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Iceland’s forest and bush cover has increased sixfold since 1990
- jonnycomputer 4y agoOk, one of the things that totally bugged me about the Viking tv show's visit to Iceland is that it only showed the harshest of environments, not the forests that used to exist there when the vikings colonized the island.
- BurningFrog 4y agoA simple fact to know: 1 kg of dry wood captures 1.65-1.80 kg of CO₂. Not because the tree is bigger on the inside, but because the oxygen atoms are most of the CO₂ weight. Source: https://www.paperonweb.com/A1110.htm https://www.paperonweb.com/A1110.htm
- bismuthcrystal 4y agoIf it has a range then it's not a fact.
- spiderice 4y agoLol, what? Who told you this? Are you saying that every single KG of dried wood will have the exact same number of carbon molecules?
- bismuthcrystal 4y agoLast time i heard some pretty smart people were pushing a Kg standard made of a very exact number of molecules of Si. So yes, by definition it should have a exact number.
- spiderice 4y agoFor starters.. not all types of wood would have the same number. But that isn't even the biggest issue with your comment. You seem to think that facts can't have ranges. Fact: There are between 6 billion and 10 billion people in the world.
- jnsaff2 4y agoI just came from a trip to Iceland and most of the country had no trees. Some corners had a little, there were also obvious plantations. There was one place that had old forest and was in other respects very magical: Ásbyrgi Canyon. Just downstream from Dettifoss which was an insane experience by itself. From what I have gathered the biggest obstacle to tree regrowth in Iceland are sheep which can roam anywhere in the island for I think 4 months in the year and just eat saplings. Obviously the sheep farming industry does not want to hear about limiting their herding areas and you can guess the result.
- Sharlin 4y agoYeah, in Iceland fences are for keeping the sheep out, not in :)
- runarberg 4y agoI really hope—for the sake of the reforest efforts—that this changes in the near future. The sheep industry in Iceland is way too big, and not compatible with the climate goals of the Icelandic government. The reason reforesting is not quicker is that wild gracing is such a holy rights for farmers that plenty of potential areas for reforesting, are just graced away. The current habit of wild gracing is making reforesting much harder then it needs to be.
- joshmanders 4y agoI just came from a trip there too. Took a week to road trip around the island and it was an experience that's for sure. Before that we had visited the redwoods in California and those absolutely dwarfed our trees here in the midwest of US (Iowa specifically) and made us feel like all the trees here were just tiny, but our trip to Iceland and their lack of trees made us feel good about our small trees.
- libraryatnight 4y agoIs Iceland easy to navigate as an English speaking tourist? I've always wanted to go.
- tims33 4y agoThe most interesting fact was that Iceland was 40% forested when settlers arrived. I'm not sure their goal is to return to 40%, but certainly a long way to go at 2.6% 20 years from now.
- AlwaysRock 4y agoIceland is a very nice place. I don't really remember seeing any trees while there. Good for them.
- lucb1e 4y agoI can recommend leaving the Reykjavík area. You'll definitely see trees around the country!
- xhkkffbf 4y agoOn a trip through Scotland, we were driving through some backroads and all of a sudden, there would be a forest with clear lines along some property boundry. The trees were more or less the same. It was essentially a tree farm. Apparently the Brits started offering special tax incentives to get people to plant trees and many listened.
- olddustytrail 4y agoNo, that wasn't any tax thing. It's called forestry. The "tree farm" is a business and it's where wood comes from.
- julienchastang 4y agoSlightly off topic: I was recently in Iceland and the country is covered in Alaskan lupine that was introduced decades ago and has now become invasive. The result is these blue tinged landscapes. According to the tour guide, there is some benefit as the Alaskan lupine improves the soil (I don't know how true this actually is).
- User23 4y agoAn Icelandic girl told me a joke once: What do you do when you get lost in a forest in Iceland? You stand up.
- nonethewiser 4y agoIt may have included some manualbeffort, but isnt this an effect of climate change?
- martini333 4y agoWhile sixfold might seem impressive, it's not. There was next to none in 1990.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- blondie9x 4y agoThis is great. But it isn't nearly enough to offset the amount of forest burning due to climate change right now. In just one area, Siberia in 2022 there have been 100,000 hectares of forests destroyed by wildfires. This article says that in all of Iceland there are now 45,000 hectares of forest. So there is 225% more land burning in Siberia this year alone compared to all the forest planted in Iceland.
- nonameking2026 4y agoAll this Co2 is doing wonders for us!
- fnordpiglet 4y agoWhenever I read about Iceland it’s invariably about how they did something right.
- yownie 4y agoPlease don't buy into the propaganda, the rest of the world just really enjoys fetishizing us.
- fnordpiglet 4y agoYes but the rest of the world doesn’t convert volcano lava into blocks of aluminum to export energy.
- s_dev 4y agoGreat news -- Ireland is another country in bad need of reforesting. The British took all our trees to build their navy and Irish farmers finished off what little remained. We have very few old growth forests as a result.
- Akronymus 4y agoI think you may have misread the title as ireland instead of iceland.
- profunctor 4y agoActually most of Ireland was deforested in the Neolithic age. We really should reforest as much as possible, preferable native species.
- arethuza 4y agoThat's what Trees for Life are doing in the Scottish Highlands: https://treesforlife.org.uk/ https://treesforlife.org.uk/
- edoloughlin 4y agoIt was said that a squirrel could travel from one end of Ireland to the other without ever touching the ground as more than 80% of the land was covered by forests https://www.teagasc.ie/crops/forestry/advice/general-topics/history-of-forestry-in-ireland/ https://www.teagasc.ie/crops/forestry/advice/general-topics/...
- toto444 4y agoI have been donating some money every month to an Icelandic tree planting project to offset my carbon emissions after reading an article on HN about how the Vikings cut all trees of the island. I find the numbers fascinating : > Forests and bushes now cover over 2% of Iceland, Vísir reports. That number may not seem like much, but since 1990, the surface area covered by forest or shrubs in Iceland has increased more than six times over – from 7,000 hectares to 45,000. In 20 years, the number is expected to be 2.6%. And from another article : > The Forest Service intends to deliver six million plants this year, says Þröstur, which is equivalent to pre-crash levels of production. “It was around five million last year, and four million the year before that. This is a rapid increase. Then we need seven to eight million next year, which we may not manage, and ten to twelve in 2025.”
- asdff 4y agoThere are also islands in croatia and all over the med that are barren from venetian shipbuilding centuries ago as well. Shipbuilding stripped a lot of forests in europe.
- pasiaj 4y agoFor comparison: Finland (338,440 km²) is three times the size of Iceland (103,000 km²) Finland has 23 million hectares (76%) of forest cover. http://www.metla.fi/metinfo/sustainability/finnish.htm http://www.metla.fi/metinfo/sustainability/finnish.htm
- BurningFrog 4y agoA hectare is 0.01 km², so Finland has 230,000 km² of forest.
- lucb1e 4y agoFrankly I find both of these really hard to wrap my head around. Not like football fields or olympic swimming pools are better, but the country of Finland being ¾ covered gives me a much better sense of scale than x million hectolometers. Probably that only works for people that are from nearby Finland and/or into geography, though. For huge scales like these, I'm thinking degrees might theoretically be a better unit, since it's easier to visualize a fraction of the globe (presuming people know there's 360 degrees around the globe) than picturing hundreds of thousands of some other unit.
- warpech 4y agoInteresting, considering this old Icelandic joke I found once in a guide: - What should you do if you get lost in a forest? - Stand up! (other version: Just get off your knees!)
- carapace 4y agoReading the title I thought, "Increased sixfold? So they have six trees now?" I'll see myself out...
- warpech 4y agoBTW what a rare example of a joke that does not offend anyone
- andai 4y agoWhen did the trees run out, and how did they heat themselves after?
- kzrdude 4y agoI've heard it as a lot of wood was used to produce iron while they could. They quickly ran out of wood when used like this. And like others mentioned here, widespread sheep & goat farming can keep the new saplings down. Not a source, but an interesting story about iron in Iceland: https://www.hurstwic.org/history/articles/manufacturing/text/bog_iron.htm https://www.hurstwic.org/history/articles/manufacturing/text...
- MrDresden 4y agoPeat was used heavily, as well as animal dung and there was drift wood (not a stable source though, and mostly used for other endeavours). Also the fairly unique construction of the turf houses which had the animals living along side the humans, maximized the capture of body heat. Then again, life in Iceland was cold, dark and miserable for centuries all the while nature kept trying to kill everyone.
- jillesvangurp 4y agoInteresting question. I came across this reddit thread that tries to answer that: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/am1qcd/how_did_people_keep_warm_in_iceland_before/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/am1qcd/how_d... Some interesting things in there beyond the more obvious things like hot springs, peat, and other biomass that Iceland would have. But drift wood being a thing that I did not think off. Of course, there would have been some forests initially and also the ability to import timber and other materials from elsewhere in exchange for some of the exports (fish, whale oil, etc.).
- Beltalowda 4y agoWhen I was hiking around in Hornstrandir a few years back there was a surprisingly large amount of driftwood on many beaches on the north side. Some pictures I found online: https://fineartamerica.com/featured/drift-wood-in-the-remote-north-western-fjords-of-hornstrandir-iceland-cavan-images.html https://fineartamerica.com/featured/drift-wood-in-the-remote... https://www.darnoldhiking.com/uploads/4/3/1/8/43181693/dsc06640-1_1_orig.jpg https://www.darnoldhiking.com/uploads/4/3/1/8/43181693/dsc06...
- xiaq 4y agoAn interesting tangential: outlawry in the Viking age was called "skóggangr", literally "going to the forest". (I read about this in https://norse-mythology.org/outlawry-viking-age/ https://norse-mythology.org/outlawry-viking-age/.) But in the sagas all the Icelandic outlaws would instead travel overseas (quite literally, since Iceland is surrounded by sea) - which now makes a lot of sense to me knowing that Iceland was already deforested early on, so there wasn't really a lot of forest to go to.
- BurningFrog 4y agoPerhaps related: Sweden is one of the very few European countries that never had serfdom. Swedish peasants were of course dirt poor, but they were free citizens, and had 1/4 of the voting power in the ancient version of parliament¹. The reason I've heard for this is that most of the country was (and is) forest. Enough forest that you can hide from, and/or ambush, anyone coming to mess with you. ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riksdag_of_the_Estates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riksdag_of_the_Estates
- selimthegrim 4y agoDidn’t the Vikings have thralls?
- BurningFrog 4y agoThey did, but that era ended a few centuries before there was a country of Sweden. Also, the thralls were mostly taken prisoner in raids abroad, so the local forests were not a factor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrall
- yakubin 4y agoFrom the title, I expected they were sounding an alarm that they are losing forests. It appears the opposite is happening. Really bewildering, given how just a couple centuries ago for most European countries having less than 70%+ forest coverage would be an oddity.
- Beltalowda 4y ago> just a couple centuries ago for most European countries having less than 70%+ forest coverage would be an oddity. 70%+ seems a lot; I'm not sure where you got that number from? For example in [1] mentions about 15% in 1086 for England, [2] mentions ~2% 1750 for the Netherlands and ~11% in 1775 for Belgium. Numbers will undoubtable differ for other countries, but 70%+ is really a lot. Neolithic people already cleared a lot of forest for agriculture in Europe, which happened thousands of years ago. In some countries (such as the Netherlands) forests have actually grown in the last few centuries (from the ~2% in 1750 mentioned before to ~10% today). Iceland had "only" about 30% forest before settlers arrived. [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2013/jul/27/history-of-englands-forests https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2013/jul/27/history-of-en... [2]: https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bos_(begroeiing)#Oppervlakte https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bos_(begroeiing)#Oppervlakte
- yakubin 4y agoI don't remember where I got the number, but a quick look at Wikipedia finds some claims that Free Germania used to have 70% forest area. I think I've also heard similar numbers in some museums given for Poland in Middle Ages. Can't find it now though. Sweden and Finland today have ~70%. 30% is the number for most of Europe today, and it's usually considered low, among the people I know. So it seems that Iceland historically already had very little forestation.
- zip1234 4y agoIceland has almost no forest at all. It would not take much to increase the forest cover.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Kalanos 4y ago
- NeoTar 4y ago...because they cover only 2% of this island... as you would know if you actually read the article!
- Kalanos 4y agono, they do not
- Kalanos 4y agohttps://www.google.com/maps/@64.9820968,-21.0589178,3a,75y,295.32h,98.63t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1stUvsqA0-GiYvR1lsVb5Wvw!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DtUvsqA0-GiYvR1lsVb5Wvw%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D300.4449%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@64.9820968,-21.0589178,3a,75y,2...
- Kalanos 4y agohttps://www.google.com/maps/@65.4562908,-15.8058236,3a,75y,105.16h,89.15t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s57e39RLH3UAtt8RddjkulA!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3D57e39RLH3UAtt8RddjkulA%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D315.3874%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@65.4562908,-15.8058236,3a,75y,1...
- Kalanos 4y agothose links are to 2 random points on the ring road that looks like everywhere else
- someweirdperson 4y agoI've been there 25 (maybe 30) years ago and cannot remember seeing any tree at all. It might be my memory. I'm not sure if everything else was simply more memorable or there were none. 6-fold increase seems easy starting from there. The 2% is impressive.
- photochemsyn 4y agoPlanting forests increases the overall amount of carbon stored in biomass, but the forestry program is also designed to harvest trees for use as fuel or building material (from the main article linked in the post): > "In the meantime, Iceland’s forests have begun to produce wood for a small timber market. Forests planted between 1950-1970 are now supplying around 5,000 square metres of wood per year: miniscule compared to industries abroad, but a start. The Icelandic birch, Siberian larch, Sitka spruce, lodgepole pine and balsam poplar are producing quality wood of equal or superior quality to that which Iceland imports from abroad. Yet an overwhelming 80% of the trees felled are burned as fuel in silicon smelting." Iceland has a silicon production industry, which relies on geothermal electricity interestingly enough. The wood is included to grab the oxygen from silicon dioxide to produce elemental silicon metal (being emitted as carbon dioxide). Overall, if they could eliminate the coal from the mix, this would be a carbon-neutral fossil-fuel free silicon production system: https://www.pcc.is/ https://www.pcc.is/ > "Silicon metal is extracted from quartzite, aided by the addition of wood chip and coal, in electric arc furnaces at temperatures of around 2,000 degrees Celsius. The new plant obtains its key raw material quartzite primarily from PCC’s own quarry in Zagórze, Poland. However, the related logistical costs are more than outweighed by the advantages of electricity procurement. And the dust emissions generated during silicon metal production are almost completely removed from the ambient air by high-performance filter systems installed in the PCC plant. Taken as a whole, therefore, the production process offers exceptional sustainability credentials."
- elevaet 4y agoI planted some thousands of trees in Iceland in the noughties. I believe the program was funded by Alcoa to offset the carbon produced by an aluminum plant they were building on the island. They paid farmers to plant trees on unused land, and the farmers hired and hosted us to do the work. It was an amazing way to see the country. We mostly planted larch, birch and alder from what I remember. It is a very beautiful country, like an arctic Hawaii.
- BitwiseFool 4y agoAre those trees native to Iceland? I would hope that they aren't just trying to increase forest cover using species that have the potential to be invasive.
- woodruffw 4y agoI think by "birch" they mean the Icelandic birch[1], which is the only tree that's actually native to Iceland. The others (Siberian larch, Alder variants) were probably previously endemic, even if they aren't "truly" native. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betula_pubescens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betula_pubescens
- elevaet 4y agoYes that's correct re the Birch. I believe the alder was what we call Slide Alder, which is useful for holding down the soil and preventing erosion on steeper areas. Not sure which Larch it was.
- mistrial9 4y agothe science shows dramatic changes in temperatures and rainfall in the far North. Planting new tree stands certainly ought not be bound by a "pure native" perspective, in these times. While you and I split hairs, not a small amount of money is being invested in genetically engineered flora of all kinds, boasting that it is "climate change ready." A much bigger problem than "pure native" to my way of thinking.
- BurningFrog 4y agoThis makes me a little sad, because a major factor making Iceland such an otherworldly place is the complete lack of trees.