The Surprising Downsides To Planting Trillions of Trees (vox.com) 115
Large tree-planting initiatives often fail -- and some have even fueled deforestation. From a report: On November 11, 2019, volunteers planted 11 million trees in Turkey as part of a government-backed initiative called Breath for the Future. In one northern city, the tree-planting campaign set the Guinness World Record for the most saplings planted in one hour in a single location: 303,150. "By planting millions of young trees, the nation is working to foster a new, lush green Turkey," Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said when he kicked off the project in Ankara. Less than three months later, up to 90 percent of the saplings were dead, the Guardian reported. The trees were planted at the wrong time and there wasn't enough rainfall to support the saplings, the head of the country's agriculture and forestry trade union told the paper.
In the past two decades, mass tree-planting campaigns like this one have gained popularity as a salve for many of our modern woes, from climate change to the extinction crisis. Companies and billionaires love these kinds of initiatives. So do politicians. [...] There's just one problem: These campaigns often don't work, and sometimes they can even fuel deforestation. In one recent study in the journal Nature, for example, researchers examined long-term restoration efforts in northern India, a country that has invested huge amounts of money into planting over the last 50 years. The authors found "no evidence" that planting offered substantial climate benefits or supported the livelihoods of local communities.
The study is among the most comprehensive analyses of restoration projects to date, but it's just one example in a litany of failed campaigns that call into question the value of big tree-planting initiatives. Often, the allure of bold targets obscures the challenges involved in seeing them through, and the underlying forces that destroy ecosystems in the first place. Instead of focusing on planting huge numbers of trees, experts told Vox, we should focus on growing trees for the long haul, protecting and restoring ecosystems beyond just forests, and empowering the local communities that are best positioned to care for them. In the past three decades, the number of tree-planting organizations has skyrocketed, growing nearly threefold in the tropics alone. So have global drives: Today, there are no fewer than three campaigns focused on planting 1 trillion trees, including the World Economic Forum's (WEF) One Trillion Trees Initiative, which launched in 2020.
In the past two decades, mass tree-planting campaigns like this one have gained popularity as a salve for many of our modern woes, from climate change to the extinction crisis. Companies and billionaires love these kinds of initiatives. So do politicians. [...] There's just one problem: These campaigns often don't work, and sometimes they can even fuel deforestation. In one recent study in the journal Nature, for example, researchers examined long-term restoration efforts in northern India, a country that has invested huge amounts of money into planting over the last 50 years. The authors found "no evidence" that planting offered substantial climate benefits or supported the livelihoods of local communities.
The study is among the most comprehensive analyses of restoration projects to date, but it's just one example in a litany of failed campaigns that call into question the value of big tree-planting initiatives. Often, the allure of bold targets obscures the challenges involved in seeing them through, and the underlying forces that destroy ecosystems in the first place. Instead of focusing on planting huge numbers of trees, experts told Vox, we should focus on growing trees for the long haul, protecting and restoring ecosystems beyond just forests, and empowering the local communities that are best positioned to care for them. In the past three decades, the number of tree-planting organizations has skyrocketed, growing nearly threefold in the tropics alone. So have global drives: Today, there are no fewer than three campaigns focused on planting 1 trillion trees, including the World Economic Forum's (WEF) One Trillion Trees Initiative, which launched in 2020.
I'll stick to physics... (Score:3)
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... and human behavior.
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Oh humans easy...ME! ME! ME!
Seen this before [Re:I'll stick to physics...] (Score:3)
Not completely unexpected... we've seen this before. Israel has had a public-relations campaign "plant a tree in Israel!" that's been going on for decades, and it turns out that the majority of the trees planted simply die; the campaign was more about making people feel good than actually increasing the tree cover in Israel. Some people have even suggested that the campaign is counterproductive : https://jewishweek.timesofisra... [timesofisrael.com]
(and, of course, there was the scandal where it was discovered that workers
Thirsty (Score:2)
Reforestation with non-native species (Score:5, Insightful)
S Africa brought in every greens for timber but found out they consume precious water relative to lumber benefits and now busy cutting them down wack a mole style. Ooops
Reforestation with non-native species is not really evidence that reforestation is a bad idea. Any good idea can be implemented poorly.
Evert square foot of land is already in use (Score:2)
Either agriculture, urbane/factories, forest, desert or frozen wasteland. Trees are already growing wherever they can grow. With rare exceptions.
The only way to plant more trees is to grow less food.
But it feels good to plant them, and if they die then the same area can be planted again in future for more feeling goodness.
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So much simpler than anything that has to do with biology and ecosystems.
Those are all just low-energy physics.
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Did anybody really think that planting a few trees will offset the Gigatons (with a 'G') of CO2 the human race is producing right now?
It's simple math: Per capita we produce about 4.5 tons of CO2 per year. To produce that much wood every single person would have to plant about a hundred trees (they grow slowly). In the USA you'd have to plant three times that.
OTOH: Maybe tree planting has other benefits. Long term benefits like having a working ecosystem.
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We probably should be doing bamboo instead. It grows much faster and sequesters (IIRC, my numbers may be wrong here) about 4 times more CO2 than tress.Just putting some in a grassy median and letting them take over will sequester a ton of CO2...but everyone's obsessed with trees...
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Bamboo in the USA is seen as an invasive weed by landscapers; which it is. It spreads everywhere, grows thickly, dominates the sun/soil resources in a patch of land, damages structures, and creates stumps you don't see until you break your ankle (or your $1500 lawn mower) on them. Bamboo doesn't allow for the lush green lawn acreage that reminds people of massive British estates and Southern USA plantations which are still looked at as a status symbol for homeowners.
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I have my doubts about tree planting and how effective it will be, for this very reason. Trees grow very slowly and I wonder how much Co2 a single tree takes out of the environment. I read a article that claims grass lands are better for it than trees.
https://climatechange.ucdavis.edu/news/grasslands-more-reliable-carbon-sink-than-trees/
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It's just more evidence of climate change and people (particularly politicians and NGO's) not paying attention to the science.
If you plant trees, you plant them in the fall, because that's when the trees normally go to seed.
If you plant trees, you plant them in the rainshadow of other trees, otherwise they will drown.
If you plant trees, you plant only NATIVE trees, otherwise they will just die, drown or become diseased.
Trees, in the context of humans are basically toddlers. They need support of other trees
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Don't forget to have trees at different stages of their life together. A forest comprised solely of ancient trees is at risk of all dying at roughly the same time. Stagger what you plant and when so patches of light can support lower vegetation. Different species are susceptible to different diseases, so a biodiverse forest is more resilient. Also, since many hardwoods take 100+ years to reach maturity, you can ensure continuous harvests by planting saplings every year.
Just because some people screw up (Score:5, Insightful)
eg by planting trees in an arid area, and others simply use it for political gain, it doesn't mean the idea itself is wrong. There arn't currently many other ways to suck up huge amounts of carbon other than planting trees. Yes, plankton in the sea but good luck seeding that on a large enough scale to make a difference.
Re:Just because some people screw up (Score:5, Insightful)
But it does mean it's more complicated than it sounds.
What these programs are attempting to do are actually complex, multidisciplinary undertakings that take a lot of up-front research, preparation and long-term planning. Anyone with sufficient power -- political leaders and billionaires for example -- can order that so many trees get planted, and it will happen. But if that's *how* it happens, it's no surprise when 90% of the trees die, or when the trees aren't what locals need.
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The solution to most problems are complex.
One of my college professors (CS department) was fond of saying:
"If you think the solution is simple you probably don't understand the problem."
Goes along with the big problems are just simple problems fallacy.
Big problems (Climate Change, racial inequity, etc.) are made up of a large/vast number of smaller problems. Each of which can most likely be defined in straight forward and fairly simple terms. Their solutions tend to not be simple, straightforward, and req
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Well, TFS does say the schemes *often* don't work, not that they never work. But seems to me that calling out the fact that many of these projects fail is important, whether in terms of improving the quality of tree planting schemes that do happen, or whether to direct resources elsewhere.
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How is humans planting more trees a "fail"?
Answer: When measured by the metrics of this study.
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Perhaps you did not even read the summary?
90% of the saplings died already. I doubt from the other 10% many survive.
Fail:
a) CO2 production
- by transporting them
- having people transport there to plant them
b) they are dead now
- could have planted them elsewhere, where they had survived
c) stupid marketing con
Re: Just because some people screw up (Score:2)
Plankton as carbon sink (Score:2)
The problem I learned with seeding plankton in order to capture carbon in the seas is that it ends up being much like this. While some of the plankton may sink to the ocean bottom, roughly 90% of it will be consumed before it gets to the dark depths, and 90% of the remaining will generally be consumed before it reaches the ocean floor. What reaches the ocean floor will generally be consumed by the critters there.
Basically, if we seed plankton and grow a bunch more of it, the net result is more ocean life,
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Basically, if we seed plankton and grow a bunch more of it, the net result is more ocean life, not carbon capture. Not that more ocean life can't be a good thing.
The plankton capture the carbon.
Sea life eats 90% of the plankton, only 10% sinks to the ocean floor. But that sea life hold's onto most of that carbon as body mass. The rest is excreted and sinks to the ocean floor.
The sea life dies and sinks to the ocean bottom where it is consumed by other sea life. But that sea life holds on to most of that carbon as body mass. The rest is excreted and falls to the ocean floor.
We might get a little carbon capture from the occasional scrap of plankton, or corpse of something that eats plankton, or the corpse of something that eats the things that eat plankton(follow the line like x20), managing to get buried in the ocean floor in a way that it doesn't get eaten, but this isn't a significant amount anymore.
What, specifically, do you think happens to the carbon in that cycle? Once the plankton is
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"The plankton capture the carbon."
Not really, its still part of the active carbon cycle. Same as planting trees. The carbon isn't sequestered.
The carbon from the fossil fuels was sequestered for millions of years, it wasn't in circulation at all. It was completely out of the system.
The carbon in oil and coal etc in the ground represent millions of generations of forest growth. Trees growing, pulling carbon out of the air for thier biomass, sinking down, and being sequestered as oil, removed from the system.
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So planting a trillion trees is not creating a carbon sequestration engine that will pull carbon out of the atmosphere and sequester it and gradually reverse the carbon release we've done. Instead its its basically just pulling the current living biomass of the forest out of the air for as long as the forest exists, and that's it. When a generation of trees die the carbon circulates into the atmosphere instead of being sequestered to eventually become coal/oil.
In the Fall I often go through my woodlot and cull the recently dead trees for firewood. Its a lot of red oak that have reached end of life, they are huge, but dead. I jokingly tell people that I spent the weekend liberating sequestered carbon (ie, processing firewood), and they usually look at me in a befuddled way, having no idea of what I am talking about. I often wondered what the point of planting trees is (I mean, as you say, you are really only sequestering 1 generation of carbon). I suppose some
What happens to carbon? Respirated (Score:2)
What, specifically, do you think happens to the carbon in that cycle? Once the plankton is eaten, what do you think happens to the carbon?
Well, that would generally be called "respiration", where the carbohydrates, fats, and proteins are oxidized for energy(with a small amount being reutilized to make the flesh of the consumer), releasing CO2 and H2O. Basically putting you back where you started when the plankton was converting CO2 and H2O into carbohydrates, fats, and proteins via processes that started with photosynthesis.
What about it? Fossilization is a rare event that involves bone being replaced by minerals. It has nothing to do with carbon capture.
"rare event" is the point. A piece of carbon even many times removed from the plankton that photosynthesized it, being
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Except you are completely ignoring growth, reproduction, cell replacement, excretions other than respiration. You seem to have oversimplified the whole process.
Addressing it is "completely ignoring" it? ..." Food webs in the ocean are both extensive and complex.
First post: "or the corpse of something that eats the things that eat plankton(follow the line like x20)" - Follow the line means "something that eats the something that eats the something that eats the something that eats
Second post: "with a small amount being reutilized to make the flesh of the consumer"
Okay: Growth is addressed. It's a small amount of the product compared to respiration, and it still
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They'll just send out more fishing boats and cancel the effect.
Re: Plankton as carbon sink (Score:2)
One way to get me to stop eating a ton of very carbon-intensive beef would be to ply me with guilt-free tuna.
Re: Plankton as carbon sink (Score:2)
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Genuine question - are trees a viable method of carbon sequestration? They don't lock it in some vault or convert it to some insoluble mineralized form. All that carbon is still sitting there in the tree. When the life cycle ends via pestilence or old age or fire, does the combustion/decomposition process just release all that carbon?
Plus the TANSTAAFL Principle surely applies. All these tree-planting initiatives rely on machinery and energy to harvest and transport and dig, then the water-pumping to irriga
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Genuine question - are trees a viable method of carbon sequestration? ... When the life cycle ends via ... fire, does the combustion/decomposition process just release all that carbon?...
The root system is about 50% of a tree by weight. So even after fire the root remains in the soil intact. In eons it may turn into the coal.
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Nope, it won't. It was possible for coal to form before fungi appeared. Now that they're here, no more coal, no matter how long you're prepared to wait!
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Genuine question - are trees a viable method of carbon sequestration?
Probably not. Not compared to the gigatons of CO2 the human race is currently producing.
More trees is still a good thing though. More forested areas = more places critters can live, less places where humans are.
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Genuine question - are trees a viable method of carbon sequestration? They don't lock it in some vault or convert it to some insoluble mineralized form. All that carbon is still sitting there in the tree. When the life cycle ends via pestilence or old age or fire, does the combustion/decomposition process just release all that carbon
Combustion, yes, in the form of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, among other chemicals.. Decomposition, no. When the tree rots, it doesn't give off anywhere near the amount of carbon as it contains. Insects eating the tree convert the tree and thus it's carbon into more insect biomass which then goes on to feed other creatures to make more biomass. I really don't understand why people think that all the carbon a tree or plankton or anything at all will be released into the environment in a dangerous for
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Genuine question - are trees a viable method of carbon sequestration? They don't lock it in some vault or convert it to some insoluble mineralized form. All that carbon is still sitting there in the tree. When the life cycle ends via pestilence or old age or fire, does the combustion/decomposition process just release all that carbon
Combustion, yes, in the form of carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, among other chemicals.. Decomposition, no. When the tree rots, it doesn't give off anywhere near the amount of carbon as it contains. Insects eating the tree convert the tree and thus it's carbon into more insect biomass which then goes on to feed other creatures to make more biomass. I really don't understand why people think that all the carbon a tree or plankton or anything at all will be released into the environment in a dangerous form unless it is immediately buried underground.
Interesting. Thank you.
I have increasingly heard statements like, "Trees are the Earth's air filtration system", but anyone who has worked with machinery (or owned a house) knows that eventually your filters have to be cleaned/changed, and then that lubricant/hair/dust goes somewhere . I was curious what happens to all the "filtered" carbon in a tree at that filter's EOL.
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When the tree rots, it doesn't give off anywhere near the amount of carbon as it contains.
Yes it does.
Insects eating the tree convert the tree and thus it's carbon into more insect biomass which then goes on to feed other creatures to make more biomass. ... sorry, you have some stupid idea in your head.
And as soon as everything is dead: it is CH4 or CO2 again
I really don't understand why people think that all the carbon a tree or plankton or anything at all will be released into the environment in a dan
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And as soon as everything is dead: it is CH4 or CO2 again ... sorry, you have some stupid idea in your head.
You are literally stating that as soon as something dies it coverts entirely into one of two gasses. That is stupid.
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PLANTING is only step one of a long process... (Score:2)
eg by planting trees in an arid area, and others simply use it for political gain, it doesn't mean the idea itself is wrong.
The problem is that planting trees is only one step, and possibly the least important step, of the process of growing trees.
A tree may have perhaps a 100 year lifetime. A project that goes "OK, we will take care of the first one hour of the tree's lifespan, and it's on its own whether it will live or die from there" is really solving only about 0.001% of the problem.
Grasslands also can absorb CO2 on a global scale (Score:2)
https://climatechange.ucdavis.... [ucdavis.edu]
Re:Just because some people screw up (Score:5, Interesting)
Correct. Witness this guy [interestin...eering.com] who planted his own forest over a period of 30 years and look how things turned out. Or this husband and wife [iflscience.com] who did the same.
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It's a lot like tech fads: they're used everywhere instead of just where they belong.
Re:political gain (Score:2)
I bet someone got carbon credits for the trees even if they didn't make it in the end.
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But if we give Plankton what he needs, he'll take over the Krusty Krab!
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Sinks almost immediately and probably created more CO2 in its creation than the plankton will sequester using it.
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The resulting bloom would probably create a red tide and thus cause a lot of problems.
Poor Planning (Score:2)
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Taken to its extreme, that's the picture of the No True Scotsman fallacy. We need to look at the efforts carefully to see if there are fundamental problems with the approach, but at a certain point you have to assume that it's just a Bad Idea.
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Isn't this effectively arguing "Just because it has failed almost every time it has been tried, that doesn't mean it's a bad idea?"
Moderation. Every single time.
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Isn't this effectively arguing "Just because it has failed almost every time it has been tried, that doesn't mean it's a bad idea?"
But it hasn't failed almost every time it's been tried. The original study is behind a paywall, so I'm not even sure what criteria they are using to define success. A part of the study looked at if the forests had any beneficial socioeconomic impacts, and concluded that they didn't. I'm not sure what that has to do with mitigating climate change, but, to me, that's why you plant trees.
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Isn't this effectively arguing "Just because it has failed almost every time it has been tried, that doesn't mean it's a bad idea?"
Taken to its extreme, that's the picture of the No True Scotsman fallacy. We need to look at the efforts carefully to see if there are fundamental problems with the approach, but at a certain point you have to assume that it's just a Bad Idea.
You can say that about exercise and eating a balanced diet too, it doesn't make them bad ideas.
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Planting trees in deforested areas is generally a good thing, but you have to do it correctly or of course it's not going to work.
Or don't do it at all. Nature knows what it's doing.
I own a bunch of land that was a farm until 100 years ago and was then just abandoned to nature. The recovery is remarkable. It started as weeds and grass, then bushes, then quick growing and short lived pines, then longer living oaks moved in. On and on and on. Almost all traces that humans were every there has vanished. Wildlife is everywhere. Even bears. I'm not a biologist, but I can walk around and clearly see different areas in different stag
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Or don't do it at all. Nature knows what it's doing.
And what is that supposed to mean? Trees grow back in a desert?
Look at Spain, in roman times it was all woods, now half is desert. Without human intervention: it will stay desert.
I own a bunch of land that was a farm until 100 years ago and was then just abandoned to nature
So it was not a desert?
The recovery is remarkable
Obviously, as it was not a desert.
How much work did humans do to facilitate this? Nothing at all. It just took time.
And how do you suppo
Re: Poor Planning (Score:2)
Re: Poor Planning (Score:2)
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This doesn't have anything to do with the downside of planing trees, it's just another example of poor planning.
Well you have to take in to account the source of this article, Vox.com. The Vox is to responsible and reliable journalism what a salt enema is to nuclear physics.
Article is a sucky article. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a method that works just fine, and shouldn't be discouraged by crappy articles like this one. You just need to do it with the right techniques.
Of the 150+ saplings I've plants on my lot, we've lost about 20. Some to a mower, some to deer, some to overspray from nearby fields, and some to just plain bad luck. And that's in an area that was paid attention to, fertilized, and watered.
Like anything else - it takes EFFORT. If you build a house but use the wrong fasteners, and it falls apart, should we then conclude efforts to build houses should stop? Sheesh.
Re: Article is a sucky article. (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, it does mean you should stop building houses. At least stop building them wrong. These people and organizations are simple grandstanding for their own political/social benefit and are wasting immense resources that should be better spent. They are doing more harm than good and seem utterly clueless about this. There is a significant disconnect between their plans and reality. So yes, stop building houses that fall apart and that seems to be the intent of this article, not to stop completely.
Horrible title, so some suck at tree planting? (Score:5, Informative)
Like anything else - it takes EFFORT. If you build a house but use the wrong fasteners, and it falls apart, should we then conclude efforts to build houses should stop? Sheesh.
Well said. Put another way, farming isn't trivial. It sounds easy...some apparently think they plant some seeds in late winter/early Spring, pull out some weeds here and there, water as needed, then harvest some awesome food in fall. Farmers will laugh at your naivety. If you've even planted a garden, you know it's not that simple. My first time, I threw some basil seeds in a lot, got an OK yield, they died a bit early. 15 years later, lots of reading, youtube videos, conversations with older, smarter people, my harvest is 10x, but that's learning lessons about plant disease, watering, fertilizer, early seed starting, buying a grow light for Feb planting, etc. This year, I planned everything PERFECTLY, to my knowledge, we had a lot of tropical storms and it decimated my garden in august with fungus from an unusually rainy summer. My garden looked AMAZING in July. I lost 1/4 of what I grew in August just due to powdery mildew and some unspecified disease that annihilated some sedum groundcover I was growing. Half of what I grew died early.
Growing shit is kind of hard. If it's easy, you got lucky, but it is a roll of the dice from year to year, and getting good yields every year requires a lot of wisdom, thought, planning, etc. So yeah, a bunch of people with big dreams, a large volunteer workforce and a ton of saplings are going to run into all the issues any farmer or even gardener will run into. If you pick the wrong plants or the wrong spot or don't know how to manage pests and disease, your plants are in for a world of hurt.
This article is just disrespectful to farmers, greenhouse operators, and anyone in the agricultural/horticultural trades. Just because it looks easy to the author of this article, doesn't mean it is. These planting tree programs are great. They only contribute to deforestation if you do it stupidly.
Most of their examples fail because they pick the wrong plants. Anyone knows this. Pineapples don't grow in Michigan. Most plants that thrive in Siberia won't do so well in the tropics. They'll love the sun, but have no clue what to do with the diseases and pests of the area. Many plants HATE water and get root rot easily. Some hate intense sunlight.
You need a lot more than good will and love to grow things. You need to know what you're doing.
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Of the 150+ saplings I've plants on my lot, we've lost about 20. Some to a mower, some to deer, some to overspray from nearby fields, and some to just plain bad luck. And that's in an area that was paid attention to, fertilized, and watered.
I'm glad this is working out for you. However, from my own experience, tree planting is harder than it seems. Most that I've planted have died.
After quite a bit of research, I've discovered that most people, myself included, plant trees too deep! [clemson.edu] (PDF warning)
This spring, I dug up a sapling that had been struggling for years and corrected the issue. I was amazed at the growth this summer, despite a drought! It grew larger this year than it has in the past five.
Walking through my community, I see t
The wrong trees (Score:5, Insightful)
There is also the problem that in a lot of places where trees are planted the "wrong" trees are planted.
Just one example is that often little consideration is given to what extent the planted trees allow for things to grow on the forest floor, which depends on a number of factors.
Ask your local forester or "forestry engineer" as some places call them.
The New Forest vs the Topics? (Score:1)
Can anyone explain why the New Forest and other UK forests were successful?
Is it something about the tropics, maybe?
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It's simple enough: Pay attention to the project from more of a farming standpoint than a political grandstanding standpoint.
IE you pay attention to all the little details like whether the species you're planting can survive there, whether the weather is right for planting, the soil is rich enough, the saplings are healthy enough, etc...
You don't try for "records" like "most plantings in a day" because that just encourages you to ignore all of the above to toss seedlings into the ground for the press confe
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Obviously I haven't read TFA, and this is pure guesswork. What else does one expect from /.? But it seems to me that an important question to ask is why the area lost the forest it previously had. In the UK it was largely due to tree felling either for shipbuilding timbers or to clear land for agriculture. In other places I wonder whether it's due to changing patterns of water usage which mean that the area can no longer support a forest.
Study (Score:2)
The authors found "no evidence" that planting offered substantial climate benefits or supported the livelihoods of local communities.
I'm not sure what tree planting has to do with helping out local economies.
However, planting more trees to mitigate climate change is a global push, requiring increased planting everywhere. I'm not sure how studying one region in India can definitively say if tree planting programs have any effect on climate change.
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nope, old mature forests are carbon positive, they make carbon pollution! Sorry to burst your bubble but it's best to leave nature the fuck alone and just reduce our own pollution.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/r... [sciencedaily.com].
Reading (Score:2)
I'm not entirely sure how you plant an old, mature forest, but that isn't what people are planting. The idea is to soak up as much carbon as possible as we transition off of fossil fuels.
Direct link to research (Score:5, Informative)
Here's a direct link to the research article. [nature.com]
I'm not a statistician, so I have a hard time making sense of how they went about this study. It sounds incredibly convoluted and a lot of assumptions were made from satellite data and what, exactly, a pixel represents (broadleaf, pine, grassland, etc). The satellite imagery they used was only 30m, so a single pixel represents quite a large bit of land.
It sounds like this is more of a societal thing - the way they go about planting trees. This portion deep in the article pretty much sums it up:
most tree planting happens within areas that already have some tree cover, limiting the potential regrowth opportunities. Planting in cleared areas is not a viable alternative because of socioeconomic and ecological constraints of converting agricultural lands back to forests.
So trees are being planted... amongst other trees. Anyone who spends time in the woods knows that a mature wooded area develops a canopy to the point that it shades out the growth of other plants and trees. That is why in most mature woodlands you can easily walk through the woods, because new things can't grow well beneath the canopy of mature trees. This is also why mature trees in a forest setting only have limbs near the top.
So in other words, planting more trees right around existing mature trees doesn't have much affect. I don't believe that is the kind of tree planting done in most other parts of the world. I know around here, fields and open areas are being reclaimed (naturally) by trees, as small scale farming has become less and less profitable. Where I grew up in Ohio, we lived next to a large, mature forest of trees covering hundreds of acres, and as kids we played in those woods quite a lot (that was 40 years ago). Deep in the woods were large piles of stones (4-5' tall) that extended in straight lines for several hundred of yards, parallel to one another. Those used to be the borders between fields, and those were the stones that farmers had tilled up and stacked out of the fields a hundred years before. It is totally forested still, and the oldest of those trees are now approaching a hundred years of age. This was land that was not just totally deforested to open fields, but also had the rocks and stones manually removed.
Planting ignorance (Score:4, Insightful)
Just planting a tree is useless (in fact, it's a waste of money, manpower, a living being [the tree], gasoil, etc.)
If you want *to make a change* you have to:
1) Plant the tree
2) Secure it water/nutrients for, at least, 10 years
3) Trim, clean, cut down, etc. to keep the ground "healthy" (the ground needs also the sun, it has to keep nutrients so there must not be big trees too close to one another, etc.)
Ain't you going to do ALL that? Then you're just making things worst.
Re: (Score:1)
nah a forest with close packed trees can be carbon negative, but there are caveats including location and age. Hilariously old mature forests can be carbon positive
https://www.sciencedaily.com/r... [sciencedaily.com].
Re: Planting ignorance (Score:4, Insightful)
What? (Score:2)
You make it sound like trees would not exist without human intervention.
Re: (Score:2)
Transforming an arid zone into a forest in less than 100 years?
Yes, those trees would not exist without human intervention, which is what the OP was talking about.
Stupidity (Score:1)
Mostly a feel good effort (Score:1)
Usually they don't plant forests (Score:2)
They do tree plantations.
Forests need an ecosystem of many, many animals to work.
Re: (Score:2)
Forests need an ecosystem of many, many animals to work.
Not just animals, but various species of plants. The typical life cycle of a forest involves clearing due to fire, disease or floods, followed by pioneer species [wikipedia.org]. Many of which provide beneficial functions like nitrogen fixation and shade. And then you get the stable, slow growth but long lived species following on.
Trying to jump directly to species suitable for old growth forests messes up the ecology. Not only for trees, but animal species. Old growth is a shitty habitat for many prey and predator animal
They don't lead to deforestation (Score:2)
Claim: "large-scale tree planting initiatives sometimes lead to deforestation"
Fact: this was not a tree-planting initiative. It was an economic incentive to turn jungle into economic crops. From the link in TFA https://www.bloomberg.com/news... [bloomberg.com] "Under Mexico’s previous government, the owner was paid to care for the jungle on their land, but after President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador took office in 2018 that program’s budget was slashed and Sowing Life was introduced. It instead pays farmers to
Stupid people (Score:2)
It is axiomatic that stupid people do stupid things. Nearly all politicians are stupid people, when it comes to anything other than their own well-being. The corollary is left as an exercise to the reader.
Nothing of surprise here sadly (Score:1)
It is expected that not all saplings will grow, hence they are planted very densely. Even of those that grow, some will get crowded out within a few years.
However planting bare root saplings at the wrong time of the year is a gross mistake. I bet they weren't even area-native species either.
Planting appropriate plants for the area, at the correct time of year, in areas with no existing tree cover (possibly due to historic deforestation), but the right conditions for trees to grow, is fine.
I think most peopl
to be fair (Score:3)
mcdonalds (Score:2)
I got a pine sapling from McDonalds in 1984, was related to the Olympics or Arbor day (something). I planted it in my parents yard, its still there today and its huge. If young me can do it anyone can do it.
Growing is not deterministic. (Score:2)
I got a pine sapling from McDonalds in 1984, was related to the Olympics or Arbor day (something). I planted it in my parents yard, its still there today and its huge. If young me can do it anyone can do it.
A plant has a huge element of chance. It's a roll of the dice. What worked perfectly for you would kill your neighbor's plant the next year, month, etc. Some kid in your town who replicated the experiment could have planted it in an area with contamination or fungus. Another kid could have a deer eat it and kill the plant. Another kid could have a pest infestation.
Growing things are far from deterministic. I've had plant species I thought were total weeds and idiot-proof because I got a 90% yield
Re: (Score:2)
I said it was a pine tree, and it is a pine tree and not an oak. My point is that anyone can be successful in planting a tree, not that 100% of plantings will be successful.
Those aren’t downsides, idiot. (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
You mean planned failures. They were never about reforestation. They were about photo ops for politicians.
Deforestation (Score:2)
In Mexico, a $3.4 billion tree-planting campaign launched by the government in 2018 actually caused deforestation, as Bloomberg News’ Max de Haldevang reported earlier this year. The program known as Sembrando Vida, or Sowing Life, pays farmers to plant trees on their land, but in some cases, they would clear a chunk of forest before putting seedlings in the ground. One analysis by the World Resources Institute, an environmental group, suggests that it caused almost 73,000 hectares of forest loss in 2019.
Planting a trillion trees is easy (Score:2)
Start with one black locust tree on your land, it'll take care of the rest.
Eating meat is not bad. (Score:2)
Here's a TED Talk about how grazing animals are reversing the growth of desert:
https://www.ted.com/talks/alla... [ted.com]
For a very long time grazing animals helped spread the grasslands. A herd of animals moves into an area, nibbles at the grasses, stirs up the ground with their hooves, spreads seeds in their hair and feces, and so on. Managed grazing can turn desert into grassland. To make this profitable people need to eat meat. The grasslands build up topsoil and capture carbon in the soil. More grass means
The key is always habitat (Score:2)
Trees are no different than any other species. You have to establish their habitat before you can expect to plant a lot of them and see them thrive.
What's missing here is landscaping to retain the right amount of water, and regulate its flow. Rainwater has got to be captured, retained, and allowed to move slowly through the landscape, and this usually means swales, berms, and lightly angled ditches. The next important part is the soil biome. We need to be farming for soil microbes to unlock its nutrient
Re-wild farmland (Score:2)
I can't speak to the Turkish project, although one does have to wonder about the competence of planting millions of saplings, and then not ensuring they have enough water to survive. The thing is: re-wilding takes more planning than "plant a million trees". A forest has a lot more life in it than a bunch of trees, even if you do water them. Best is if you can work off of existing wild areas, and help them to expand.
Anyway, the real solution is to re-wild farmland. Certainly in the West, we have far more f
The thing about trees (Score:2)
is that they plant themselves.
I had a stand of tall pines on my property. One fine winter, one of them snapped in half and crashed through my roof.
I had them all chopped down. But before I could think about what I was going to put in their place, a bunch of oaks popped up.
If the tree planting were accompanied by irrigation and fertilization programs to get greenery where there wasn't any already, that would be one thing. But dig a hole drop a seed obviously doesn't work unless you're talking about already a
More trees = deforestation? (Score:2)
and sometimes they can even fuel deforestation.
Wow, that is a bold claim. I'm sure the next sentence will spell out how this happens...
In one recent study in the journal Nature, for example, researchers examined long-term restoration efforts in northern India, a country that has invested huge amounts of money into planting over the last 50 years. The authors found "no evidence" that planting offered substantial climate benefits or supported the livelihoods of local communities.
... or not.
Yet another example of Goodhart's law (Score:2)
"Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes." -- Charles Goodhart.
This looks like a classic example of trying to increase (place pressure upon) a number (statistical regularity) regardless of the other consequences (collapse). No. of trees planted = hectares of forest cover, only it doesn't if they plant the wrong trees in the wrong places &/or at the wrong times. This willfully ignorant narrow-mindedness also a fundamental characterist
The soil depletes by itself. It's impossible. (Score:2)
Soil is not an infinite resource. First you need to generate soil. Without generating soil you can't reforest substantially. This has been known for 5-10 years. People are stupid.
Read that again. People are stupid. Reforestation can't fix global warming because of fundamental facts about soil biology.
What's the danger here? (Score:2)
The headline suggests that it's bad somehow to plant trees. So, the Turks did it incorrectly and a lot of the trees died. Other places have had planting campaigns that didn't work out to anyone's benefit, so say some researchers. The writer even asserts that planting campaigns contribute somehow to deforestation but offers no support for this statement. I agree that there is a virtue-signaling aspect to the activity, but I fail to see what harm there could be in planting trees. At best, they make oxygen
Staggering (Score:2)
My dad had a PhD in 5 related fields, including ecology. He was often called in as a professional witness regarding the ecological impact of mining and logging operations. One thing I learned from him is that it's unhealthy for all trees in the forest to be the same age. We need to stagger the trees we harvest and how many saplings we plant at a time. Old trees are more susceptible to insects, fires, and diseases. We don't want the whole forest to die at the same time.
Other benefits are there (Score:1)