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This seems like a short term fix prone to all the problems of mono-culture. First pine-beetle infestations brining in disease put all that hard-work to naught.
by xipho 5y ago
This seems like a short term fix prone to all the problems of mono-culture. First pine-beetle infestations brining in disease put all that hard-work to naught.
There is a natural progression to growing forests, how about protecting, and just staying off large swaths of land, using fire treatment and land management techniques as we understand them and let the land restore itself? Perhaps we have to think past 5-10 year windows and start to work at plans that think a minimum of 50 years out. Old-growth forests take easily that long, at minimum, to get started "naturally".
- jillesvangurp 5y agoYes, the key to success here is restoring the soil. Once you have healthy soil, the only way to stop forests from happening is large herbivores. There are some interesting large scale efforts to attempt to restore soil across the world. It's a remarkably fast process once it gets going. The Chinese have a few decades experience with regreening: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall_(China) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall_(China) Doing it wrong, can have some negative effects as well.
- smallerfish 5y ago> Once you have healthy soil, the only way to stop forests from happening is large herbivores ...or primates.
- turbinerneiter 5y agoAs far as I understand, the natural progression to growing forest easily breaks once the forest is gone. Large swaths of land around the Mediterranean are now desert but used to be forest, until they were cut down. Erosion and other factors than stop new forests from growing. In these cases you need to kickstart the process by sending the correct starter.
- FuriouslyAdrift 5y agoManaged grazing within forested land is an option. Our forests have become too dense in many areas due to overly aggressive fire management. https://forestry.usu.edu/news/utah-forest-facts/forest-grazing-managing-your-land-for-trees-forage-and-livestock https://forestry.usu.edu/news/utah-forest-facts/forest-grazi...
- joecot 5y agoThere's also a massive undervaluing of the naturally occurring fungal network that exists between the trees. The mushrooms we see on the ground are just the reproductive organs. If you dig into the ground (and you've probably seen this many times if you've dug a hole near vegetation), there's tons of white fungal strands that connect between the tree roots. They absorb or release moisture, they transfer nutrients back and forth to the tree roots. There isn't a ton of research on it currently, but I'd bet my hat that the lack of that natural fungal network between trees just planted in rows is why planted forests rarely take hold. Same as there's so much focus on how to capture carbon out of the air while we pump megatons in every year, it's very silly how much focus there is on replanting forests instead of just ... not cutting them down.
- millzlane 5y agoFunny anecdote cannabis cultivators have for a long time been using mycorrhizae. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycorrhiza https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycorrhiza
- bradleyjg 5y agoNot cutting forests down doesn’t provide sufficient opportunities for people to do things. At best you get a handful of people patrolling and maybe a small non profit with a speaker or two peacocking around. Whereas planting carbon capture forests provides tons of opportunities for people to do things, be involved, make money, build an identity, puff themselves up. Always look at incentives, not outcomes.
- swader999 5y agoPlanting trees doesn't puff you up. It breaks you down literally. Tendinitis, back pain, muscle loss. You get PTSD, you wake up years later in a cold sweat from the nightmares. And the bugs...
- afarrell 5y agoIs this a consequence of planting trees or of working at a breakneck pace for an abusive employer?
- rTX5CMRXIfFG 5y agoTbh “natural progression to growing forests” sounds to me like a mere excuse for doing nothing about the status quo. We’re already growing plants for agriculture and are currently looking to terraform Mars, and we as a species were so willing to break that “natural progression” when we started building cultures around automobiles and plastics.
- rini17 5y agoEverything can be used as excuse. That's not an argument. It is possible to cooperate with natural progression to create ecosystem that provides resources for humans. Actually humans did that for thousands of years. It has the advantages that requires much less energy input (less fertilizer, tilling) and it's more resilient to pests and climate change. It has the disadvantage that it isn't optimized for short term profit. And it isn't cool (likely to elicit "bah, weeds" response).
- xipho 5y agoTbh "mere excuse for doing nothing" sounds like a mere excuse for a lack of imaginative solutions and reluctance to take time to think things out. It doesn't follow from my statement. We can disrupt the status quo AND (in parallel) do other things. It will be incredibly difficult to take land from private shareholders and keep people "off" of it- something that will be highly disruptive. If you read 5 words further you'll see I referenced referenced land-management techniques, there is a huge wealth of science that exists, and is ongoing in this regard, applying these is the opposite of "doing nothing".
- thizzbuzz 5y agoYeah, that's pretty much all you'll get out of HN - yet another rehashing of a slightly-contrarian justification for "doing nothing about the status quo".
- sp332 5y agoIt's not fast enough. "The average forest migrates at a rate of roughly 1,640 feet each year, but to outrun climate change, it must move approximately 9,800 to 16,000 feet—up to 10 times as fast." https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2021/10/trees-forests-assisted-migration-fire-climate-joshua-redwoods-sequoia/ https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2021/10/trees-forest... [Edit 2: a more direct source for that number is https://academic.oup.com/jof/article/111/4/287/4599572 https://academic.oup.com/jof/article/111/4/287/4599572 ] Edit: also, while the article only names one species of tree, it switches to using the term "tree seed" which I think covers more diversity. At least the linked project https://www.blm.gov/programs/natural-resources/native-plant-communities/native-plant-and-seed-material-development/collection https://www.blm.gov/programs/natural-resources/native-plant-... mentions diversity a lot, so they're not aiming for a monoculture.
- lettergram 5y agoI don't know if "Mother Jones" is a great source also -- "to outrun climate change," What does that mean exactly? The greatest carbon sink in the world is the midwest during growing season. Would converting that into forests improve that? No. Also, it's not clear why they only grow at the given estimated rate. I don't think it's as simple as "plant more trees".
- Flashtoo 5y agoWhat happens in the Midwest that makes it a carbon sink? Growing crops that turn back into atmospheric CO2 within a couple of months would be carbon neutral at best. "The strong atmospheric sink in the agricultural region is consistent with the difference in the spatial distribution of agricultural production and product consumption: a strong atmospheric uptake by crops during the growing season in the Midwest states, while much of the release of carbon associated with consumption of agricultural products occurs in other regions, in the United States and abroad. It must thus be pointed out that this apparent atmospheric sink in the Midwest does not imply a long-term carbon sequestration" https://www.pnas.org/content/107/43/18348 https://www.pnas.org/content/107/43/18348 , Discussion
- chiefalchemist 5y ago
- BurningFrog 5y agoYeah, this is not growing a forest. It's constructing a park.
- errcorrectcode 5y agoNailed it. It will need constant maintenance since weather patterns, fauna, and soil won't be self-sustaing.
- joshuaissac 5y agoReforestation can happen on its own if the land is left alone. Rinderpest and the tsetse fly caused the reforestation of previously inhabited lands in sub-Saharan Africa. http://www.faculty.umb.edu/pjt/pearce00.pdf http://www.faculty.umb.edu/pjt/pearce00.pdf
- errcorrectcode 5y agoAnecdotal example not widely-applicable. If the climate is changes from semi-arid Mediterranean to desert, forests will dry up, burn, and not return as they were.
- xipho 5y agoIf you want to see why we are in trouble look no further than this comment. Imagine thinking humans are required for nurturing all life on this planet. It's the other way around my friend. Are there situations where humans can help? Yes. Are we capabale of terra-farming. Heck no.
- errcorrectcode 5y agoTerraforming or terrafarming? We already did ruinous terraforming with anthropogenic climate change. The mainstream is stuck on nice-sounding, impractical, meaningless Bandaids rather than delving into scalable solutions that will likely require economic incentives and international coordination.
- 5y ago