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My brothers MA thesis was about comparing the multiple model forests that have been planted throughout the EUs different climate zones (I didn't even know such

by atoav 3y ago

My brothers MA thesis was about comparing the multiple model forests that have been planted throughout the EUs different climate zones (I didn't even know such a thing existed, bur it makes sense). His focus was looking at resilience against weather, insects etc. and mixed forests fared significantly better throughout all climate zones. As someone from the alps, a thing that should not be forgotten is how important a diverse tree structure can be for stabilizing soil, especially in mountain areas. And those areas can expect more extreme wheater conditions due to climate change, especially in the form of rain. Mudslides can become a real economic factor in such regions. Mixed forests are also better at stabilizing the soil because the root structures are less uniform. So the best moment to plant mixed forests is 20 years ago, the next best is now. Edit: For non-wood people, the reason why there aren't more mixed woods is that harvesting is easier in non-mixed environments (although that also has changed with newer methods and tech).

chiefalchemist 3y ago
> His focus was looking at resilience against weather, insects etc. and mixed forests fared significantly better throughout all climate zones. It makes sense. The diversity means that while one genera is suffering from some Hostility X or Y (e.g., insects) the others might not be, or at least as much so. Diversity is a form of hedging your bet.
- Lutger 3y ago
  Hedging your bet is one part, another big one is creating habitat for predators. Pests often arise in monocultures because there just isn't any suitable habitat for the organisms that eat them. A part of that habitat is food, so ironically and perhaps counter intuitively, a good agro-ecological practice is to farm your pests. This provides a source of food (but not in your main crop) to attract the predators that you want to help control the pest. This is the reversal of a negative spiral where you control pests by killing them, thus preventing predators to settle in your land and making it a very nice place for the pests to multiple. And they will, because you can never kill them all - unless you keep using massive amounts of pesticides. This is why monocultures often need a lot of pesticides to work, its very hard to do without.
asddubs 3y ago
You just have to look at how utterly the Harz pine forests have been completely destroyed by the bark beetle to see what monocultures get you. It's just huge swaths of lands filled with nothing but dead trees
- HarryHirsch 3y ago
  There's the additional complication that when the beetle or the windstorm come there's suddenly an overabundance of wood on the market, which depresses prices. You'd need to do forest maintenance but cannot afford it, market forces are against it. It's like the Schweinezyklus but worse.
  - robocat 3y ago
    > Schweinezyklus Translation is probably Boom-bust cycle (literal: swine cycle?) https://dictionary.reverso.net/german-english/Schweinezyklus https://dictionary.reverso.net/german-english/Schweinezyklus for some rather poor usage examples
    - lysium 3y ago
      It’s pork cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_cycle
- Biologist123 3y ago
  I have heard estimates of 100 million trees dead in the Harz. The common refrain is that this was caused by climate change, but also choice of monoculture was a major contributing factor as the area was historically covered by mixed deciduous. Furthermore, choice of forest type will affect soil moisture retention, so reduced rainfall would have been buffered by better choice of forest type. Loss of those trees was an economic disaster. I’m not sure it’s an environmental disaster yet - especially as replanting seems to be with better reference to the agro-climatic zone.
  - Xylakant 3y ago
rootw0rm 3y ago
afaik it helps guard against particularly devastating wildfires, too.
- mtnGoat 3y ago
  The best way to deal with fires is not to. The problems the west is facing are due to so much fire suppression for tire last century and a half left too much fuel near the ground, we are now learning to let them burn.
  - dagmx 3y ago
    This is somewhat simplistic. There are many methods to wild fire control, including prescribed burns. Yes, many forestry practices are antiquated and incorrect, but it’s not as simple as just letting fires burn. There’s a significant science to forestry and wildfire management. Fire suppression is as important as fire management and fire encouragement. They go hand in hand, and require a measured balance
  - atoav 3y ago
    Not to get too political here, but the problem is literally that we have "raked the forest" too much. If you don't know how this could be political, be prepared to make your day a whole lot dumber if you google it.
wesapien 3y ago
I was just listened to a podcast on this and they said planting a bunch of trees don't make a forest especially tropical ones. There's just too much going on there.
taylorius 3y ago
No offense meant at all to your brother, it sounds like an interesting investigation. That said, the answer to these sorts of eco-questions always seems to be that the way nature has worked for millions of years is actually the best way (for loads of reasons we didn't know) - and if we mess with it too much, there will be some problems. This just seems kind of inevitable though. If nature's way didn't work, it wouldn't be happening. I suppose finding the reasons behind it being optimal are where the "meat" of such an investigation is. Interesting stuff.
- dagmx 3y ago
  Your comment bothers me because it is based on very shaky premises. Nature doesn’t work in the most optimal way, so it’s not always best to replicate it. Tons of things happen in nature that may wipe out important ecosystems. I suppose one could argue that at a long enough time scale it will even out but that time scale can be millennia. In the meantime, nature can wreak tons of havoc. Nature (and by that I mean ecosystems because nature is a vague) also doesn’t behave in necessarily intuitive or easily observable ways either. What might seem “obvious” at first can be very wrong. Nature (and again I mean ecosystems) also doesn’t exist in vacuums. What may have worked for centuries can be upset by even the most subtle of temperature shifts, and those might be caused by effects hundreds of miles away. Unchecked nature is also not always going to be conducive to human needs either. The entire field requires constant observation and inference. Even the ways of indigenous people that are fetishized as natures way by many, are scientific in nature. They’re the result of many years of observation, experimentation, learning and modifying how nature works to fit our needs.
  - flakeoil 3y ago
    > "the most optimal way" Optimum in what sense? Make as much cash as quickly as possible or have a forrest and a working eco system (or even any trees at all) also in 100+ years from now.
    - dagmx 3y ago
      Optimal as in preserving life if we’re going based off of the person I was replying to, but in general that is hard to define which is part of my point . Nature can just as quickly extinguish entire ecosystems, just as much as it can make them thrive. Just trusting nature to do the optimal thing and trust that it’ll turn out okay isn’t sensible unless you also don’t care about the constituent parts of that ecosystem. Insects can ravage entire populations of trees, rendering them dead and inhospitable to wildlife. Blight can do the same. Those are just as much nature at work as happy trees in a forest.
saiya-jin 3y ago
We had in Slovakia in 2004 a small catastrophe in our tiny higher mountains (High Tatras) - wind up to 110 kmh IIRC, and literally large swathes of pine/spruce forests that were on higher grounds were cut like with lawnmower. They often broke in half with bare trunk still standing, not even ripped out of the ground. Then parasitic beetles had a feast and their population exploded. Main reason was stated as monoculture planted decades ago, since these forests are pretty and they were used also for treating respiratory illnesses (clean mountain air with strong pine sap smell really helps, sort of natural aromatherapy). Almost 20 years passed, its still a sad sight. More logging, some ad hoc growth but forest definitely didn't regrow in any meaningful form, rather fast growing bushes took over. There was a lot of fight between forest / natural park management and ecologists on how to proceed, and everybody (including forest) lost.
Lutger 3y ago
In some tree monocultures, you can just see the soil is covered with layers of organic matter that just isn't decomposing fast enough. This is because there isn't the diversity in the soil food web required to process it, reflecting the lack of biodiversity above the ground. Such soils often have a very low ph and poor nutrient cycling.

by atoav 3y ago

chiefalchemist 3y ago

> His focus was looking at resilience against weather, insects etc. and mixed forests fared significantly better throughout all climate zones. It makes sense. The diversity means that while one genera is suffering from some Hostility X or Y (e.g., insects) the others might not be, or at least as much so. Diversity is a form of hedging your bet.

Lutger 3y ago
Hedging your bet is one part, another big one is creating habitat for predators. Pests often arise in monocultures because there just isn't any suitable habitat for the organisms that eat them. A part of that habitat is food, so ironically and perhaps counter intuitively, a good agro-ecological practice is to farm your pests. This provides a source of food (but not in your main crop) to attract the predators that you want to help control the pest. This is the reversal of a negative spiral where you control pests by killing them, thus preventing predators to settle in your land and making it a very nice place for the pests to multiple. And they will, because you can never kill them all - unless you keep using massive amounts of pesticides. This is why monocultures often need a lot of pesticides to work, its very hard to do without.

asddubs 3y ago

You just have to look at how utterly the Harz pine forests have been completely destroyed by the bark beetle to see what monocultures get you. It's just huge swaths of lands filled with nothing but dead trees

HarryHirsch 3y ago
There's the additional complication that when the beetle or the windstorm come there's suddenly an overabundance of wood on the market, which depresses prices. You'd need to do forest maintenance but cannot afford it, market forces are against it. It's like the Schweinezyklus but worse.
- robocat 3y ago
  > Schweinezyklus Translation is probably Boom-bust cycle (literal: swine cycle?) https://dictionary.reverso.net/german-english/Schweinezyklus https://dictionary.reverso.net/german-english/Schweinezyklus for some rather poor usage examples
  - lysium 3y ago
    It’s pork cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_cycle
Biologist123 3y ago
I have heard estimates of 100 million trees dead in the Harz. The common refrain is that this was caused by climate change, but also choice of monoculture was a major contributing factor as the area was historically covered by mixed deciduous. Furthermore, choice of forest type will affect soil moisture retention, so reduced rainfall would have been buffered by better choice of forest type. Loss of those trees was an economic disaster. I’m not sure it’s an environmental disaster yet - especially as replanting seems to be with better reference to the agro-climatic zone.
- Xylakant 3y ago

rootw0rm 3y ago

afaik it helps guard against particularly devastating wildfires, too.

mtnGoat 3y ago
The best way to deal with fires is not to. The problems the west is facing are due to so much fire suppression for tire last century and a half left too much fuel near the ground, we are now learning to let them burn.
- dagmx 3y ago
  This is somewhat simplistic. There are many methods to wild fire control, including prescribed burns. Yes, many forestry practices are antiquated and incorrect, but it’s not as simple as just letting fires burn. There’s a significant science to forestry and wildfire management. Fire suppression is as important as fire management and fire encouragement. They go hand in hand, and require a measured balance
- atoav 3y ago
  Not to get too political here, but the problem is literally that we have "raked the forest" too much. If you don't know how this could be political, be prepared to make your day a whole lot dumber if you google it.

wesapien 3y ago

I was just listened to a podcast on this and they said planting a bunch of trees don't make a forest especially tropical ones. There's just too much going on there.

taylorius 3y ago

No offense meant at all to your brother, it sounds like an interesting investigation. That said, the answer to these sorts of eco-questions always seems to be that the way nature has worked for millions of years is actually the best way (for loads of reasons we didn't know) - and if we mess with it too much, there will be some problems. This just seems kind of inevitable though. If nature's way didn't work, it wouldn't be happening. I suppose finding the reasons behind it being optimal are where the "meat" of such an investigation is. Interesting stuff.

dagmx 3y ago
Your comment bothers me because it is based on very shaky premises. Nature doesn’t work in the most optimal way, so it’s not always best to replicate it. Tons of things happen in nature that may wipe out important ecosystems. I suppose one could argue that at a long enough time scale it will even out but that time scale can be millennia. In the meantime, nature can wreak tons of havoc. Nature (and by that I mean ecosystems because nature is a vague) also doesn’t behave in necessarily intuitive or easily observable ways either. What might seem “obvious” at first can be very wrong. Nature (and again I mean ecosystems) also doesn’t exist in vacuums. What may have worked for centuries can be upset by even the most subtle of temperature shifts, and those might be caused by effects hundreds of miles away. Unchecked nature is also not always going to be conducive to human needs either. The entire field requires constant observation and inference. Even the ways of indigenous people that are fetishized as natures way by many, are scientific in nature. They’re the result of many years of observation, experimentation, learning and modifying how nature works to fit our needs.
- flakeoil 3y ago
  > "the most optimal way" Optimum in what sense? Make as much cash as quickly as possible or have a forrest and a working eco system (or even any trees at all) also in 100+ years from now.
  - dagmx 3y ago
    Optimal as in preserving life if we’re going based off of the person I was replying to, but in general that is hard to define which is part of my point . Nature can just as quickly extinguish entire ecosystems, just as much as it can make them thrive. Just trusting nature to do the optimal thing and trust that it’ll turn out okay isn’t sensible unless you also don’t care about the constituent parts of that ecosystem. Insects can ravage entire populations of trees, rendering them dead and inhospitable to wildlife. Blight can do the same. Those are just as much nature at work as happy trees in a forest.

saiya-jin 3y ago

We had in Slovakia in 2004 a small catastrophe in our tiny higher mountains (High Tatras) - wind up to 110 kmh IIRC, and literally large swathes of pine/spruce forests that were on higher grounds were cut like with lawnmower. They often broke in half with bare trunk still standing, not even ripped out of the ground. Then parasitic beetles had a feast and their population exploded. Main reason was stated as monoculture planted decades ago, since these forests are pretty and they were used also for treating respiratory illnesses (clean mountain air with strong pine sap smell really helps, sort of natural aromatherapy). Almost 20 years passed, its still a sad sight. More logging, some ad hoc growth but forest definitely didn't regrow in any meaningful form, rather fast growing bushes took over. There was a lot of fight between forest / natural park management and ecologists on how to proceed, and everybody (including forest) lost.

Lutger 3y ago

In some tree monocultures, you can just see the soil is covered with layers of organic matter that just isn't decomposing fast enough. This is because there isn't the diversity in the soil food web required to process it, reflecting the lack of biodiversity above the ground. Such soils often have a very low ph and poor nutrient cycling.