7 ms·
Just speculating wildly and looking at Sweden, for example meadows have more or less disappeared since 30-40 years. I mean flowering meadows, not pastures for g
by kpil 9y ago
Just speculating wildly and looking at Sweden, for example meadows have more or less disappeared since 30-40 years. I mean flowering meadows, not pastures for grazing.
The meadows have been turned into forests and to a lesser extent pastures.
It's not a few percent, it's 30% of the land, probably more in Germany where there are much lest forests than in Sweden.
The bio-diversity in a meadow strikes me as much higher than heavily grazed pastures or a mono-culture wheat fields or pine forest.
- javajosh 9y agoMy understanding is that there is a give and take between meadows and forests that occurs on multi-year cycle. Meadows grow when there is too much water, and trees grow when the water recedes. You can see this in the Yosemite Valley really clearly. Perhaps this is a sign that the freshwater in the ground is going away.
- mschuster91 9y ago> Perhaps this is a sign that the freshwater in the ground is going away. Now look what Nestle/other food giants, but also slaughterhouses and animal farms, do: they use groundwater with private wells, and they extract more water than can be replenished... boom.
- WillReplyfFood 9y agoI wonder if sabotaging such private wells, by conrecte blocking parts of the aquifying layer would constitute as self-defense.
- mschuster91 9y agoMost likely not, and you risk disruption of underground water flows by injecting huge amounts of concrete into the ground...
- chewz 9y agoLarge areas had been meliorated (in 70-ties in my country Poland) so the meadows are gone for good outside of some protected areas. All these wild weeping willow which had been a signature of Masovian landscape and which I still remember from childhood visits to family farm died soon thereafter. So did the frogs. It is like coming to different country now.
- mantas 9y agoSame in Lithuania. Although it's not as permanent as you might think. In 90s many state farms went under and huge portions of land was left to it's own devices. By 00s, many of them turned into grass with wild flowers, tiny trees, and everything Wherever melioration failed, it was slowly nearing meadow-like conditions. Now big portions of it are used again either for agriculture or housing...
- slackingoff2017 9y agoNot sure if this is case in Sweden, but here in the US the reforestation is actually a return to the natural state. Much of the country was logged repeatedly in the last few centuries. Modern sustainable logging and the transition to other energy sources is resulting in the land returning to the endless forest it was before settlers arrived. This is mostly clearly seen on the east coast because most of the Midwest is still used for farming. Edit: in Europe this is visible in coppiced forests. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coppicing https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coppicing . Haven't seen one here in the US but I assume they're somewhat common in Europe where they were an early and effective method of sustainable forestry.
- zerkten 9y agoI think the point was made at the end of the previous post that pine (or other non-deciduous) forests are being planted there. I think it's a similar story across Europe, but I'm most familiar with Ireland where modern forestry has used Sitka Spruce which is non-native and impacts biodiversity.
- djsumdog 9y agoIt seems like a lot of American logging has pushed to the Pacific Northwest, where it's very wet, doesn't get very hot/cold and new growth is very fast. I was talking to someone in Portland out in the middle of nowhere who said, "Almost everything you see is new growth; less than 60 years old. It grows that fast." The Singapore City gallery had a display where they talked about growing plants sustainability for paper.
- mc32 9y agoYup, Fat growing pulpwood is what they use. 20-40 year cycle. http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/1634930/is-the-largest-fastest-growing-pine-f-zn6 http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/1634930/is-the-larg... Weyerhaeuser, etc. grow those fast growing pulpwood trees and harvest.
- timthelion 9y agoIt may grow fast, bug the pacific north west once was covered with HUGE trees. Those trees may seem normal, but they are small in comparison to how things "normally" looked before Europeans. https://www.google.cz/search?q=spruce+giants+olympic&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjs8fX3ovzWAhUEtxoKHVyYDo8Q_AUICigB&biw=1262&bih=608 https://www.google.cz/search?q=spruce+giants+olympic&source=...
- jopsen 9y agoYeah, lots of wet land have been drained for farming.