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> 2. People tend to plant monocultures I can't count the number of times someone has pointed to neat, ordered ranks of nothing but pine-trees or blue-gums and l
by mft_ 3y ago
> 2. People tend to plant monocultures I can't count the number of times someone has pointed to neat, ordered ranks of nothing but pine-trees or blue-gums and labelled it a “forest”. Nope. A forest is an ecosystem, a great variety of plants — trees, shrubs, bushes, mosses, fungi, ferns, lichens — and animals. A monoculture is not “habitat” to anything much.
I'm not disagreeing with you on the bigger picture (at all) but I'm interested:
1. If a monoculture not-quite-a-forest is planted and not harvested, won't it gradually become a more varied ecosystem over time? As in, won't shrubs, bushes, mosses, fungi, ferns, lichens, and animals (not to mention other varieties of trees) gradually 'move in'?
2. Are we in danger of letting perfect be the enemy of good here? Would we rather have no new trees at all in a space, or a monoculture not-quite-a-forest (assuming it's not for harvest)?
- AndyMcConachie 3y agoThis video about a project in Scotland might be helpful. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiDBAU2d7oE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiDBAU2d7oE
- MrVandemar 3y ago1. Yes, eventually. Nature does that. But we're talking a long time scale here more than a human lifetime. And it'll never be as good as if you never cleared the land in the first place. Not even 10% as good. 2. Sure, always good to have more trees, but really what you need is ecosystems. For example, many trees don't reproduce without understory, which is the smaller trees and shrubs and plants that make up a forest. You don't get that with monocultures. I can look out my window and see some beautiful Melaleuca trees in the middle of a grass paddock for cattle. If you drove by, you'd think maybe “nice to see some trees there. Lovely blossom.” Those trees are functionally dead. They will never reproduce, because they depend on the understory to do so, which was cleared a long time ago. To say nothing of cattle nibbling on potential seedlings (but you know, food production is important). This is one reason why the count of species that go extinct every day is so high. It's not that we exterminated them specifically, but we exterminated their food's food's food that was part of a tangled web of evolved inter-dependencies. Monocultures, or near monocultures, don't have the complexity. Maybe best to think of them as “social housing for (a very few) varieties of animals”. I guess, the long and short of it is, everything we're currently doing is largely palliative care, and just take a little care that whatever it is you do doesn't do as much harm as good.
- mft_ 3y agoThanks for the thoughtful answer :)
- hackerlight 3y agoWhat is the standard of "good"? Are you talking about the amount of carbon sequestration per unit of area?
- MrVandemar 3y agoNo. Nothing so calculated. The standard of “good” is the old adage that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”. For example, don't use disproportionate amounts of fossil fuels or poisons or plastics to plant a single seedling. Good intentions, but a net worse outcome.