[HN Gopher] Plans to plant billions of trees threatened by under...
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Plans to plant billions of trees threatened by undersupply of
seedlings
Author : geox
Score : 87 points
Date : 2023-07-31 18:10 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.uvm.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.uvm.edu)
| pologreen1978 wrote:
| [flagged]
| aydyn wrote:
| Is it? A lot of northern forests are comprised of only a
| handful of Fir species.
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| They're aware of the need for species diversity - it's
| mentioned 5 times in the article.
|
| > U.S. tree nurseries don't grow close to enough trees--nor
| have the species diversity needed--to meet ambitious planting
| goals
|
| What are you finding "kinda stupid"?
| mistrial9 wrote:
| agree, but the article talks about that directly.
| pologreen1978 wrote:
| It's talks about planting a whole bunch of trees in an area,
|
| It doesn't bring in the fact that you also need to bring in
| animals, and small plants to kickstart the rewilding process
| aydyn wrote:
| Provide some empirical studies to back up your claim.
|
| What you're saying sounds like the "Appeal to Nature"
| fallacy.
| warent wrote:
| Mark this as one of the first times I've heard forest
| restoration categorized as "stupid"
| HideousKojima wrote:
| Nah,it is pretty stupid. If there were plans to actually
| manage the growth of the new forests as opposed to the "plant
| and forget" methodology used by a lot of tree planting
| efforts it wouldn't be so stupid:
|
| https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/22679378/tree-planting-
| for...
| pologreen1978 wrote:
| Thank you!
| knewter wrote:
| Growing up there was an ad on the radio each year around arbor
| day. A grizzled old man's voice says "when I was growing up, my
| dad and I would go to the forest each year on arbor day to plant
| some trees." It encouraged the same behaviour.
|
| A forest is kind of by definition at capacity for how many trees
| will grow there. Planting a tree elsewhere means it will not
| suffer from the canopy blocking all it's light.
|
| So many saplings senselessly murdered by well-meaning wordcels.
| morninglight wrote:
| We need a program for training people to rake leaves.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Trees almost everywhere will create more trees if left to
| themselves. One oak tree produces lots of acorns.
|
| The problem is mankind. We like to interfere. In a way many tree
| planting schemes are an indicator of this interference (hubris?).
| We just need to let nature do its thing in most places.
|
| There are of course some places that need help and people can
| help here (watering, stopping logging, species diversity, grazing
| animal protection etc) but generally nature will do it for us if
| we let it.
|
| Small scale planting schemes are great for community and
| education too.
| wizofaus wrote:
| > One oak tree produces lots of acorns.
|
| But takes 40+ years to do so...
| hosh wrote:
| I'm glad planting trees is happening. And yet, I think the
| execution will not be that great.
|
| In my neighborhood park, there were a bunch of new trees planted
| this year. And yet, it looked like someone just sprinkled trees
| without a care about the specific species, sun, and water.
|
| There were places that were great ideas for planting -- west
| sides of pathways to help block the blazing afternoon Phoenix
| sun.
|
| And yet, there places they planted too close to existing trees,
| where they won't even get sun (plants compete for sunlight, not
| root space).
|
| They didn't bother to dig basins or to mulch (both harvests
| water, helps retain moisture, and feed the trees).
|
| The species are not appropriate for the lower Sonoron, but it is
| what people expect for "trees" in the cultural idea of "parks".
| There were no concept of designing for canopy layers (at least,
| overstory vs understory), much less adding shrubs or flowers to
| help round out the ecosystem. ("Diversity" is not really about
| different species of trees, but rather, the ecological function
| of each plant at the different canopy layers, working together to
| form a stronger, more resilient ecosystem).
|
| Instead, they got their planting numbers up and everyone can pat
| themselves on the back for Doing Something.
| m463 wrote:
| A neighbor wanted to seed a hill, but some other folks had done
| it, but they got the wrong mix.
|
| So he checked a lot of places until he found a guy who knew all
| the native species and hydroseeded his hill. Basically water
| shot up onto the hill, mixed with seeds and more. stuff just
| took hold and it worked out.
| hosh wrote:
| That's what guerrilla gardners do with their seedbombs do as
| well. (Not necessarily the hydroseeding, but rather, a
| selection of native species).
| twiddling wrote:
| https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/actions/how-make-seed-bomb
| Scoundreller wrote:
| > They didn't bother to dig basins
|
| I thought you weren't supposed to do this because the roots
| then grow in circles within the soft soil and eventually
| girdle/"suffocate" themselves.
|
| But maybe I'm misunderstanding what is meant by "basin".
| hosh wrote:
| Ah! Great question! Let's talk roots.
|
| Trees have different kinds of roots, such as lateral roots
| and tap roots. What they do depends upon the species, their
| growth patterns, and how those patterns adapt to their native
| environment.
|
| Many trees will send out some lateral roots, and depending
| upon the species, they can be invasive. In the Sonoron, the
| mesquite is very aggressive about both lateral roots (far
| exceeding the drip line of the trees) and deep tap root (some
| mesquites have been discovered with tap roogs going 250 ft in
| the ground). They also have the added advantage of being a
| nitrogen fixer.
|
| Fig roots are invasive, though primarily lateral, shallow
| roots. Jujube (and all buckthornes) are invasive, sending
| roots that can then grow and pop up as a whole other tree!
| Mulberries, particularly the Pakistan varieties, also have
| vigorous, water-seeking roots.
|
| Bamboo are not trees. They are grasses, and grow like grasses
| with rhizomes. Once established, at around year 5, you would
| have a running bamboo grove pop up out of nowhere (because
| they can grow 1 foot a day until they reach their maximum
| height).
|
| As far as basins, a basin is any depression in the landscape
| where rainwater can pool. It can be shallow, or deep. Many of
| the greenways here in Phoenix are large basins that can
| collect and help absorb our monsoon rains.
|
| What you are talking about with girdling happens with
| hardwood trees, and not with "basins". When planting a
| bareroot hardwood tree, you should not plant it in a way so
| that the root crown goes too much below the ground level. The
| roots need to be unravelled so that they can grow outward
| instead of forced back on its self. For hardwoods, they can
| and do strangle themselves if their roots are allowed to
| girdle. Contrast that to a fig, whose roots will go whichever
| way and it will be fine.
|
| Knowing that, you can still create a basin for such trees.
| You would dig the basin as a ring much further away from the
| hardwood, possibly as a shallow basin.
| hinkley wrote:
| The main problem is not in digging the basin, it's that
| most people think you're supposed to fill the basin with
| new dirt, which recreates the same problem with bare root
| plants that you get with 10 gallon trees bought from the
| nursery.
|
| Dirt put back into a hole is never the right amount of
| compact, so the root crown can sink or pushing the soil
| back into place can tear off roots.
|
| If you look at the root ball, you can often sort out how to
| spread out the roots without digging a basin, instead
| trenching out in several directions. A lot less work,
| especially if you're in rocky soil. I'm never digging a
| giant circular hole in flood plain soil again if I have any
| say in it.
| liveoneggs wrote:
| All landscapers plant trees too close to things because they
| expect to get re-hired every few years to replace them.
| antisthenes wrote:
| > There were places that were great ideas for planting -- west
| sides of pathways to help block the blazing afternoon Phoenix
| sun.
|
| It's interesting that you miss the forest for the trees here.
|
| There really are no trees that are "great" for where you live,
| because without human intervention like what you described,
| there really are no trees that sustain themselves in the Lower
| Sonoran area. It is essentially a desert.
|
| So the long term solution is really just slowly depopulating
| the Phoenix area or having landscapes that are appropriate for
| a desert, and planting trees where water isn't so scarce as to
| be unsustainable without human babysitting.
|
| > And yet, there places they planted too close to existing
| trees, where they won't even get sun (plants compete for
| sunlight, not root space)
|
| Competing for sun isn't really a thing in a desert, because
| canopies in that landscape are a liability rather than an
| advantage. They contribute to water loss, which is extremely
| scarce.
|
| If anything, having partial shade is good protection for young
| trees, which are more susceptible to variations in drought and
| heat.
| hosh wrote:
| > There really are no trees that are "great" for where you
| live, because without human intervention like what you
| described, there really are no trees that sustain themselves
| in the Lower Sonoran area. It is essentially a desert.
|
| The Lower Sonoron us actually a steppe biome. There are
| plenty of native trees and shrubs that thrive all on its own
| with the given rainfall. People see "desert" and picture
| wastelands like the Sahara or the Gobi. Many people who never
| been to the area are surprised at how lush both the lower and
| upper Sonoran are.
|
| As far as human intervention goes, there is a nuance here:
| there is a big difference between acting upon the world as
| apart from the ecosystem, and acting within the world as part
| of the ecosystem.
|
| My neighbor's Pakistani white mulberry is very well suited
| for growing here in the Sonoron, with some help. Jujube trees
| (one of the buckthorne family) is very well suited here. So
| are moringas, with people growing dense, backyard moringa
| groves here in Phoenix.
|
| There are people who figured out how to grow the classic
| fruit-bearing trees here. Using dwarf varieties, careful
| pruning, use of deep mulch basins, chop-and-drop, companion
| planting, they can do very well here without having to rely
| on flood irrigation.
|
| > Competing for sun isn't really a thing in a desert, because
| canopies in that landscape are a liability rather than an
| advantage. They contribute to water loss, which is extremely
| scarce.
|
| In the park environment I am talking about, despite it being
| in the Sonoran, it is actually designed like a park you would
| see in temperate biomes. That means the overstory trees there
| are large ponderosa pines (which has high water requirements
| for the area, so they flood irrigate the park during the
| summer). The tree I was talking about in that park s going to
| be starved for sunlight is surrounded by the shadows of
| several of the overstory trees
|
| > If anything, having partial shade is good protection for
| young trees, which are more susceptible to variations in
| drought and heat.
|
| That's partially correct. There are other ways to work with
| this. For example, the people who sold my black mission fig
| to me told me that it doesn't shade itself. Well, it does
| shade itself, as long as you don't trim the lower branches
| that forces you to then put the white reflective paint on its
| trunks.
|
| In the Sonoran, the mesquites and the ironwood act as nursery
| trees, providing partial shade to support a variety of
| plants. The Suguoro cactus, for example, requires a nursery
| tree to help it along when it is young. Then it kills off the
| nursery tree when it gets mature enough. Ironwood, despite
| growing extremely slowly, because it acts as a nursery tree
| for a variety of plants, is a keystone species.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| There are still trees native to the Sonoran though? Palo
| Verde, desert ironwood, acacia, palms, and the not strictly
| native but highly adapted mesquite. You'll see these trees
| planted all over the metro and if you visit someplace like
| Granite Reef, you'll find entire natural groves of them
| creating dense shade even in the hottest months. The key to
| this is obviously water, but far less than you'd need for
| stands of other tree species (and it can be deeper).
| hosh wrote:
| Swales, basins, and bearms help with water management. I
| see a lot of that in the greenways in and around Phoenix.
| Just not at my neighborhood park.
|
| There's a botanical garden an hour out of Phoenix metro
| that showcases edible Sonoran plants, as well as arid-
| adapted plants from around the world.
|
| The native species do fine on raw, undeveloped lands.
|
| I think it's because people confuse "desert" (or arid) with
| "wasteland".
|
| And there are methods to remediate wastelands -- it just
| takes effort and time.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| It certainly doesn't help that specific directions from
| Phoenix traveled by major highways are fairly desolate.
| The Gila river valley as you drive south to Tucson is
| mostly salt flats for the first half hour, while heading
| north on the 17 goes through old lava fields and the
| waterless Agua Fria plateau.
| hosh wrote:
| I haven't travelled to Tuscon yet so I don't know, though
| I know there are some large preserves outside of Tuscon.
|
| I'm not sure what you mean by the waterless Agua Fria
| plateau. I make a lot trips between Phoenix and northern
| cities like Prescott, Sedona, and Flagstaff. At no point
| among them do I see areas that are truly waterless. A
| lava field would be a sight to behold, but I don't recall
| any such thing along I-17 north.
|
| During the years with there are more winter rains, the
| plateau one reaches right around Sunset Point makes for
| an amazing grassland. That's even knowing that, with as
| green and lush as it is that season, it will mean fire
| and devastation later in the drier parts of the year.
| During the monsoon rains, those high grassland turn into
| magnificent landscape with ponding, reflecting the stormy
| clouds in the sky, across a wide horizon.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Sunset point is on the plateau I'm talking about. It's
| actually an old volcanic basalt flow from the Miocene.
| There's no permanent water sources up there, only down in
| the surrounding canyons (e.g. the aptly named rock
| springs). It's part of a big band of old vulcanism that
| extends all the way from Anthem (e.g. kuttu "peak") up to
| just south of the Grand Canyon, though you would have to
| hike in to see most of it.
| hosh wrote:
| Neat! I'll have to revisit it again with an eye towards
| what you just told me.
| hinkley wrote:
| I know a guy who can rant at length about wetland restoration.
| Wetland plants have several waves of succession. If you plant A
| and B at the same time, B never establishes because A takes
| over. If you plant A and C at the same time, C dies because it
| needs A to be mature in order to live. Because restorations are
| an 'event' with an allocated budget, we make a big show of
| showing up and planting A,B&C all at the same time, when what
| we really need to do is plant B year one, A year three, and C
| year five.
|
| Edit: I kinda suspect the correct solution here is to have 3
| separate funding sources and to hit each up in turn, so they
| all get their event.
| wddkcs wrote:
| If you are concerned, get involved. It's likely trivially easy
| for you to get face to face with the person responsible for the
| plantings, and it's unlikely anything will change in your
| backyard unless you or another concerned citizen does
| something.
| nickserv wrote:
| It's really not "trivially easy" to get in contact when the
| operation is run by a government or a corporation (even
| less).
|
| At best they "hear you" and "will take it into account", then
| keep on doing what was planned. At worst they treat you like
| an idiot or a lunatic. And it's not like the company hired to
| do the work is going to listen to some random person telling
| them how to do their job.
|
| Only thing I've found works is volunteering for orgs that
| actually do things right, if you can find one.
|
| That or just planting yourself at 2 in the morning ;-)
| hosh wrote:
| Probably why the idea of r/GuerrillaGardening is getting
| popular.
|
| Leaving that aside, I was reading about an urban
| permaculture group's experience with working with the city.
| In their experience, the city they are working with wants
| to make sure that whatever is done will work with other
| people as well. (This was Seattle, with a conversion of one
| part of the park to a perennial food forest)
| nickserv wrote:
| This won't get resolved until collectively we move from
| "planted X millions of trees" to "X millions of trees have
| flourished for 5/10/15 years".
|
| The problem of course is that it's a) much more difficult and
| expensive to keep track of survival rates, and b) provides no
| immediate green-washing credentials (politicians, corps,
| looking at you).
|
| Thankfully there are some NGOs that are doing it right, proper
| analysis of the site, selection of diverse species, and yearly
| visits to measure survival rates.
|
| It's just that presently, these are the minority.
| hosh wrote:
| Have you ever heard of Scientific Forestry? It was something
| documented in James C Scott's _Seeing Like a State_. Here 's
| a long-form essay summerizing the ideas in the book:
| https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/07/26/a-big-little-idea-
| call...
|
| These forests were planted during the late colonial era by
| the French and German. The great naval powers at the time
| were running out of trees tall and straight enough to make
| masts. They cut down natural old-growth forests, and planted
| trees in a way that makes it easier to count. They grew
| better, and called it a success. However, that first
| generation grew well because they used up the nutrients
| banked by the natural forest. The subsequent generations did
| not grow as well.
|
| So over the centuries or so of trying this, they tried things
| like, adding in insects, and measuring their rate of growth.
| But it all stems trying to force a complex system into
| something that is _legible_ , but the results are its own
| folly.[1]
|
| Frankly, our climate and global ecosystem is a complex,
| adaptive system [2][3][4], and to think that we can reduce
| solutions based on a single metric, such as atmospheric CO2
| numbers, is a disaster in the making from our collective
| hubris.
|
| [1] https://www.science.org/content/article/germany-s-trees-
| are-...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin_framework#Complex
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_adaptive_system
|
| [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis
| nickserv wrote:
| Indeed, ideally we should be thinking in tree lifespans, or
| several hundred years.
|
| But right now, we plant oaks, which can live for centuries,
| and don't even think about next year's dry season. And then
| wonder why they die from lack of water.
|
| Now fast growing sitkas, which can be harvested in 30 years
| for profit, seem to be doing just fine...
| vidanay wrote:
| All the trees in my mother-in-laws senior housing development
| died after five years because the original landscaper didn't
| remove any of the steel wire cages around the root balls.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Just leave areas alone and let nature do its thing.
| Retric wrote:
| Across hundreds of years this is largely pointless, but
| people aren't worried about that kind of timescale. In the
| short term planting trees in areas they can thrive can make a
| signifiant short term impact.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| The cheapest effective solution, but sadly perhaps not fast
| enough, and definitely not optimal if you're trying to create
| rather than just preserve habitats.
|
| The way things are going we're going to need to learn how to
| construct artificial reefs to survive as a species, and quite
| possibly also artificial game habitats. Planting trees is
| just one part of that.
| hosh wrote:
| It can be pretty fast if you work with the natural feedback
| loops. Permaculture design principles, "use small, slow
| solutions".
|
| This is an accidental grove out along the CAS canal
| project. The bearm made unintentionally by the canal
| designers captured monsoon rains and accumulated organics
| for a grove to naturally spring up there.
| https://youtu.be/jf8usAesJvo
|
| The more impressive (deliberate) projects involve turning
| barerock wastelands into productive lands using these
| principles.
|
| There is a big difference between human intervention that
| sets us apart from the ecosystem (in which we act _upon_
| the ecosystem) and human intervention where we work as a
| participant of the ecosystem (in which we _participate_
| within the ecosystem). We can and should use technology,
| but it is a different paradigm and a different way of
| seeing.
| devindotcom wrote:
| it doesn't really work that way, unfortunately invasives can
| take root and replace entire forests before native plants can
| take root. it's a huge problem in post-wildfire areas.
| smt88 wrote:
| There are entire countries that were deforested, and it's
| essentially impossible for nature to repopulate those
| forests.
|
| Human intervention destroyed the ecosystem and there is
| immediate and ongoing harm to that destruction. It's idiotic
| to suddenly decide to "let nature do it's thing" now when
| billions of people are threatened by climate change.
| hosh wrote:
| Oh, I think something will regrow there even if humans die
| off. It's more likely that the planet will continue to
| live, and some other intelligent lifeform arises as a
| successor.
|
| This isn't really about saving the planet. Over a large
| enough timescale, the planet will recover just fine -- as a
| living system, the global ecology can and does regenerate.
|
| Instead, what we're fighting for is a place for humans
| within the global ecosystem.
|
| "Human intervention" need not be destructive. It has been
| destructive because we came to see ourselves as apart from
| the ecosystem, rather than being part of the ecosystem.
| There have been cultures, to one degree or another, see
| themselves and conduct themsleves as part of the ecosystem,
| and tended the lands as such.
|
| Wastelands can be remediated. In India, there are people
| working with marginalized castes and ethnic groups to
| restore wastelands. It's not something that works over a
| single season, but it is something that starts yielding
| stuff useful to humans within a single generation. The work
| that these people do ends up restoring land from bare rock
| eroded by poor land management practices. These were land
| no one wanted, and now they are both productive (yielding
| something useful) while at the same time, a fertile, active
| ecosystem beyond the human-centric view of the world.
|
| There doesn't have to be a dichotomy between "human
| intervention", and "leaving nature alone". We're a part of
| the natural ecosystem -- how could we really ever "leave it
| alone"?
| ipaddr wrote:
| You realize nature populated the forests in the first
| place. Birds carry seeds. It is not impossible.
| bluGill wrote:
| Over millions of years. If the soil the trees need has
| washed away they won't grow anytime soon. Some places you
| can plant a native tree and it will grow. Other places
| something is lost and it won't grow anymore. Places can
| be very tiny areas in the case of a desert.
| hosh wrote:
| And there are ways to remediate wastelands! It would take
| a very long time though if we just "left it alone".
|
| I think there's a false dichotomy about what "human
| intervention" means, because as a civilization, we think
| of human intervention as forces that act upon the
| ecosystem from the outside. Not all cultures and
| civilizations sees it that way. I think we think that way
| in modern times because we see ourselves as apart from
| the ecosystem rather than a part of the ecosystem. It's
| pretty common to hear people say, "there's nothing
| there", even if it is a lush, wildland (or close enough
| to it).
|
| As an example, there are ancient, abandoned perennial
| food forests that were created by the inhabitants. These
| work with natural processes so that yields useful to
| humans are byproducts of the healthy ecosystem, and they
| can carry on even when humans stop tending them.
| abeppu wrote:
| That only makes sense if you're willing to commit to it.
| "Leave areas alone and let nature do its thing" can't just
| mean "don't run deliberate tree-planting efforts with short-
| sighted planing". Actually leaving stuff alone and letting
| nature work would involve us retreating from the area, not
| developing the land, not spraying insecticides and
| herbicides, not introducing invasive species, not polluting
| the ground water, not putting extra particulates into the
| air, _certainly_ not continuing to pump carbon into the
| atmosphere.
|
| So the "just" part of" just leave areas alone, is asking
| quite a lot. That's not to say it's wrong ... but it's more
| ambitious than e.g. net-zero goals. In some sense, it's
| exactly 2x as ambitious as E. O. Wilson's "Half-Earth"
| proposal.
| bluGill wrote:
| The existence of invasive species make even that plan
| questionable. A lot of trees are dead because of invasives
| that are still, so even if you plant it, it will die again.
|
| There are a lot of trees and invasives. Sometimes if we
| plant trees and give them a few years of active removal of
| the invasives they will grow strong enough to out compete
| the invasive, but if you don't remove the invasive they
| will be chocked out and die. However only sometimes.
| hosh wrote:
| "Invasive" are another idea I think are widely
| misunderstood by the public.
|
| I think it is more about how many ecological relationship
| something has with other species within the local
| ecosystem.
|
| Something without a lot of interactions would just take
| resources and contribute nothing back to the ecosystem
| would degrade an ecosystem until there are adaptations to
| include that species within the ecosystem. Contribution
| could be food for other species. They might provide
| habitat. Maybe they help spread seeds, or distribute
| nutrients for plants. And yes, yields for humans too.
|
| By that understanding, I would say that the modern human
| is probably the most successful invasive specie across
| many ecosystems.
|
| And it isn't that, I am advocating that we get rid of the
| humans within those ecosystems, but find ways for humans
| to participate within that local ecosystem. Once those
| relationships are established, it is better for that
| local ecosystem to have humans than to not have humans.
| hosh wrote:
| There is a big difference between human intervention that
| sets us apart from the ecosystem (in which we act upon the
| ecosystem) and human intervention where we work as a
| participant of the ecosystem (in which we participate within
| the ecosystem). We can and should use technology, but it is a
| different paradigm and a different way of seeing.
|
| Some of the things the permaculture folks have been quietly
| doing for over 50 years have yielded some impressive results.
| They go far beyond what you'd hear about in the mainstream,
| and we're only seeing some of it trickle in (such as the
| ideas of restorative and regenerative agriculture or
| agroforestry).
| devindotcom wrote:
| This is an interesting problem area, I recently talked with Mast
| about it - they started as Droneseed, and soon realized the whole
| seed-seedling-planting-managing process (not to mention funding)
| was pretty busted.
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/17/from-root-to-crown-mast-re...
|
| It's also really data-intensive, or it is if you want it to be
| effective. There's a lot of forestry and climate science that
| goes into whether a planting effort will be successful, not to
| mention a hell of a lot of back-breaking labor. But hopefully
| this sector will get the attention it needs now that people are
| seeing how badly it's been neglected in recent decades.
| jjk166 wrote:
| I feel like the important part of these tree-planting initiatives
| is setting aside land for trees to grow. If you leave a plot of
| land alone, climate-appropriate plants will grow soon enough. You
| might have to do more in special scenarios like reversing
| desertification, but that's not generally the point o these
| initiatives, and the number of trees needed for that is much
| less.
| danbruc wrote:
| A trillion trees by 2030, each fixating 30 kg of CO2 per year
| [1], with a global CO2 emission of about 40 trillion kg by 2030 -
| roughly linearly extrapolated from [2] - that would capture about
| 75 % of global emissions, much more than I would have guessed. A
| billion trees on the other hand are just 0.075 % of global or 0.6
| % of US emissions [3]. Also according to [1] a billion trees will
| need 20,000 km2, a trillion 20,000,000 km2, that are 0.2 % and
| 200 % of the US land area. And a trillion trees till the end of
| 2030, that are 369 million trees per day every day, that seems
| quite ambitious. The numbers used are the first thing a search
| turned up, I hope they are at least good enough for the orders of
| magnitude.
|
| [1] https://www.encon.eu/en/calculation-co2-offsetting-trees
|
| [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/276629/global-
| co2-emissi...
|
| [3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/183943/us-carbon-
| dioxide...
| wizofaus wrote:
| Apparently it's estimated there's about 3 trillion trees on
| earth currently - I'm assuming it historically may have been
| closer to 4 or even 5 before we gleefully started chopping them
| all down. But it's hard to imagine a trillion extra trees being
| compatible with 10 billion humans wanting to have land to
| produce food with, unless we can genetically engineer trees
| capable of growing in parts of world humans tend to avoid.
| ChatGTP wrote:
| So we don't bother?
| wizofaus wrote:
| As mechanisms to help reduce net emissions go, planting
| trees is probably the one likely to encounter the least
| resistance, so I'm all for it, but the idea that it's going
| to help us avoid far more painful changes seems a little
| foolhardy.
| nroets wrote:
| If we start doing it at scale, a lot of people will assume
| it will work and think it's okay to make cross country
| trips in a big RV.
|
| Already there are people who think recycling will save the
| planet.
| wizofaus wrote:
| I'm all for people making cross country trips in a big
| RV, providing they're properly paying for whatever long-
| term environmental costs are involved - folks aren't
| going to get behind a plan to save the planet if they
| never get to spend any time enjoying it.
| voisin wrote:
| What percentage of newly planted trees survive? I suspect it is
| low double-digits without serious watering and good site
| preparation, which isn't the case for any of the tree planting
| at scale I've seen in Canadian sites.
| abeppu wrote:
| I think the 30kg/tree varies widely both by species and
| conditions, and critically given the timeline you've mentioned
| (by 2030) by _maturity_. E.g. this source estimates 10kg/year
| for the first 20 years, but if much of that is after year 6-7,
| even if we could plant a trillion trees by 2030, they would not
| be close to the levels of carbon fixation you're mentioning.
|
| It's ambitious, but _even if we succeed_, it won't be impactful
| in the time horizon you're discussing. In 2030 we may have a
| large proportion of 1-3 year old tiny saplings that may each
| weigh only a few kg (wet).
|
| (update: forgot the link for source mentioned)
| https://onetreeplanted.org/blogs/stories/how-much-co2-does-t...
| smileysteve wrote:
| Why are we not considering clumping bamboo or/andor hemp;
| Both of which take root easier, and grow 3x-5x faster,
| require less water.
| danbruc wrote:
| I intentionally picked the favorable numbers as I was
| expecting even with those it would turn out to be a pretty
| futile endeavor, even ignoring things like forest fires. And
| it pretty much is, at least with a billion trees. And for a
| trillion trees I can not see how this could realistically
| happen. I would have to plant a tree every three weeks for
| the next seven and a half years, 125 trees in total, that
| sounds not too impossible. But once you consider that
| everyone in your city will have to the same - and every other
| human on earth - I don't think it would be too long before I
| would no longer be able to find a spot for the next tree
| where it interferes with nothing and can grow for a couple of
| decades.
| delecti wrote:
| "Fortunately" for the sake of this problem, we've got 1000
| years of land that was cleared to get lumber. Not all of it
| is land that we could replant trees on (some being used for
| farming or housing), but for a decade-long society-wide
| project I wouldn't be too concerned, if there were actually
| political will to do it.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Planting trees is in the same category of solutions as
| recycling. In theory you could plant a quadrillion trees, but
| realistically it won't happen and instead the initiative will
| be used as a way to increase our consumption and destruction of
| the planet even more.
|
| Reduce, reuse and recycle was the original term. Everyone over
| indexed on recycling and completely abandoned the first two.
| (Instead we went the other way and started individually
| wrapping bananas in plastic)
| q845712 wrote:
| In all fairness it's really hard to make money off of
| "reduce" and "reuse," and we've decided to use money as the
| system for allocating all of our resources.
| wizofaus wrote:
| I wonder about that - surely there must be a decent number
| of shoppers who'd prefer to buy products where you could
| reuse containers, for a start. Recycling perfectly good
| glass, metal or even plastic containers always feels
| terribly wasteful to me. And it has to be economically more
| efficient, so it should be possible to sell the product a
| lower cost.
| voisin wrote:
| Well I think you've hit the nail on the head. A functioning
| ecosystem and a functioning economy in our present
| contemplation of the term are not compatible.
| eimrine wrote:
| Haven't read the article but who plants trees like that? If you
| want to grow a tree, you must go to forest, dug out the baby tree
| which is not going to survive, like when you see a big number of
| instances of the tree in relatively small area, then you go in
| wiser place and dug the baby tree in. Here is how I do it.
| agilob wrote:
| I read somewhere that birds and squirrels are better at planting
| trees because they do it at random, their forests grow faster,
| are more diverse, provide better shelter and are more resistant
| to fires and bugs.
|
| Can't find the study or news anymore. Anyone help? Could they
| plant a border of tress for squirrels and birds, so they would do
| the rest of the job and fill the square?
| burnished wrote:
| God, I hope this is a genius plan. Something about bird and
| squirrel labor for reforestation pleases me
| [deleted]
| jnmandal wrote:
| It's true, but also takes way too long for the mission at hand.
| Trees already grow slowly, and squirrels/birds were going to
| eat a lot of the seeds which -- as we can see here -- is
| counter to incentive when there is a dearth of seed. This is
| not even to mention the ungulates, which will eat most of the
| young trees. Simply put, a managed plantation will produce
| better outcomes than "hands-off" rewilding or even a hybrid
| model. It is better still if the wildlife are managed or
| contained. Healthy forests have predators to provide pressure
| on herbivore populations; predators were often intentionally
| removed in many of the places we are now considering for
| afforestation.
|
| But that said, theoretically: yes, absolutely, a tree planted
| as a seed by a squirrel, if it survived to old-age, will likely
| have grown faster and healthier than the equivalent nursery
| product tree, which would have endured lots of handling and
| some shocks at a young age.
|
| If I were to guess at the type of innovation we might see in
| this space, I would say GMO trees that grow at enhanced speed
| is more in the vein of what might be deployed. If land were
| more readily available, like in boreal regions, then you might
| see some sort of innovation in the form of novel rewilding
| techniques, like you are suggesting.
| peteradio wrote:
| I'd be willing to bet the loss from ungulates/rabbits is
| worse than the squirrels/birds. If we had a way to fence off
| the individual young trees it would be ideal. I've had to do
| this for my own young oaks as they will get eaten down to the
| ground if not fenced.
| wizofaus wrote:
| Wouldn't the big advantage of GMO trees be ones that grow in
| non-boreal regions? But I gather genetic engineering for most
| tree species is limited by the slow reproductive cycle (oak
| trees take 40 years to produce acorns, and they're not even
| close to the slowest to reach maturity).
| mistrial9 wrote:
| quick - bio-engineered seedlings must be the answer!
|
| The article does ask important questions, but also repeatedly
| mentions "investment" and "investors". People, the forests do not
| grow money. "Thirty-five million dollars" is a fortune in the
| forest, yet our living world is dying for lack of simple things,
| and death by a thousand cuts. How can one billion dollars be
| spent on a single recreation facility[0], and no money for
| forestry? Because the system is not reflecting real value, it
| reflects self-referential money value.
|
| Beware of investors. These science people are lining up for what?
| -- [0] New Athletics stadium in Las Vegas to reportedly cost ...
|
| Sportsnaut https://sportsnaut.com > las-vegas-athletics-stadium-
| cost May 27, 2023 -- The total stadium cost is estimated at $1.5
| billion, for a new ballpark that will have a retractable roof and
| seat 30,000 people.
| asdff wrote:
| Even better would be a drone that can irrigate, limb a tree,
| spread compost, and use directed energy on unhelpful pests
| while ignoring beneficial insects. We have the technology today
| to build a drone that can do all of these things, there's just
| no market for it so it doesn't exist or else it would already.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Even in the best of circumstances, a tree takes years if not
| decades to mature. That isn't a timeline that many investors
| are attracted to.
| swifthesitation wrote:
| With careful planning and initial human upkeep for the
| first few years, it's been shown this can be accelerated
| and have a self-sustaining forest in ~10 years. Akira
| Miyawaki (29.01.1928 - 07.16.2021) [0], a botanist who
| studyied plant ecology, seeds, and natural forest
| restoration methods, introduced a "reforestation" algorithm
| known as the "Miyawaki method" in the early 1970s [1]. It
| has been adopted throughout the world with great success.
| And also prompted a viral TED talk by Shubhendu Sharma [2]
| who then produced a 12 video series on YT on how to create
| your own forest [3].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akira_Miyawaki [1]
| https://www.af-
| info.or.jp/en/blueplanet/assets/pdf/list/2006... [2]
| https://youtu.be/mjUsobGWhs8 [3] https://youtube.com/playli
| st?list=PLDw6OmGaV5rnOCATIho19Icvp...
| [deleted]
| bluGill wrote:
| It doesn't have to be trees. Grass can also take CO2 out of the
| air. Then you burn it off next spring, which leaves behind a
| layer of sequestered charcoal. Keep doing this for decades and
| you will have removed a lot of CO2 - all in natural prairie
| fashion.
|
| If you live in the typical single family house you can make a
| small difference by mowing your law as little as you can get by
| with (use an electric power). You can also try to mow paths to
| make it look like the tall grass is intentional as an end run
| around demands you mow. Let the wild flower grow (but you do have
| to to watch for and remove invasive plants that will grow and
| take over destroying the effect you are trying to do). I don't
| know how to convert your suburban grass to charcoal in a way that
| won't get the neighbors after you for pollution though.
| forinti wrote:
| Surely the smoke would be an issue if you did this over a
| significant area, no?
| jshprentz wrote:
| The final quote, "... but often, on the ground, it's one old
| farmer walking around to collect acorns. ..." reminded me of the
| the book _The Man Who Planted Trees_ [1] in which a shepard
| single-handedly reforests a desolate valley by planting acorns
| and other seedlings.
|
| The book inspired an animated film of the same name [2], which
| won an Academy Award in 1988. I remember seeing this at an
| animated film festival about 35 years ago in the Biograph Theater
| in Washington, DC. Today I rewatched it on YouTube [3].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Planted_Trees
|
| [2] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093488/
|
| [3] https://youtu.be/epTqUnKsuUY
| digitalsushi wrote:
| One time a farmer-turned-software guy told me a wild claim once
| that Earth could carry about a billion humans tops, until someone
| figured out how to suck nitrogen from the air and make ammonia.
|
| I wonder if we're fertilizing all these new trees we wanna plant
| with air manure.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| [flagged]
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| This is as absurd as it is futile because of forest fires, decay,
| and math.
|
| _" TeamTrees vs REALITY!!"_ https://youtu.be/gqht2bIQXIY
| nverno wrote:
| Trees have a big impact on local climate. The carbon
| sequestering part might be futile (but forests play other roles
| in climate change, like promoting cloud cover which is good for
| cooling), but reforesting is worth doing for a million reasons-
| plus everyone likes trees.
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