor Day Foundation reaching out to only a few hundred creators, Team Trees is now featured in over 80,000 videos from over 4200 global creators. Across Instagram and Twitter over 556,001 posts have garnered more than 4.6 billion views. Discovery Channel made a documentary called #TeamTrees about the campaign which aired on December 3, 2019, coupled with a donation of USD $100,203 the next day. Eike Lüdeling, the department head of horticultural sciences at the University of Bonn, stated, "It turns out that many of these seedlings, if you don't do this well or if people do it who don’t really care about those trees, then they all just die quickly. Sometimes it’s probably a better idea to plant fewer trees and really take care of them." Danny Cohn, the director of public relations for the Arbor Day Foundation, addressed these concerns, stating that "the partners who work with the organization are all required to have plans to help their trees thrive."

Planting projects Planting locations of Team Trees include:

Team Seas

On October 29, 2021, MrBeast and Mark Rober teamed up again to launch Team Seas, a successor to the project that aimed to help clean up marine debris. As with the Team Trees campaign, many influencers had also joined in spreading the message to help the project be a success. While the project is international, MrBeast and Mark Rober traveled to the Dominican Republic to help clean up there and address issues with trash collection in underdeveloped and underserved areas.

See also Team Seas Team Water Billion Tree Tsunami

References

External links Official website

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Team Trees

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Team Trees claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Team Trees before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Team Trees ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Team Trees

In research: Team Trees appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Team Trees in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Team Trees is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 2019 in Internet culture, Conservation projects, Forestry initiatives, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Team Trees outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Team Trees in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Team Trees means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Team Trees out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Team Trees in simple terms?

Why does Team Trees matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Team Trees?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Team Trees.