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The world has more trees than it did 35 years ago (2021)
- laweijfmvo 4y agoI wonder if there's any benefit for a (poor/non-rich) country planting a bunch of trees now and ransoming them when the climate is truly fucked...
- oasisbob 4y agoI believe this piece is referring to this 2018 Nature paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0411-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0411-9
- poulsbohemian 4y agoThis is both surprising and unsurprising, but also potentially misses the point. If the trees lost are in the Amazon and that's a giant filter for the planet, then it doesn't really matter if we planted trees somewhere else if the environmental impact isn't directly offset. Also, it was only about 45 years ago that we had rivers catching on fire so an improvement over that doesn't mean that we've magically fixed all of our environmental issues.
- tomrod 4y agoAFAIK we are more like 53 years past that point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuyahoga_River https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuyahoga_River EDIT: Ah! you updated to 45 from 35. That makes more sense.
- poulsbohemian 4y agoYou did the homework, I estimated.
- 40four 4y agoWhy wouldn’t it matter if we’ve planted trees elsewhere? Nobody is suggesting we’ve magically fixed every environmental issue, but wouldn’t you rather see trends like total number of trees (or number of rivers catching on fire, as you put it) trend in the right direction? I take it as a cautiously optimistic signal that people/ governments are paying attention to the problems at hand, and making progress. This is a good thing, unless you really ARE hoping for some sort of magical one off fix.
- poulsbohemian 4y agoIt’s not that it isn’t positive, but as another poster said astutely, a tree <> tree. Love me some trees, glad we are planting them, but that doesn’t mean that putting a rando tree in my front yard is actually having any meaningful impact over not cutting down a tree in the Amazon.
- senko 4y agoDo you have influence over those that cut down a tree in the Amazon? If so, it would definitely be better if you could persuade them to stop. If you don't, planting a rando tree in your back yard still does more good for the planet than not doing so.
- tern 4y agoThere are huge geopolitical forces fighting to preserve the Amazon. The cost of deforestation is quantified and states pay millions if not billions (I forget the numbers) to people in order to leave it untouched. Of course, it's political and 'we're not doing enough,' etc. but individuals have more influence over the Amazon than most things. Great podcast on the subject: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/people-i-mostly-admire/id1525936566?i=1000543196174 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/people-i-mostly-admire...
- lupire 4y agoPreserve is a long way from restore, though.
- tern 4y agoIndeed, true restoration involves investment in forest engineering and returning to more indigenous ways of life. I was recently on the Amazon with relevant scientists and activists. There's a lot of work to do and little financial incentive. If you're wondering, the best thing you can do as an individual, besides getting involved in international politics, is go do an eco-tour (or otherwise support that industry), provided you don't think the benefit is offset by the plane flight. The people doing the deforestation need alternative sources of livelihood.
- throwawaylinux 4y agoWhat is a giant filter for the planet?
- simonebrunozzi 4y agoTree <> Tree Meaning: a 4 year old tree in the Amazon is not equivalent to a 100 year old tree in the Amazon. We might have more trees, but I doubt we have the same CO2 recycling capacity that we had 35 years ago.
- jploh 4y agoSomeone advocating direct air carbon capture made this strong argument that stuck with me: Carbon released by drilling oil didn't come from trees. So recapturing the carbon from what we think was released from trees burned down before does not include carbon stored underground.
- oasisbob 4y agoThe writer is clearly conflating canopy coverage area with individual trees.
- tooltower 4y agoWhat would be a better measure? Tons of carbon locked up in the wood? The amount of carbon they can remove from the atmosphere on an average day?
- pvaldes 4y agoyes, and yes.
- tomrod 4y agoHow would you measure this with accuracy and cost efficiency? Is canopy reasonable enough after a certain percent increase (say, 5% increase)? We are talking about percentages of the Earth's dry land, so nontrivial certainly.
- pvaldes 4y ago> How would you measure this with accuracy and cost efficiency? Does not seem like an impossible task, I see two preliminary ways at least to attack the problem, but probably both will be wrong and is not my job to measure this without resources in any case
- 13of40 4y agoA couple of years ago I was playing with the King County (Washington) online parcel map and found out you can get pretty decent resolution aerial photography of Seattle and its surroundings from 1936. One of the things that struck me most was that a lot of the areas that are heavily wooded now were very much less so back then, presumably because 1936 was only a few decades removed from when they clearcut all of the old growth forest. If you think about it, that means someone like my grandfather who grew up here in that era would have had a much different understanding of the idea of a forest than myself, and not in an especially good way.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Terr_ 4y agoThere's also some interesting Kitsap history there, with respect to shipyards and cutting down most of Bainbridge Island.
- timellis-smith 4y agoI expect this trend to increase now that we've passed peak farmland https://ourworldindata.org/peak-agriculture-land https://ourworldindata.org/peak-agriculture-land
- subsubzero 4y agoI know the US has more trees than 100 years ago: https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/america-trees-now-century-ago/ https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/america-trees-now-century-ag... The US east coast has seen massive gains in tree plantings. I wonder if the gains in the US offset the loss in the amazon?
- malfist 4y agoFun data point from Kentucky. When Daniel Boone discovered the cumberland gap and made way for settlers to settle in Kentucky, kentucky was ~80% forest land, and most of that was because native americans burned sections of kentucky for crops and living space. ~~100 years ago, kentucky had below 50% forest coverage, today it's over 90%, more than it's ever been in recorded history.~~ These numbers came from a speech the head of ketucky's forestry service gave to my college polsci class, they disagree with what google says is the truth. These numbers may be false.
- bombcar 4y agoDoes that mean all inhabited areas of Kentucky are in 10% of the land?
- brigandish 4y agoFrom memory, most of the population of the UK resides in just 2% of the land. I couldn't find the stat (I heard it on the radio) but there's this[1]: > 91% of Scotland’s population live in 2% of its land area Scotland does have large areas of barely lived on land but it's still surprising to see this stat, so I wouldn't think Kentucky's stat, even though I've never been there. [1] https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/news/2022/91-percent-of-scotlands-population-live-in-2-percent-of-its-land-area https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/news/2022/91-percent-of-scotla...
- bombcar 4y agoYeah, I would suspect it's correct, depending on how you define "settlement". For me an acre with trees on it isn't quite a forest (but I'd call it forested I guess) - somewhere between that and 40 acres is the boundary imo.
- dexwiz 4y agoI wonder what the ratio of this is good samaritan tree planting versus timber industry. Timber plantings account for a large portion of US land. Timber is a very popular investment among long term land owners. Not all land is suitable for farming, and timber is a relatively passive way to extract value form the land. Additionally timber likes to make claims like "we plant 2 trees for every 1 harvested." What they don't tell you is that half the trees won't make it to the next clear, and often smaller/weaker/sick trees are culled before a full clear to make room for better ones to grow.
- pluc 4y agoYou're failing to account for all the "buy one we plant a tree // for every N$ spent we'll plant a tree" promotions finally coming to fruition
- dexwiz 4y agoI lump those into good samaritan planting. Also I am dubious on how many of those promotions just end up subsidizing replanting lumber tracts. I am trying to find numbers but anything by the timber industry just seems to tout "we are replanting more than we harvest on a national level," but doesn't seem to differentiate who is planting what.
- xwdv 4y agoWow, they actually did it? I figured those were just empty promises that no one would follow up with to see if it was actually done.
- bombcar 4y agoCompanies sell it - but as pointed out they’re sometimes charging to plant trees they would have planted anyway.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y agoI wonder how much of this is The Great Green Walls of Africa and China...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- enviclash 4y agoYes but. Forget about simple linear relations. Where are those trees? What is their biogeochemical role? How change in them and the surfaces they occupy interacts with global dynamics in Earth system components? These are some of the questions that matter.
- proee 4y agoDo more trees equal more forrest fires? What, if anything, can be done to prevent mass fires down the road as we plant more trees? Should we be promoting controlled burns or thinning out of forests?
- tomrod 4y agoTypically letting fires burn is the best way to prevent future large forest fires.
- dexwiz 4y agoDon't plant eucalyptus trees. California is full of eucalyptus imported from Australia. They are oil soaked trees that drop a large amount of debris, both in the form of twiggy branches and the bark the peals off. This is great fire fuel and is in part the reason behind California's wild fires. Obviously they aren't the sole reason, but selecting proper trees can go a long way in managing fire risk. https://firesafemarin.org/plant/eucalyptus https://firesafemarin.org/plant/eucalyptus https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/ornamental/trees/eucalyptus/eucalyptus-fire-hazards.htm https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/ornamental/trees/eucalyptus...
- Melatonic 4y agoAs animals that likely evolved based on the benefits of tree dwelling it would be pretty ironic if we were also their demise
- anotheraccount9 4y agoShould we make a distinction between numbers of trees in a forest versus trees on a "farming tree"? Would there be an ecological difference?
- pvaldes 4y agoVery comforting but most probably false. In 2021 we had big wildfires in Australia, Russia, US, and Brazil chopping at warp speed...
- tern 4y agoI think it's vital to start shifting the default narrative around this type of thing to match current historical understanding. The Amazon rainforest is a _garden_. North America was deforested by humans thousands of years ago, and many trees were planted by people. "Biodiversity" is an imprecise term in a way that muddles the broader relevance. We're losing previously _managed_ forest (high biodiversity in a way that's relevant to humans) and gaining "wild" land, which often enough is not as beneficial, even as merely a carbon sink. The real story is that we've lost the ability to cultivate the land in a way that serves our interests, plus there are almost 8 billion people around now.
- guilhas 4y ago"Sadly, the research also confirms a large-scale loss of our planet’s most biodiverse ecosystems, particularly in the tropical rainforests." Single species trees planted for paper is not the same as native trees and ecosystems that existed for 1000s years and that we keep destroying for some IKEA furniture
- gthrone 4y agoYa spot on... Deceptively optimistic title when I feel that is still the real issue.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- glup 4y agoThis is a near-meaningless statistic for evaluating the health of the environment, obviously. Maximizing the coverage of intact ecologies supporting biodiversity should be the management objective. The problem here is that you can plant more trees, but the forest is monocropped and doesn't support the rich network of species it did previously. Hence, the importance of conservation (and corridors between protected lands) rather than restoration.
- princevegeta89 4y agoI came to know about this on David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet: While it is good to know that we have more trees than we did 35 years ago, the biodiversity of coverage has been seriously damaged. This basically means we do not have that massive variety of trees anymore. A lot of trees we grow today are mostly coming out of secondary commercial purposes. I remember a huge forest in Cambodia was cut down and repopulated with nothing but an oil plantation which isn't necessarily a great thing. The ecological imbalance caused was great enough that animal numbers decimated quickly and never returned to the original level. It might have helped offset some CO2 levels, but again, it had other adverse effects such as requiring huge amounts of water to keep it going.
- vermorel 4y agoOriginal paper (2018) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0411-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0411-9
- astannard 4y agoIt's not just the tree count but type too that needs thinking about. Trees to help biodiversity rather than just for the numbers. Having huge masses of fast growing pine is not the best for wildlife. Variety is the key.