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I wonder what affect 30+ years of "free tree" programs that various states and environmental clubs run for arbor day and such has had. Growing up in the midwes
by fotbr 9y ago
I wonder what affect 30+ years of "free tree" programs that various states and environmental clubs run for arbor day and such has had. Growing up in the midwest/great plains, ever year in elementary school we were given trees to take home and plant for arbor day. Little sticks, maybe a foot long with a small handful of roots, wrapped in damp paper towels to survive the trip home.
Someone says "oh, white oaks grow alright across the entire state, and their acorns are a good food source for the local wildlife" and they send out a few thousand of them for arbor day via elementary schools.
Some of them even survive. 30+ years later, those trees have dropped millions of acorns, most of which feed squirrels and deer or rot away, but some turn into trees.
Rinse and repeat every year. Seems like you could, over the course of nearly 40 years, unintentionally shift the population of a tree species.
- manarth 9y agoThe interesting question for me is this: is there a reason to believe human seed distribution is biased towards the west? If it is human-influenced, what are the determinative factors? Do humans favour certain seeds/trees in this selection? Are the seeds geographically distributed evenly, or is distribution biased towards the west? Is the westward growth bias caused by seed distribution, or locale viability? If humans weren't distributing the seed, are there other vectors that would provide an equivalent function?
- Someone 9y agoI'm not saying it explains everthing they found (they may even have corrected their stats for it), but the area they studied seems closer to the east coast then to the west coast. Moving long distances east is hard there for trees. First, they would hit larger populations centers; then, the ocean.
- piotrkaminski 9y agoSo basically they're moving west because there's more space there? ;)
- thatwebdude 9y agoAgreed, I think humans planting "exotic" trees have a lot more to do with tree migration than just global warming alone. Also, last year before we turned my childhood home into a rental I cleared out a large Coniferous tree I planted when I was a young sapling. It was much, much larger than 12 inches tall.