> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Industrial corporations in the EU can offset their carbon emissions (and the associated taxes) by sponsoring the plantation of trees. The calculation of this carbon offset is based on the expected carbon capture of a tree over several decades, even if at the moment it is just a sapling.
This summer a Dutch tree-planting company accidentally started a fire in Spain that burnt a much wider surface of forest than what they had planted. As a local major put it: "they were going to plant 200 hectares and ended up burning 1,000 hectares covered with 50-year old pine trees".
I wouldn't be surprised if, from the point of view of carbon taxes, the saplings that were burnt in the fire were accounted as having offset carbon emissions just as much if they had lived a full life. Presumably, the new saplings that will be planted on their ashes will be accounted by the same amount.
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.
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.
"Modern principles of economics" start with great anecdote how British Government changing payment from £/prisoner boarded to £/prisoner delivered reduced death rate on Australia convict ships from ~30% to less than 1%.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
> 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
Rapid growth is not actually good for the longevity of a tree. A tree which grows rapidly (presumably to take advantage of a resource surplus) will be structurally weaker and die at a younger age to wind, pests, etc.
So it's true that planting in compost can accelerate the tree, but there's nothing wrong with planting a tree in "dirt" from a natural perspective (assuming it doesn't outright die from pH balance or lack of water etc).
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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
> Needless to say, the logging industry was not happy about The Lorax. The book was banned from many schools and libraries near thriving timber communities. Timber industry groups even sponsored a rebuttal book, called The Truax, which helped kids understand the necessity of harvesting timber.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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 :)
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.
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.
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" ?
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.
As mentioned in one of the other comments here, we have come to the realization that the last-mile growers are not incentivized enough, sometimes not at all, to "maintain" the trees till they can sustain themselves.
The government and public authorities will sign a plan; then it goes down to multiple intermediaries, and by the time it reaches those planting the trees get little to care. It is rampant with corruption and fraud. If I have to put in numbers, here is an idea -- if there is $1 available for every tree to be planted, anyone in direct benefit at the final step gets less than 10¢. Those organizations and people "shouting" about planting trees goes on to the next plantation project, and it goes on.
I have been involved with and have invested in nurturing an ecosystem in a remote corner of India. I have got the involvement of the locals, and they know what trees/plants to grow that will benefit not just in sucking in CO2 but bears fruit that the locals can leverage. The idea is to have a tangible outcome from the trees that we can create a circular economy and treat the Climate actions as a good side-effect. The locales have no clue and don't even have enough to survive to care about Climate Change.
This is an all negative perspective. There are many that succeed too (Caveat: No, I'm not a forest expert but I do travel). I have seen at least 3 examples of Miyawaki forests that have succeeded close to where I live. I've seen some fairly large and successful afforestation efforts too.
While yes, an extremely unbalanced perspective helps us focus on a rather important issue, I do wish the article were a mite more balanced.
This is one of the "earnest environmentslist thinks we can do better" articles that are so popular with the "see, it was a hoax all along" crowd.
Within the intended audience, this is a call for stricter standards to ensure this is done well and achieves its aims. Outside, for people who just read the headline, it's taken as further evidence that it's all BS. A fake solution to a fake problem, both pushed by evil people.
I'm not sure what you can do about this, climate change deniers are not famous for their appreciation of nuance, but we should probably take note of it anyway, otherwise you end up with people with very different opinions thinking they are agreeing when they say "this is terrible!". And nerds seem extra vulnerable to being sold this kind of know-it-all, "well, actually", cynicism for some reason.
I’m not sure what climate change skepticism has to do with reforestation efforts or environmentalism, more broadly. Generalizing those with different opinions than you as lacking nuance doesn’t seem particularly nuanced to me either.
As a climate change skeptic I’m very much in favor of having more trees around, having less pollution in general, and don’t really care for the idea of covering up vast swaths of native grasslands with solar panels. Reforestation seems like a pretty good way to take advantage of higher CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
The thing is we do not live in ordinary times. Last summer temperatures made many established trees in the cities close to getting killed. Anything with less developed root system and without regular, generous watering probably fared worse.
Farmers hardly abandon their crops or are clueless about agriculture, but in many regions this growing season was a disaster.
From large scale, low initial investment and high yield tree planting: pick one. Any even the most amateur gardener can figure out that growing things successfully requires checking many boxes.
Last but not least: in climatic emergency maybe instead of as we can see a pipe dream of low cost, no maintenance, native species only eco-forest we may start to think about planting almost anything that grows successfully and does not burn too easily.
All you need to do is stop cutting the plant life. If a forest can grow there, it will. Planting trees is extremely dumb, they are already optimized to spread themselves! Also, you can't really plant mature forests; pioneer species need to grow there first.
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.
This reminded me of this biodegradable plant box a company makes to support tree plantings which will not have future water and nutrients supplied. A Shell oil project used the boxes in an Argentina arid steppe. Was interesting to me in their 2018 write-up. They have not yet updated the results. https://www.groasis.com/en/projects/argentina-the-unconventi...
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.
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.
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.
~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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
theptip|3 years ago
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.
DoreenMichele|3 years ago
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
pstuart|3 years ago
MichaelZuo|3 years ago
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.
empyrrhicist|3 years ago
beezlewax|3 years ago
PicassoCTs|3 years ago
MichaelCollins|3 years ago
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|3 years ago
https://www.google.com/maps/@30.2640043,-85.4463662,3277m/da...
felipeerias|3 years ago
This summer a Dutch tree-planting company accidentally started a fire in Spain that burnt a much wider surface of forest than what they had planted. As a local major put it: "they were going to plant 200 hectares and ended up burning 1,000 hectares covered with 50-year old pine trees".
https://www.heraldo.es/noticias/aragon/huesca/2022/07/20/los... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/22/reforestation-... https://landlifecompany.com/news/land-life-statement-july-21...
I wouldn't be surprised if, from the point of view of carbon taxes, the saplings that were burnt in the fire were accounted as having offset carbon emissions just as much if they had lived a full life. Presumably, the new saplings that will be planted on their ashes will be accounted by the same amount.
Lendal|3 years ago
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.
CommieBobDole|3 years ago
kilotaras|3 years ago
ianbicking|3 years ago
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
sn41|3 years ago
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-...
hinkley|3 years ago
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.
sitkack|3 years ago
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.
antisthenes|3 years ago
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.
mabbo|3 years ago
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.
unknown|3 years ago
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debacle|3 years ago
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|3 years ago
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.
clairity|3 years ago
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.
bpodgursky|3 years ago
Rapid growth is not actually good for the longevity of a tree. A tree which grows rapidly (presumably to take advantage of a resource surplus) will be structurally weaker and die at a younger age to wind, pests, etc.
So it's true that planting in compost can accelerate the tree, but there's nothing wrong with planting a tree in "dirt" from a natural perspective (assuming it doesn't outright die from pH balance or lack of water etc).
swader999|3 years ago
smesla|3 years ago
11235813213455|3 years ago
throwaway8582|3 years ago
kokanee|3 years ago
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.
0000011111|3 years ago
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
perrygeo|3 years ago
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.
superchroma|3 years ago
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|3 years ago
RunSet|3 years ago
https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/the-environmental-messa...
BurningFrog|3 years ago
insane_dreamer|3 years ago
It's a reason why those "we plant a tree every time you buy X" marketing claims are mostly BS.
xani__|3 years ago
nathancahill|3 years ago
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|3 years ago
tantalor|3 years ago
unknown|3 years ago
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pmayrgundter|3 years ago
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|3 years ago
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.
Maursault|3 years ago
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.
mistrial9|3 years ago
orangepurple|3 years ago
nyanpasu64|3 years ago
Brajeshwar|3 years ago
The government and public authorities will sign a plan; then it goes down to multiple intermediaries, and by the time it reaches those planting the trees get little to care. It is rampant with corruption and fraud. If I have to put in numbers, here is an idea -- if there is $1 available for every tree to be planted, anyone in direct benefit at the final step gets less than 10¢. Those organizations and people "shouting" about planting trees goes on to the next plantation project, and it goes on.
I have been involved with and have invested in nurturing an ecosystem in a remote corner of India. I have got the involvement of the locals, and they know what trees/plants to grow that will benefit not just in sucking in CO2 but bears fruit that the locals can leverage. The idea is to have a tangible outcome from the trees that we can create a circular economy and treat the Climate actions as a good side-effect. The locales have no clue and don't even have enough to survive to care about Climate Change.
rinka_singh|3 years ago
While yes, an extremely unbalanced perspective helps us focus on a rather important issue, I do wish the article were a mite more balanced.
ZeroGravitas|3 years ago
Within the intended audience, this is a call for stricter standards to ensure this is done well and achieves its aims. Outside, for people who just read the headline, it's taken as further evidence that it's all BS. A fake solution to a fake problem, both pushed by evil people.
I'm not sure what you can do about this, climate change deniers are not famous for their appreciation of nuance, but we should probably take note of it anyway, otherwise you end up with people with very different opinions thinking they are agreeing when they say "this is terrible!". And nerds seem extra vulnerable to being sold this kind of know-it-all, "well, actually", cynicism for some reason.
docandrew|3 years ago
As a climate change skeptic I’m very much in favor of having more trees around, having less pollution in general, and don’t really care for the idea of covering up vast swaths of native grasslands with solar panels. Reforestation seems like a pretty good way to take advantage of higher CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
elmolino89|3 years ago
From large scale, low initial investment and high yield tree planting: pick one. Any even the most amateur gardener can figure out that growing things successfully requires checking many boxes.
Last but not least: in climatic emergency maybe instead of as we can see a pipe dream of low cost, no maintenance, native species only eco-forest we may start to think about planting almost anything that grows successfully and does not burn too easily.
hoseja|3 years ago
tomohawk|3 years ago
https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_savory_how_to_fight_desertif...
contingencies|3 years ago
carride|3 years ago
fnordpiglet|3 years ago
JoeAltmaier|3 years ago
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.
princevegeta89|3 years ago
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.
jibbit|3 years ago
foobarbecue|3 years ago
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.
rdtwo|3 years ago
greenie_beans|3 years ago
c0brac0bra|3 years ago
hutzlibu|3 years ago
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.
extantproject|3 years ago
RcouF1uZ4gsC|3 years ago
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.
georgeburdell|3 years ago
biellls|3 years ago
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.
Retric|3 years ago
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.
jandrese|3 years ago
pbj1968|3 years ago