4 ms·

My family owns a small pine plantation as an investment, and we were very lucky to buy our saplings right before the fery vast growth varieties came on the mark

My family owns a small pine plantation as an investment, and we were very lucky to buy our saplings right before the fery vast growth varieties came on the market. The fast growth versions have extremely soft timber, its functionally useless, even the paper pulp mills only buy it at a discount. They are probably vulnerable to storm damage too, but we haven't had to deal with that. Might still be useful to build a wind break and out-compete introduced varieties in phases

abakker 12y ago
I guess they're moderately OK at carbon sequestration? Assuming that we just choose to do nothing with them once they die.
- bsder 12y ago
  They're more water, less carbon. So, they are less efficient at carbon sequestration in terms of density. And, they are probably easier for microbes to break back down so they hold the carbon for less time.
  - vanderZwan 12y ago
    Wait, so they literally took the meat industry's trick of "add water to add weight" and used that with trees?
  - WillNotDownvote 12y ago
    Poplars are considered to be among the best trees in terms of carbon sequestration according to studies done thus far. In addition, if they're converted to paper and other wood products, they continue to sequester the carbon for the life of those products. Here's a layman's article on the "best trees" for carbon sequestration- http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/the_green_lantern/2008/01/the_greenest_tree.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/the_green_l...
    - ars 12y ago
      > paper and other wood products, they continue to sequester the carbon for the life of those products. Which is basically forever if you throw away the paper instead of recycle it.
      - aetherson 12y ago
        I would regard it as prima facia deeply unlikely that processing wood into paper is carbon-negative, regardless of how long you then store the paper. It takes power to turn trees into paper.
        ars 12y ago
        It's easy enough to calculate: Do you need more than an equivalent amount of paper burned into energy, to make that paper. The answer is no, paper mills power themself from trimmings from paper making. They use much less than the mass of paper they produce. Making paper does not take very much energy. The energy used in cutting and preparing wood is not that much when compared to the amount of wood produced. So yes, turning wood into paper is carbon negative (in a way, technically it's the growing of the tree).
- Lerc 12y ago
  I think the problem with soft wood and carbon sequestration are possibly the same underlying problem. If they are still gathering sunlight and carbon the same way but gaining size quicker then there is just less carbon per cubic cm. There'll be some advantage in being able to get at more light and carbon sooner, but as carbon stored per square meter of land it's probably less. That is not to say that you could not in principle make trees better, but I think the changes would have to be something fundamental to the cell physiology. A C4 carbon fixation pine tree might be better but it might be easier to turn bamboo into a pine tree than it would be to make a pine tree work with C4. Evolution is really good at balance, tweaking a bit can knock a lot off balance. It's not an impossible feat to make something better but it isn't easy.
davidp 12y ago
This is why hardwoods are, uh, hard. They're typically slower-growing, so their rings are more tightly packed, giving the wood additional strength. I'm skeptical that the fast-grown trees from the article are as long-term healthy as naturally grown ones.
- jeffdavis 12y ago
  I thought the trees in the article were native species, not special fast-growing varieties. Did I miss something?
  - davidp 12y ago
    Any tree that grows quickly will have thicker (less densely packed) rings. The author describes a planting strategy that "tricks" the trees into growing more quickly than usual, so my intuition is that those trees will be weaker than they otherwise would be. The choice of species just moves the "natural" density point.
    - sangnoir 12y ago
      growing forest quickly =/= growing trees quickly. I might have missed something, but I don't think he mentions anything about making the trees grow faster. The "tricks" are to mature the forest (i.e. make it self-sustaining) within 10 years, tree growth-rate notwithstanding.
      - lione 12y ago
        The article mentions planting them close together and having them compete for sunlight, thus stimulating fast growth.
- Osmium 12y ago
  > This is why hardwoods are, uh, hard. General point of interest, but this isn't universally true. E.g. Balsa is a hardwood and is decidedly not hard.
- 12y ago

abakker 12y ago

I guess they're moderately OK at carbon sequestration? Assuming that we just choose to do nothing with them once they die.

bsder 12y ago
They're more water, less carbon. So, they are less efficient at carbon sequestration in terms of density. And, they are probably easier for microbes to break back down so they hold the carbon for less time.
- vanderZwan 12y ago
  Wait, so they literally took the meat industry's trick of "add water to add weight" and used that with trees?
- WillNotDownvote 12y ago
  Poplars are considered to be among the best trees in terms of carbon sequestration according to studies done thus far. In addition, if they're converted to paper and other wood products, they continue to sequester the carbon for the life of those products. Here's a layman's article on the "best trees" for carbon sequestration- http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/the_green_lantern/2008/01/the_greenest_tree.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/the_green_l...
  - ars 12y ago
    > paper and other wood products, they continue to sequester the carbon for the life of those products. Which is basically forever if you throw away the paper instead of recycle it.
    - aetherson 12y ago
      I would regard it as prima facia deeply unlikely that processing wood into paper is carbon-negative, regardless of how long you then store the paper. It takes power to turn trees into paper.
      - ars 12y ago
        It's easy enough to calculate: Do you need more than an equivalent amount of paper burned into energy, to make that paper. The answer is no, paper mills power themself from trimmings from paper making. They use much less than the mass of paper they produce. Making paper does not take very much energy. The energy used in cutting and preparing wood is not that much when compared to the amount of wood produced. So yes, turning wood into paper is carbon negative (in a way, technically it's the growing of the tree).
Lerc 12y ago
I think the problem with soft wood and carbon sequestration are possibly the same underlying problem. If they are still gathering sunlight and carbon the same way but gaining size quicker then there is just less carbon per cubic cm. There'll be some advantage in being able to get at more light and carbon sooner, but as carbon stored per square meter of land it's probably less. That is not to say that you could not in principle make trees better, but I think the changes would have to be something fundamental to the cell physiology. A C4 carbon fixation pine tree might be better but it might be easier to turn bamboo into a pine tree than it would be to make a pine tree work with C4. Evolution is really good at balance, tweaking a bit can knock a lot off balance. It's not an impossible feat to make something better but it isn't easy.

davidp 12y ago

This is why hardwoods are, uh, hard. They're typically slower-growing, so their rings are more tightly packed, giving the wood additional strength. I'm skeptical that the fast-grown trees from the article are as long-term healthy as naturally grown ones.

jeffdavis 12y ago
I thought the trees in the article were native species, not special fast-growing varieties. Did I miss something?
- davidp 12y ago
  Any tree that grows quickly will have thicker (less densely packed) rings. The author describes a planting strategy that "tricks" the trees into growing more quickly than usual, so my intuition is that those trees will be weaker than they otherwise would be. The choice of species just moves the "natural" density point.
  - sangnoir 12y ago
    growing forest quickly =/= growing trees quickly. I might have missed something, but I don't think he mentions anything about making the trees grow faster. The "tricks" are to mature the forest (i.e. make it self-sustaining) within 10 years, tree growth-rate notwithstanding.
    - lione 12y ago
      The article mentions planting them close together and having them compete for sunlight, thus stimulating fast growth.
Osmium 12y ago
> This is why hardwoods are, uh, hard. General point of interest, but this isn't universally true. E.g. Balsa is a hardwood and is decidedly not hard.
12y ago