4 ms·

Yes you need to build ecosystems not just plant trees. Monoculture tree stands are often mostly empty of other life. You need to plant a variety of native spec

Yes you need to build ecosystems not just plant trees. Monoculture tree stands are often mostly empty of other life. You need to plant a variety of native species keeping track of keystone species and year round food production so that your forest supports other life.

TSiege 4y ago
Absolutely. Our ways of thinking about the environment are trapped in the past. Where we focus on one variable and miss the importance and resilience that comes from a holistic approach. We need to be encouraging the right ecosystems for the right environment. For example, we need to be encouraging native grassland ecosystems in the great plains, not forests. Native grasses can have root systems 8 feet deep to deal with droughts and erosion, a forest just doesn't make sense there
- wikfwikf 4y ago
  I think this way of thinking is trapped in the past. The reality of atmospheric carbon is that we have to get rid of it or face mass extinction. Trying to build some nostalgic idea of a untouched ecosystem in tune with 'nature' is just a feelgood ideology. We're actually faced with an engineering project - the first planet that our species will terraform.
Ensorceled 4y ago
There is a grove of red pine near where I grew up that was planted row on row about 15 feet apart. These trees are 70+ years old but most of them are only 7-8 inches in diameter. The floor of this grove is just red with pine needles, nothing else can grow and any animals are just passing through. Whenever I hear about planting trees for "carbon sequestration", I immediately remember walking through that forest and thinking how quiet and dead it felt.
goda90 4y ago
A "keystone species" that is important for a lot of ecosystems but on the surface seems contradictory to the goal of carbon sequestration is wild fires. A stand of coniferous trees can block out light year round, limiting all other species of plants from growing underneath, but a fire will make the holes in the canopy that they need to spring up. Likewise, grasslands, which sequester a lot of carbon in their roots/soil, depend on fire to keep out trees and letting prairie plants thrive.
adolph 4y ago
From Ch 1, Seeing Like a State By James C. Scott: The great simplification of the forest into a "one-commodity machine" was precisely the step that allowed German forestry science to become a rigorous technical and commercial discipline that could be codified and taught. A condition of its rigor was that it severely bracketed, or assumed to be constant, all variables except those bearing directly on the yield of the selected species and on the cost of growing and extracting them. As we shall see with urban planning, revolutionary theory, collectivization, and rural resettlement, a whole world lying "outside the brackets" returned to haunt this technical vision. In the German case, the negative biological and ultimately commercial consequences of the stripped-down forest became painfully obvious only after the second rotation of conifers had been planted. "It took about one century for them [the negative consequences] to show up clearly. Many of the pure stands grew excellently in the first generation but already showed an amazing retrogression in the second generation. The reason for this is a very complex one and only a simplified explanation can be given.... Then the whole nutrient cycle got out of order and eventually was nearly stopped.... Anyway, the drop of one or two site classes [used for grading the quality of timber] during two or three generations of pure spruce is a well known and frequently observed fact. This represents a production loss of 20 to 30 percent." A new term, Waldsterben (forest death), entered the German vocabulary to describe the worst cases. An exceptionally complex process involving soil building, nutrient uptake, and symbiotic relations among fungi, insects, mammals, and flora--which were, and still are, not entirely understood--was apparently disrupted, with serious consequences. Most of these consequences can be traced to the radical simplicity of the scientific forest. https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/scott-state.html https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/sc... Azn link for HN Books: https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-like-State-Certain-Condition/dp/0300078153 https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-like-State-Certain-Condition/d...
wikfwikf 4y ago
Why do you care about the forest supporting other life? Isn't the goal just to take carbon out of the atmosphere?
- colechristensen 4y ago
  Ecosystems grow, maintain themselves, and can be better at sequestering carbon. Random example: blue jays plant oak trees. They like acorns, pick them off trees and bury them for later, and forget some. If you have an ecosystem that supports blue jays your forest will expand without fundraisers and government programs. Ecosystems fix carbon in more active biomass than just tree trunks. If you get soil building ecosystems and ecosystems that put more carbon in living creatures, you have less carbon in the atmosphere. The extra CO2 in the atmosphere is like fertilizer, and you can get life to utilize it more and grab more of it out of the atmosphere by supporting it in small ways so it can go on to support itself.
  - wikfwikf 4y ago
    In a forest full of large trees, the carbon in the non-tree biomass is a rounding error. If you can pack the trees slightly closer and almost everything else now finds the environment too hostile to survive, it's probably a net win from a carbon point of view.
- monknomo 4y ago
  The more life a forest supports, generally, the more carbon gets removed and the longer the forest lives.
  - quixoticelixer- 4y ago
    That's not necessarily true
- pastacacioepepe 4y ago
  > Isn't the goal just to take carbon out of the atmosphere? I disagree. We also want to avoid ecological cascade effects in our ecosystems.
TEP_Kim_Il_Sung 4y ago
Look into permaculture; It is all about restoring natural forest floors! Geoff Lawton and Sepp Holzer are good people to look into.

TSiege 4y ago

Absolutely. Our ways of thinking about the environment are trapped in the past. Where we focus on one variable and miss the importance and resilience that comes from a holistic approach. We need to be encouraging the right ecosystems for the right environment. For example, we need to be encouraging native grassland ecosystems in the great plains, not forests. Native grasses can have root systems 8 feet deep to deal with droughts and erosion, a forest just doesn't make sense there

wikfwikf 4y ago
I think this way of thinking is trapped in the past. The reality of atmospheric carbon is that we have to get rid of it or face mass extinction. Trying to build some nostalgic idea of a untouched ecosystem in tune with 'nature' is just a feelgood ideology. We're actually faced with an engineering project - the first planet that our species will terraform.

Ensorceled 4y ago

There is a grove of red pine near where I grew up that was planted row on row about 15 feet apart. These trees are 70+ years old but most of them are only 7-8 inches in diameter. The floor of this grove is just red with pine needles, nothing else can grow and any animals are just passing through. Whenever I hear about planting trees for "carbon sequestration", I immediately remember walking through that forest and thinking how quiet and dead it felt.

goda90 4y ago

A "keystone species" that is important for a lot of ecosystems but on the surface seems contradictory to the goal of carbon sequestration is wild fires. A stand of coniferous trees can block out light year round, limiting all other species of plants from growing underneath, but a fire will make the holes in the canopy that they need to spring up. Likewise, grasslands, which sequester a lot of carbon in their roots/soil, depend on fire to keep out trees and letting prairie plants thrive.

adolph 4y ago

From Ch 1, Seeing Like a State By James C. Scott: The great simplification of the forest into a "one-commodity machine" was precisely the step that allowed German forestry science to become a rigorous technical and commercial discipline that could be codified and taught. A condition of its rigor was that it severely bracketed, or assumed to be constant, all variables except those bearing directly on the yield of the selected species and on the cost of growing and extracting them. As we shall see with urban planning, revolutionary theory, collectivization, and rural resettlement, a whole world lying "outside the brackets" returned to haunt this technical vision. In the German case, the negative biological and ultimately commercial consequences of the stripped-down forest became painfully obvious only after the second rotation of conifers had been planted. "It took about one century for them [the negative consequences] to show up clearly. Many of the pure stands grew excellently in the first generation but already showed an amazing retrogression in the second generation. The reason for this is a very complex one and only a simplified explanation can be given.... Then the whole nutrient cycle got out of order and eventually was nearly stopped.... Anyway, the drop of one or two site classes [used for grading the quality of timber] during two or three generations of pure spruce is a well known and frequently observed fact. This represents a production loss of 20 to 30 percent." A new term, Waldsterben (forest death), entered the German vocabulary to describe the worst cases. An exceptionally complex process involving soil building, nutrient uptake, and symbiotic relations among fungi, insects, mammals, and flora--which were, and still are, not entirely understood--was apparently disrupted, with serious consequences. Most of these consequences can be traced to the radical simplicity of the scientific forest. https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/scott-state.html https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/sc... Azn link for HN Books: https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-like-State-Certain-Condition/dp/0300078153 https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-like-State-Certain-Condition/d...

wikfwikf 4y ago

Why do you care about the forest supporting other life? Isn't the goal just to take carbon out of the atmosphere?

colechristensen 4y ago
Ecosystems grow, maintain themselves, and can be better at sequestering carbon. Random example: blue jays plant oak trees. They like acorns, pick them off trees and bury them for later, and forget some. If you have an ecosystem that supports blue jays your forest will expand without fundraisers and government programs. Ecosystems fix carbon in more active biomass than just tree trunks. If you get soil building ecosystems and ecosystems that put more carbon in living creatures, you have less carbon in the atmosphere. The extra CO2 in the atmosphere is like fertilizer, and you can get life to utilize it more and grab more of it out of the atmosphere by supporting it in small ways so it can go on to support itself.
- wikfwikf 4y ago
  In a forest full of large trees, the carbon in the non-tree biomass is a rounding error. If you can pack the trees slightly closer and almost everything else now finds the environment too hostile to survive, it's probably a net win from a carbon point of view.
monknomo 4y ago
The more life a forest supports, generally, the more carbon gets removed and the longer the forest lives.
- quixoticelixer- 4y ago
  That's not necessarily true
pastacacioepepe 4y ago
> Isn't the goal just to take carbon out of the atmosphere? I disagree. We also want to avoid ecological cascade effects in our ecosystems.

TEP_Kim_Il_Sung 4y ago

Look into permaculture; It is all about restoring natural forest floors! Geoff Lawton and Sepp Holzer are good people to look into.