[HN Gopher] Phantom forests: Ambitious tree planting projects ar...
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Phantom forests: Ambitious tree planting projects are failing
Author : kaboro
Score : 176 points
Date : 2022-10-18 14:38 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (e360.yale.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (e360.yale.edu)
| theptip wrote:
| > Not surprisingly, those locals often reacted badly. For
| example, in northern Malawi, they broke fences and burned a
| growing forest to get back the common grazing land on which the
| trees had been planted. In two Nigerian projects, villagers cut
| all the planted non-fruit trees for firewood, while protecting
| those that bore fruit.
|
| Recommended reading: "Seeing Like A State" by James Scott. The
| first section on Scientific Forestry directly applies, and the
| rest of the book conceptually does too.
|
| In summary, the state seeks to render its resources and populace
| legible, because local arrangements are very hard to quantify
| (and tax) from the center. This drive to achieve legibility
| inevitably distorts the world they are attempting to understand,
| for example by incentivizing monoculture forestry (easier to
| count the trees) instead of natural forest growth (providing many
| communal resources that are impossible to measure such as
| firewood, foraging, grazing, and so on).
|
| There is a very prevalent idea that "subsistence farmers" know
| little about the land they work. It's usually the opposite; they
| tend to have far more practical expertise than the centralized
| planners.
|
| If instead of planning these projects centrally, they were
| planned and executed by locals in collaboration with central
| funding sources, you'd be much more likely to get good results.
| The local farmers can usually tell you what trees will grow,
| where they will survive, what the village needs more of, and so
| on. To be more concrete -- why not provide a centralized program
| that subsidizes villages to plant trees, but does not specify
| which trees to plant? If the incentives are high enough you'll
| get people to plant anything (as the OP shows). But at a lower
| level of incentive, they will only do the work for something that
| they actually value. That's the sweet spot.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| The problems start when each empowered locality starts
| demanding exemptions to laws that must be enforced consistently
| to be credible, or even viable.
|
| It's a very difficult problem to resolve as coordination
| problems get exponentially costly as the number of parties
| grow.
|
| In organizational terms, once there's two or more layers of
| middle management, delegating decision making to frontline
| managers create wicked problems.
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| Thats the problem with all these projects though, they are
| situation brittle, depending on a situation not changing for
| the worse and a constant economic drip keeping them alive. The
| actual solution would be to saturate humans need for firewood
| and material - by drone planting the only plant that could keep
| up, survive and thrive, with it - Variations of genetically
| modified Bamboo.The past is gone, it cant be restored, but the
| danger can be contained with no constant costs and outside of
| the containment vessels, something like the past one day might
| return.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "The actual solution would be to saturate humans need for
| firewood and material - by drone planting the only plant that
| could keep up, survive and thrive, with it - Variations of
| genetically modified Bamboo"
|
| Bamboo needs lots of water, and I am unaware of a modified
| version that does not, so is not really suitable in many
| areas. How about low tech solar cookers instead?
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _Seeing like a state_ is a terrific book.
|
| It's possible that I learned the idea of _forest death_ from it
| rather than a college class.[1] The German word for it is
| waldsterben and there seem to be few English language resources
| about it.[3]
|
| My recollection is that monoculture forests promote forest
| death. Diversity is critical to a thriving forest.
|
| [1] Or both. I was an Environmental Resource Management major.
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30749891
| empyrrhicist wrote:
| That's the idea behind community-based participatory research.
| Some people get it.
| pstuart wrote:
| You're spot on with your assessment, the only thing I'd change
| is that the centralized management does more than funding -- it
| provides a library of possible projects with expert assistance
| as needed. Locals still get control and ownership of their
| efforts but they have help when _they_ want it.
| theptip wrote:
| Indeed. Given the starting point, and the major shift in
| world-view required to do this kind of thing, I think of that
| library as a "phase 2" kind of thing. First get a few
| successful projects under our belt, then think about how we
| can add more leverage.
|
| But I strongly agree that the end point to envision is the
| center acting as a library/facilitator to share knowledge
| between different groups, rather than The Source of Truth in
| itself.
|
| Local farmers that succeed in these sort of programs would
| likely be happy to go share ideas and experiences with other
| farmers, and the government can certainly provide funding and
| logistical support to facilitate these small-scale
| collaborations.
|
| And it's certainly the case that there are some scientific
| advances that farmers aren't aware of, that "the center" can
| help to introduce; things like sensors, democratized GM
| technology, and so on, could all be developed centrally and
| made available to the periphery. Farmers tend to be quick to
| adopt new tools and practices that actually help them.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Carbon credits from tree planting? Similar to the famous bounties
| on rats in old France. Rat plantations made a few rich.
| Similarly, institutions can claim credit for planting 'forests'
| that are pointless and failures.
|
| Sure planting trees is generally a low-yield operations, with
| <50% survival rate typical. But these referenced projects were
| abysmally low, egregiously low, around a percent or two. Low
| enough to see that no honest effort was made.
| pmayrgundter wrote:
| Great comments about monoculture and poor incentives.
|
| Natural forests have a complexity that doesn't seem worthwhile to
| brute-force by massive tree planting. There's an obvious spatial
| complexity for different plant phyla patterns (see a bunch of
| links below).. a kind of blending between meadows to underbrush
| to trees, mosses and lichen in rocky areas, mangroves holding
| onto rivers. And there's plenty of fungus and animal
| participation to consider as well.
|
| I like to listen to permaculture people and their approaches..
| thinking of the water tables, clay and soil types. I think
| there's probably also some new thinking to be done about how
| functional water cycles differ from arid areas and developing
| long-term plans to coax water back up with strong cloud-seeders,
| from coastlines and river basins towards inland deserts.
|
| That all leads to healthier rivers and tidal estuaries, which are
| keystones for many maritime ecosystems, due to feeding and
| breeding migrations e.g. of salmon, crab, eels.
|
| I guess I'm saying we're missing the forests for the trees :)
|
| https://cache.desktopnexus.com/thumbseg/2276/2276110-bigthum...
| https://images.fineartamerica.com/images/artworkimages/mediu...
| https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/536460cbe4b02a...
| https://www.backyardgardenlover.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/...
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/Bl...
| hinkley wrote:
| I just finished Suzanne Simard's book, which if you ignore the
| timelines (early 90's) of when she thought about these things,
| reads like your kid discovering a love of your favorite hobby
| and breathlessly explaining each new discovery as they happen.
|
| The new idea I encountered in the book was one of deep rooted
| trees hydrating the soil by reaching into the water table and
| pulling it up to the surface. Particularly at night when
| evaporation rates drop off. I'd read years ago that some
| African cultures ascribe this power to fig trees (possibly from
| Wangari Maathai), but I've never seen anything but anecdotal
| evidence of this happening anywhere else. She anthropomorphized
| these things but I suspect that some of the activities she saw
| could more boringly be ascribed to osmotic pressure. Sugars and
| water are going to leak out across a gradient at some rate even
| if you try to stop it. Especially across a barrier that is
| designed to pass water in the opposite direction.
| pmayrgundter wrote:
| I love her work :) The co2 isotope-based tracing is genius.
|
| Also reminds me of the nutrient chain in PacNW connects the
| salmon spawn to becoming tree fertilizer via the bear fishing
| and discarding partly eaten carcases; they just eat the fatty
| skin. Deep ecology.
| nathancahill wrote:
| One of my favorite anecdotes on this problem is Guatemala. The
| laws on the books are pretty decent, incentives for farmers to
| reforest land where there used to be trees, with the government
| paying for the initial seedlings and then yearly payments (with
| verification of tree growth) over 7-15 years as the trees mature.
|
| However, farmers quickly found a loophole where they could find a
| plot of virgin forest, clear cut the hardwood for lumber and then
| use the bare land to sign up for the program. They would plant a
| fast growing monocrop of pine and tend it (and collect payments)
| for 7 years until they would harvest it for lumber. All fully
| paid for by the government.
| gelatocar wrote:
| While that is obviously rorting the system, isn't it kind of
| ideal from a carbon capture perspective? One of the big
| problems with planting forests for carbon capture is that they
| often burn down, and even when they don't, the natural cycle of
| the forest trees dying or falling and breaking down releases
| the captured carbon too. Harvesting the trees and using them as
| a building material seems like a better way to ensure that the
| captured carbon stays stored for longer. As long as they aren't
| used for firewood...
| superchroma wrote:
| " _There is no anti-tree lobby_ "
|
| There absolutely is. In my country, logging companies release
| statements complaining bitterly about effects to industry when
| new areas of land are protected from logging by the government.
| They equally are quite happy to quietly log ancient trees when
| allowed. Just because people don't march around with their agenda
| printed on a badge doesn't mean they don't exist.
| ianbicking wrote:
| If you add the slight qualifier "there is no anti-tree-planting
| lobby" then it works... those logging companies will also
| enthusiastically support planting trees
| soperj wrote:
| There's no lobby, but you count me as part of an anti-tree-
| planting group. There's a specific reason why, and it's
| because of how it's done. The reason that they plant trees,
| is to grow specific kinds of trees that are good for logging
| companies. So they spray areas that are logged with
| glycosphate to prevent other plants from reclaiming the
| logged areas, and then plant round-up ready GMO trees in the
| area. It leads to these massive mono-culture forests that are
| prime for huge forest fires. The trees they want are fire-
| promoting trees (like pines), and the trees they don't (like
| aspen) are fire break species. They then blame the bigger
| forest fires entirely on climate change.
| xani__ wrote:
| ajross wrote:
| Only timber species, though, not forests.
| rolandog wrote:
| The same way that wolves are pro-birthers when it comes to
| sheep.
| RobLach wrote:
| Yes but planting trees and turning it to lumber is an
| excellent way to sequester carbon.
| orangepurple wrote:
| Trees are not 100% carbon. Logging worsens soil
| conditions when no effort is made to preserve it. "Just
| keep planting lol" is not sustainable. Algae sequester
| carbon better.
| jandrese wrote:
| What logging does is create an economic incentive to
| plant the trees and let them grow. The problem with algae
| is that it doesn't have economic value currently. People
| dream about turning it into food or biofuels but that's
| not currently viable.
|
| Although if you were only interested in sequestering
| carbon (which currently has close to 0 economic
| incentive) you could grow algae, filter them out of the
| water, and then pump them deep underground into old
| gas/oil wells. It's still a lot of energy but possibly
| more viable than most carbon capture proposals. Over
| millions of years that algae will probably turn back into
| coal/oil.
|
| Also, farming algae in natural waterways tends to have
| its own environmental impacts.
| rolandog wrote:
| Oh, agreed. I just wanted to make an analogy about groups
| that have, in theory, competing interests but can in some
| cases have common goals.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Harvesting and replanting trees is not anti-tree.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| a quick read of this -- it appears to be a list of badly executed
| projects by struggling governments, more than anything ecosystem-
| oriented; coinciding with "constant topic of conversation in
| political circles" .. Second in failure rate only to "protecting
| healthy forests that exist now" ?
| orangepurple wrote:
| From a distance it appears as if those organizations are doing
| those tree planting stunts to tick boxes on ESG compliance
| forms required to receive international aid they need for
| embezzlement income. How else do useless third world
| bureaucrats fund their escapades? Look no further than the
| recent history of Nauru to see how leadership has zero qualms
| stealing the future of a whole country then converting it into
| a literal prison for hire for $27 million a year.
| ianbicking wrote:
| The Miyawaki method [1], which I'm sure has been on HN before, is
| a very different approach to these projects. When I first read
| about it, it seemed like a kind of too-good-to-be-true miracle
| approach, but reading further it's really just a lot of hard
| work.
|
| Site preparation is a huge part of it. This photo gallery [2]
| gives some sense. It starts with soil testing and soil amendment,
| I doubt they ever consider the soil "good enough" at the outset.
| I'm not sure if they also do any hydrological changes? Then they
| plant a dense and diverse set of trees. I'm not clear how many
| trees ultimately survive. There's theories about the set of trees
| you'd use, but I can only imagine some of the process is just
| natural selection, and a belief that early density is positive to
| later growth.
|
| Bringing it back to technology, I do wonder what tools could
| support this kind of higher-effort higher-impact forestation. It
| seems like there's work to be done performing soil tests and
| understand the results and recommended amendments, including some
| decision trees around tests and results. There's general guidance
| on the choice of trees, but it requires matching that guidance
| against local conditions and local plants.
|
| In some ways the process is simpler than landscaping a house: you
| aren't trying to get a perfect set of plants, and you aren't
| imposing other requirements. You're really trying to build a mini
| ecosystem, and the ecosystem is there to do a lot of the work on
| its own.
|
| I am less sure how this approach translates to more marginal
| locations. It's a bit easier to rapidly create a lush and vibrant
| forest in India than at the edge of a desert. Most of the
| examples are in tropical locations.
|
| [1] https://www.crowdforesting.org/miyawaki-model/forest-kerala
|
| [2] https://www.greenyatra.org/miyawaki.php
| sitkack wrote:
| I did a fun experiment in my yard, I took a small mixture of
| grass seeds (store bought bird seed) and planted them in
| various places in the yard (after sprouting). It was amazing to
| see what did and did not thrive in various places due to sun,
| water and soil.
|
| One place supported all 4 kinds, the other three only supported
| 1 or 2 kinds of grasses.
|
| I would think reforesting a barren land might have to take
| multiple phases of growth to prepare the soil, ability to hold
| water, fungal colonies to extract nutrients, etc.
| sn41 wrote:
| Hmm. Pleasantly surprised to find Kerala being mentioned in
| this context - I wasn't aware of this.
|
| But on a related note, the south west of India has a rich
| tradition of "Sarpa Kavus", literally, "Serpent Shrine", but
| which are in reality, sacred groves in some corner of the yard
| of many traditional homes (see [1] for a typical example) -
| these are mostly left to themselves for most of the year,
| except for a couple of festival days. In practice, it is almost
| a biome within the yard.
|
| [1]
| https://nandakishorevarma.wordpress.com/2016/12/30/a-sacred-...
| mabbo wrote:
| > I do wonder what tools could support this kind of higher-
| effort higher-impact forestation
|
| What's neat is that the tools already exist. Much of modern
| farming is a data problem- knowing soil conditions and nutrient
| levels across a large area and which plants would work best
| where. They often make use of satellite data, watershed
| simulation, weather and climate models.
|
| I wonder if anyone has documented using those tools for this
| purpose.
| atonalfreerider wrote:
| Ceres is one that I know about:
| https://www.ceresimaging.net/customer-stories
| antisthenes wrote:
| The Miyawaki model is incredibly labor intensive and requires
| far more sophistication in monitoring and planting methods than
| developing countries are usually willing to commit to mass
| planting projects.
|
| 90%+ of these mass planting "1 million trees in 30 seconds"
| projects is usually little more than putting sticks in the
| ground, hoping some of them make it, with little regard for
| survivability, usefulness, tree species nativity, etc.
| hinkley wrote:
| Some of these notions of building a forest have parallels in
| the still developing field of probiotics versus prebiotics.
| Setting the dominoes instead of trying and failing to set the
| scene.
|
| It turns out that building a healthy forest is a long difficult
| process that can span multiple administrations and in some
| cases lifetimes. Building the conditions for a second growth
| successional forest is something most of us can watch in real
| time.
|
| These things are quality over quantity, which requires some
| cleverness in order to leverage. Forests (vs tree farms) spread
| by mycelium, by root, by seed, and by wing, and pretty much in
| that order. You'll get more success planting the entire
| perimeter of an intact forest than planting a rectangular area
| next to it, and more success planting a rectangular area next
| to an intact forest than planting a random hill in the middle
| of a clearcut. I have a hypothesis that planting rich islands
| within line of sight of each other and then letting nature in-
| fill between them also works better, but I have seen no
| research supporting or refuting that hypothesis. Nature
| corridors seem to be pretty close to this model and those have
| been proven.
|
| One thing I'd like to see us do is move away from square and
| rectangular clearcuts toward more linear ones. Perhaps on
| contour, and leaving support species instead of nuking
| everything before replanting. See also research by Suzanne
| Simard and her peers on the soil food web.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| The problem is with the incentives. We reward organizations for
| _planting_ trees when we should be rewarding them for _growing_
| trees.
|
| Anecdotally, paper mills don't seem to have a problem
| successfully growing monocrop forests on their own properties
| because they actually have a reason to care about the success of
| replanting their own land.
| ethagknight wrote:
| This is great insight that I haven't considered. IN parts of
| the US you can plainly see miles of monoculture forests in all
| directions thriving (in an industrial sense) because they are
| actively managed. Look around Panama City, FL, (link below) for
| a good example.
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/@30.2640043,-85.4463662,3277m/da...
| chaostheory wrote:
| Isn't most of the Western portion of the US comprised of
| monoculture forests due to the historical lack of rain
| compared to the Eastern half?
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| No.
|
| The western half of the US has many monoculture forests
| where forestry companies manage them with thinning,
| herbicides and selective planting.
|
| Natural forests in the west are diverse and contain many
| species of trees. They are different trees than you see in
| the east, and many of the coniferous species appear
| similar.
| CommieBobDole wrote:
| To extend that, there was an article here a while back about
| how many of the people growing these monoculture pine forests
| for paper production have stopped cutting them because
| gathering the pinestraw and selling it for landscaping purposes
| is much more lucrative.
| Lendal wrote:
| I have plenty of incentive to keep the trees in my own yard
| from dying, yet I lack the expertise. So they die. I need an
| arborist. Unfortunately the arborists in my town are
| incentivized to get me to pay their company to cut my trees
| down and replace them with new ones every 10-15 years or so.
|
| We really just need more foresters, with a broader mission that
| extends beyond simply government-owned park land, who can help
| individual landowners to plant the right kinds of trees in the
| right ways.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >I have plenty of incentive to keep the trees in my own yard
| from dying, yet I lack the expertise. So they die. I need an
| arborist.
|
| I don't mean to be rude, but how brown is your green thumb? I
| get killing house plants, but killing a tree growing outdoors
| seems like something you'd actively have to do. The most
| common "mistake" I've seen are lack of care with lawn
| equipment like weed whackers. Are they just not being planted
| correctly so they don't have a chance?
| crazygringo wrote:
| I'm no expert gardener but I can't help but wonder if it
| could be animals/pests eating the leaves before the tree is
| tall enough? Or gnawing all the bark, etc.
|
| Also trees might not be a good match for the soil, there's
| clay the roots can't penetrate, etc.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I get planting the wrong tree in the wrong area. That's
| part of what I meant by not being planted correctly. Not
| treating the root ball properly is another.
|
| However, I have pecan/oak trees in my area. Every spring,
| I get free saplings from the nuts that actually
| germinated and sprouted in a lot of my pots that I use
| for my container garden. If I were to actually try to get
| one of these nuts to grow, it would never take. Yet every
| spring, Mother Nature gives me freebies that I feel
| guilty about plucking when it comes time to prep for the
| next round of veggies instead. I have an almost perfect
| spot to let another tree grow to full size. If it weren't
| for the remaining stump from where the shitty developer
| planted Bradford Pears, I'd transplant some of the Live
| Oaks saplings in their place.
| gopher_space wrote:
| Underwatering a recent transplant is pretty common. I'll
| just hold a hose on the area until I get bored.
| luhn wrote:
| Some great advice that I got: Buy a five gallon bucket,
| drill an 1/8" hole in the side. That way the water can
| soak into the ground without having to stand there with a
| hose for five minutes. Plus you can measure how much
| water you're giving the tree--I was told one bucket twice
| a week for the first year, but I'm sure YMMV depending on
| the tree and your climate.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >until I get bored.
|
| =) I really wish I could make a lot of my decisions based
| on this alone.
|
| If you have a short attention span, that's not good.
|
| Yet, at the same time, if you zone out for an hour and
| doing this daily, that's not good but in an opposite
| manner.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| If you're in the US, contact your local extension office for
| help. Though I'm also unsure why your trees would keep dying;
| I haven't seen a lot of people with that issue.
| rini17 wrote:
| There's no substitute for self learning here, sadly. As soon
| as you want "nonstandard" garden you're on your own, with
| plenty of trial and error. With that in mind, maybe there's
| local gardening group?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Can you expand on your arborist conflict of interest. Are
| they all dishonest or can you simply ask what the expected
| lifetime of the tree would be?
| googlryas wrote:
| Your local/nearby college/university almost certainly
| provides these services for free.
| extantproject wrote:
| https://archive.ph/7bVu8
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| How many of these tree planting projects are funded by carbon
| credits/offsets?
|
| Tree planting seems the be the simplest/cheapest project to do
| that ostensibly removes CO2.
|
| Basically, the carbon offsets serve as a conscience salve for
| rich people to continue their lifestyle, and then these tree
| projects exist as a way to say that you are at least trying to do
| something. Nobody really cares if they are effective or not.
| throwaway8582 wrote:
| Much of the Earth's surface is not suitable for growing trees,
| either because it's too dry, to wet, to cold, poor soil or lack
| of soil, etc. The article gives examples of planting in places
| where trees don't typically grow, on coastlines and in deserts,
| so it's not at all surprising that the trees planted there died.
| This is why I've always been skeptical of tree planting
| initiatives. In areas where they can survive, trees will just
| naturally appear on unused land, there's no need to plant them.
| If this isn't happening on it's own, it's probably because the
| conditions there aren't right for them.
| kokanee wrote:
| Some would argue that where conditions for trees aren't
| suitable, the solution is to build a forest there. Forests
| themselves are the best terraforming tool, if you can get them
| started by supplying the necessary nutrients, energy, and
| water.
|
| I don't know how feasible it is, but using trees to transform
| parched landscapes is the mission of a company I interviewed at
| a while back called Terraformation, founded by the former CEO
| of Reddit.
| sitkack wrote:
| To add reference to the claim that, "forests themselves are
| the best terraforming tool", one can take the example of
| Ascension Island. With the introduction of outside trees that
| formed an ecological foothold, they started cooling humid air
| and reinforcing the soil so that other plants and trees can
| flourish.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension_Island#Botany
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-11137903
|
| Once, This Island Had Just One Tree
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZPrk9IZ3Jw
| robocat wrote:
| Looking at the satellite photos, a lot of the Island is
| still quite barren.
|
| Strangely enough, the Google maps satellite imagery is
| almost useless. Use Apple maps instead. If not on an Apple
| device, you can access Apple maps via
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ascension+island (note: satellite
| imagery is not available this way on my iDevice).
|
| Here is another BBC article, which I think is far more
| balanced and talks about the negative issues of the
| biological cost of the planting:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36076411
|
| The last volcanic eruption was 1508 or so. I did a quick
| Google to find some information on how long takes it
| generally takes for vegetative regeneration after volcanic
| eruptions. Looks like it depends on type of eruption and
| rainfall: "Mount Kelud in East Java has erupted on a
| 15-37-years cycle for the past centuries [snip] Within 3
| years of the eruption, stem diameters were 3-10 cm. [snip]
| being able to establish itself rapidly in the extreme
| conditions that prevail after a recent ash deposition event
| (given the short return period of eruptions), but by
| enriching the ash deposits with nitrogen, paves the way for
| grasses to take over, which in turn delay succession to
| other woody vegetation" (not sure if the landscape was
| purely volcanically virgin). Obviously it can also takes
| centuries in the example of Ascension. A study in Hawaii
| looked at the order that types of vegetation took hold: htt
| ps://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/science/5/chap8..
| .
| jandrese wrote:
| The caveat with this is the forests can do ok for awhile, but
| then a dry spell will hit and it tends to burn down.
| perrygeo wrote:
| > trees will just naturally appear on unused land, there's no
| need to plant them. If this isn't happening on it's own, it's
| probably because the conditions there aren't right for them.
|
| That is only true if the seeds can travel to get there! Moving
| many miles or uphill via seed dispersal is a slow process. The
| climate gradients and habitat pressures are moving much faster.
| While I agree that land suitable for forests will eventually
| reforest itself, if we want to do it on human timescales, we
| may need to kick-start the process with a seed transfer
| program.
| 0000011111 wrote:
| I wonder what the success rate would be if trees were replanted
| in forest that burned.
|
| And to what extent climate change would make the environment no
| longer suited for trees?
|
| In the US forest fires burn about 7 million acres on average
| each year.
|
| https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/IF10244.pdf
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_California_wildfires
|
| The Dixie fire alone was about 1 million acres.
|
| San Francisco is 30,000 acres for perspective.
|
| https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/IF10244.pdf
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Maybe the gauge of success isn't 100% but much lower - a 15%
| success rate doesn't seem terrible, as was quoted for several
| projects. Maybe we better custodianship you can make that better,
| but I've seen quotes elsewhere that even with the most aggressive
| stewardship up to 70% of planted trees in afforestation efforts
| die. Maybe carpet bombing with seedlings and being happy with the
| residual survival is the game and we should be happy? Careful
| stewardship may not be scaleable, but mass planting is. That 15%
| delta might be dwarfed by the scale of effort possible.
| contingencies wrote:
| Some practical steps might include staging (eg. first reduce
| topsoil loss and create windbreaks with native grasses and ground
| covers, then start shrubs, then move on to trees, finally seed
| additional biome), always interplanting a range of species,
| placing protective rocks or other features for initial
| microclimate (moisture channeling, moisture retention, part wind
| protection, shade), and ensuring that all species planted are
| regionally endemic (greater capability to thrive in location
| conditions). Things to avoid are plants that depend on artificial
| irrigation, fertilizer, or pathogen protection.
| tantalor wrote:
| Did nobody play SimEarth? You have to start with grasslands
| before building up to forests. And you need the right critters.
| jibbit wrote:
| ~10 trees have been planted on my street (in London) over the
| past few years. Each cost hundreds of pounds and took months to
| arrange. Every one died this summer.
| georgeburdell wrote:
| Didn't see any mention of Israel? Their afforestation efforts
| seem successful
| foobarbecue wrote:
| The folly of monoculture forest planting forms the basis for a
| subplot in The Overstory.
|
| I can't give a wholehearted reccomendation for The Overstory
| since it was a bit melodramatic for my taste. The narrative
| cadence of the book goes something like: tragedy, pointless
| tragedy, ridiculous tragedy, unrealistic tragedy and so forth
| until the end... with a dash of interesting ecology and history
| sprinkled throughout. I suppose it should be read as magical
| realism with "rage against the machine" vibes.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| and what about grasslands? these projects will sometimes plant
| forests that were historically savanna and grasslands
| c0brac0bra wrote:
| This may be unpopular on HN, but that's what Allan Savory has
| advocated for, along with rotational (holistic in his words)
| grazing of ruminants.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| i didn't realize that "preserve and promote grasslands" was a
| controversial take lol
| hutzlibu wrote:
| History is gone. Also it is likely, that there were times when
| those Savanne areas were covered with trees.
|
| There is no shortage of grasslands that are close of becoming
| desserts with one serious draught, but there is shortage of
| forests, that hold the moisture and prevent further
| desertification.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| i love forests too. i don't know where you live, but you
| might learn something about grasslands from the southern
| grasslands institute: https://www.segrasslands.org/
|
| re: "history isn't gone," that's a reductive position. it
| will certainly be very different millions of years from now,
| but it won't be as drastic within our lifetime. the
| ecological history of a place tells us where plants thrive
| and don't thrive. site selection is a fact of plant success.
| certain types of trees grow in grasslands but they aren't the
| dominate plant life -- fossil records would indicate this.
|
| i'm no ecologist or scientist, but i've read that grasslands
| can hold water too. just google "do grasslands store water"
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "i'm no ecologist or scientist, but i've read that
| grasslands can hold water too. just google "do grasslands
| store water""
|
| Well, I am also not a formal educated ecologist, but I am
| friends with some (including regular heated discussions)
| and have had a strong interest in the subject since years.
|
| So yes, grasslands do hold water. But afaik it is a really
| tiny amount compared to trees. Also just compare how deep
| the roots of trees reach, compared with grass. (even though
| the savannah grass is of course a special breed and way
| better equipped against droughts than the common gras on a
| lawn)
|
| "the ecological history of a place tells us where plants
| thrive and don't thrive. site selection is a fact of plant
| success."
|
| I agree that it is stupid to ignore that.
|
| But we humans changed so much on the earth already, that
| the conditions in many places also changed. Winds, rain,
| temperature, .. including the soil but usually for the
| worse (acid rain and co, but also fertilizers). This is
| what I meant with history is gone.
|
| So my point is, I would not not plant a forest, just
| because 100 years ago, there also wasn't a forest there.
|
| (Also humans have had cattle for a long time and
| overgrazing is likely the number one reason for
| desertification or plain grasslands.)
|
| I rather would just look at the current data. How is the
| soil. PH. Salt level. How much rainfall. What is the
| temperature, etc.
|
| And then start with the right shrubs and bushes. And then
| trees.
|
| A forest will grow on its own with the right conditions. We
| can help with those conditions.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| i agree that humans have changed a lot. and i also agree
| that you should look at the current data. you should also
| look at the failures of reforesting areas that weren't
| historically forests. what is the data of reforestation
| failure vs success in those areas?
|
| if you're interested in this topic, i've learned a lot
| from the authors of this paper (paper is also good and
| relevant to our discussion and points to a lot of their
| sources): https://repositorio.unesp.br/bitstream/handle/1
| 1449/159556/W...
|
| it's a fascinating topic! appeals to my social science
| and nature interests
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "it's a fascinating topic! appeals to my social science
| and nature interests"
|
| Definitely.
|
| I am also interested in the linked paper, but for some
| reasons it fails to download for me.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| it's titled "Grassy biomes: An inconvenient reality for
| large-scale forest restoration? A comment on the essay by
| Chazdon and Laestadius"
| formerkrogemp wrote:
| > History is gone. Also it is likely, that there were times
| when those Savanne areas were covered with trees. > There is
| no shortage of grasslands that are close of becoming desserts
| with one serious draught, but there is shortage of forests,
| that hold the moisture and prevent further desertification.
|
| Well said. It makes one wonder how the Midwest Great Plains
| shelter belt and other regions like it will handle this
| current dry spell we're in globally.
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| See also https://placesjournal.org/article/informal-settlers-
| environm... (discussion at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32726036), describing how
| one local-run tree-planting operation has succeeded where
| government and NGO-run prestige projects failed.
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| Growing a forest is as much an effort as it is to plant it. Of
| course, wherever the forests have ever been present, those places
| were being controlled by nature automatically. Nothing has ever
| changed, except for the fact that we have cut down a good
| majority of those.
|
| To replicate a forest means to replicate the entire mechanics and
| settings that forests thrive in, not just replicating the
| presence of plants/trees alone.
| debacle wrote:
| Trees tend to fail spectacularly, even for seasoned growers. The
| site that I bulk purchase seedlings from estimates a failure rate
| as high as 70% for evergreen plugs _if you do everything right_.
| As you move up from seedlings to 3 year old plants, the failure
| rate drops to 10%, but my real failure rate is probably closer to
| 30%. The number one reason is too much /too little moisture, with
| some pests/disease thrown in.
|
| Furthermore, trees need organic material. A lot of it. A tree
| planted in "dirt" will be about the same size 3 years later. A
| (young) tree planted in rich compost can double in size in a
| year. You can't stick a tree in the ground anywhere and expect it
| to grow without a good amount of help.
| jhoechtl wrote:
| > Furthermore, trees need organic material. A lot of it. A tree
| planted in "dirt" will be about the same size 3 years later.
|
| As someone who has a green thumb, was fascinated of trees since
| a kid and is working a considerable amount of forrest partly
| with his own tools: It's not like that.
|
| There are trees which fall into the category of early
| succession. They shy away of compost, their seeds do not even
| germinate in such an environment. They need bare soil.
|
| Other trees prefer poor soil as they perform symbiosis with
| fungi (mykhoriza), essentially producing the type of soil they
| need (partly).
|
| And then there are the trees which prefer rich soil.
|
| The later category are trees where the lawn owner is to
| impatient to wait (how can I make my tree grow faster) or the
| aggroforrestry is dependent on highest yield in shortest growth
| time.
| smesla wrote:
| What sort of evergreens are you planting? Are they native? I
| replanted a clearcut a year or so ago and even with an
| abnormally hot summer and a dry fall I'm looking at 30%, tops.
| debacle wrote:
| A variety. I'm working to restore a large tract of former
| farmland, and so we're trying to plant whatever sticks to
| increase biodiversity.
| smesla wrote:
| If you haven't yet, you may want to hire a professional
| forester. At 70% loss they'd likely pay for themselves many
| times over and save a lot of headache.
| debacle wrote:
| These are seedling trees, less than a foot high. They're
| expected to fail at a pretty high rate. In the future
| I'll be updating to 2nd year trees which seem to have a
| better cost/survival rate.
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| They need insects also (some will eat the moisture, some will
| pollinate, spread grains, etc), diversity
| swader999 wrote:
| A thirty percent failure rate is pretty decent for three year
| old seedlings when you consider the pine cone potential of the
| survivors.
| clairity wrote:
| yes, LA has a program to give away trees for planting in yards
| and parkways, and my read of the program is that, while it's
| goal is laudable, the implementation is lacking. earlier this
| year, a partner non-profit planted 2 trees for us and i planted
| an additional 2 trees that another org gave us, and i learned
| that it's not a set-it-and-forget-it type of endeavor. walking
| around my neighborhood, many of these trees, even though most
| are native species adapted to the environment, will end up
| dying because of the lack of care and the lack of education
| that comes with the trees. beyond enriching the soil when
| planting, it apparently takes ~5 years for the trees to
| establish themselves, and so requires constant watering for at
| least that amount of time.
|
| ours sprouted quickly when first planted but then stagnated
| through the hottest parts of the summer. now we're entering the
| winter season and i'm wondering what we need to do to
| revitalize the soil again to help them grow in the spring.
| lazide wrote:
| Also, even native plants aren't adapted to what many people
| consider 'native soil' - if there is no existing native
| vegetation, the soil itself is far different from what a
| typical seed would deal with from that same plant natively.
|
| And when you think about it, it's normal - you'd never end up
| with a giant 100% consistent group of plants in a native area
| anyway. You'd have variable concentrations all over the
| place, with some devoid of one species, others overpopulated
| with it, all based on suitability of the local env. and and
| variations in the soil, water, shade, and competing plants
| nearby.
|
| As humans, we just think we can point to a spot and it should
| comply and grow amazingly I guess, and we get flustered if
| that isn't what happens.
| xani__ wrote:
| jandrese wrote:
| Also, even in nature most saplings don't make it. It's easy
| to forget that trees release hundreds or thousands of seeds
| every year and only a small handful will even germinate,
| and few of those will make it to maturity. Most every plant
| takes a quantity over quality approach. Exceptions may
| include stonefruit trees, but even those produce a lot of
| fruit, but only dozens instead of thousands.
| splitstud wrote:
| clairity wrote:
| yah, good soil is an ecosystem of living things, not an
| inert medium. urban soil tends to be more depleted and
| polluted than average, so needs even more attention to get
| trees to grow. i'm not really a gardener type, but i do
| love me some trees and shade!
| mypalmike wrote:
| In Seattle, we have a similar program. The tree comes with a
| donut-shaped water bag for twice weekly watering during the
| dry summer, and instructions for tree care for those first 5
| years. The main takeaways I got were: don't bury the trunk
| (the top of the root system should just barely be above the
| dirt line) and amend the tree maybe once a year with coarse
| wood or bark mulch, leaving a couple inches of space around
| the trunk. Three years in, my tree seems to be flourishing.
| Maursault wrote:
| I think the author is incorrect about no one hating trees,
| because developers seem to hate trees. The most conspicuous
| detail in a new development is the absence of trees.
|
| I think trees need a forest. The best place for a tree to grow is
| under a mature tree of its own species. But even trees of
| different species help prevent damage to each other from winds
| and storms. Perhaps instead of trying to plant a new forest, we
| should be jealously conserving and expanding what forest remains.
| Harvesting timber by clear-cutting should be illegal, and while
| the logging industry has adjusted somewhat to conservation,
| wealthy landowners still do it all the time.
| rdtwo wrote:
| Planting the wrong trees can be an ecological disaster and a lot
| of trees planted are the wrong tree for the environment
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| As the article points out, the problem is our obsession with
| "trees planted" instead of "trees survived" after n years (n=20?
| not sure, but at least 10).
|
| It's a reason why those "we plant a tree every time you buy X"
| marketing claims are mostly BS.
| xani__ wrote:
| It's more than that. Even if planting gigantic monoculture
| "works" it's not exactly a healthy forest. Ignoring what the
| locals need/want will also just bring it to status quo sooner
| than later.
| biellls wrote:
| Monocultures of any kind are always fragile, you need diversity
| to have a resilient ecosystem. These projects should benefit from
| an understanding of permaculture, which is a discipline that aims
| to create the right conditions for healthy systems. Everything
| from succession (pioneer leguminous species that can fix nitrogen
| and improve soil, slowly replaced by other species), trying to
| slow down and catch water where it falls to prevent soil erosion
| and runoff and much more. I've heard (unsubstantiated) claims
| that initiatives in China have already started to take these into
| account and have succeeded where other monoculture forests
| failed.
|
| A side effect is that you can end up with productive species.
| Imagine forests where many trees bear fruits, others have acorns
| that pigs can feed on, fruit vines and understory herbs that
| animals can graze on, large lakes with edible fish. This is the
| future I'd be excited for and it's all currently possible with
| the right policies.
| jandrese wrote:
| Would it really be so hard to plant a mix of seeds? I can see a
| monoculture if the intention is to harvest the wood or fruit
| later, but if you're only planting to capture carbon or restore
| a forest then a mix of trees seems like a healthier option and
| shouldn't be any more effort. You don't need to be precise with
| the mix either, a just random chance should be fine.
| Retric wrote:
| Monoculture of very fast growing trees let's them maximize the
| value per acre when sold as carbon indulgences. Actual impact
| is much lower, but by then they have moved to the next project.
|
| That said, in areas that got deforested having any tree cover
| can make the area much more habitable for other trees. Thus
| single digit survival rates can still result in new forest over
| a few decades.
| tomrod wrote:
| The economic topic you're hinting at is externality. There is
| also the notion of Goodhart's Law, where any (single
| dimensional) measure gets gamed.
| [deleted]
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