Live data from Hacker News

There’s Plenty of Space for One Trillion More Trees

nautil.us

11–20 of 77 posts

Re: There’s Plenty of Space for One Trillion More Trees

#12
I read that the great plains were naturally forests, not grasslands. The theory is they are grasslands because long ago the forests were burned to provide habitat for the buffalo.

This theory is supported by the Kansas farmers having planted trees, and the trees do quite well.

I would imagine that a great deal of forest could be created by replanting the great plains.

Re: There’s Plenty of Space for One Trillion More Trees

#13

I read that the great plains were naturally forests, not grasslands. The theory is they are grasslands because long ago the forests were burned to provide habitat for the buffalo. This theory is supported by the Kansas farmers having planted trees, and the trees do quite well. I would imagine that a great deal of forest could be created by replanting the great plains.

I wonder how that would affect tornado occurrences

Re: There’s Plenty of Space for One Trillion More Trees

#14

Look here: https://www.google.com.au/maps/@-33.0362291,118.4896355,5465... Can you figure out where there used to be trees ? That's now wheat farms mostly. Due to the tree removal salination has ruined 2 million hectares of what is now essential wasteland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salinity_in_Australia

Wow, the way the farms are perfectly cut around the protected regions... I thought that was just tiling in GMaps.

That's horrifying.

Re: There’s Plenty of Space for One Trillion More Trees

#16

Look here: https://www.google.com.au/maps/@-33.0362291,118.4896355,5465... Can you figure out where there used to be trees ? That's now wheat farms mostly. Due to the tree removal salination has ruined 2 million hectares of what is now essential wasteland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salinity_in_Australia

Don't know why you couldn't replant trees then. There are many types trees that do well in saltier soil. For example, White Ash, Red Cedar, Black Walnut, Japanese Black Pine, Pin Oak and Red Oak. Doubt it'd take much to get something estabilshed, and it'd probably take over on it's own gradually.

Re: There’s Plenty of Space for One Trillion More Trees

#17

If you planted a tree every second, it would take you 31 thousand ish years to plant them all. That said, if you had 100k people planting them itd take under a year. Can a machine plant 1 tree per second? Id be interested to learn that

That's an interesting thought. It immediately made me think of some fast moving contraption that buried seeds into the ground. Obvious difficulties would be navigating, and being small while being able to force something into the ground.

Re: There’s Plenty of Space for One Trillion More Trees

#18
post #4
post #2

Could satellite/drone imagery with computer vision could get an accurate count?

Given half the trees are already gone, not sure how useful a more detailed count would offer.

Actually there are more trees in the US now than in the 1800s [1]. However, the downside is that there is relatively little age difference in them, since they were planted in the last 50 years or more. This means less diversity of habitat, and it takes a while for the critters to build up biosystems in them. Still, I'll take the positive away from it. The quick effect of actually warming the Earth was surprising to me, because if we plant so many new trees we lower the albedo, and it takes a while for the trees to scrub the CO2 to make it a net win.

  [1] http://www.greenoptimistic.com/united-states-trees/#.VwxsqybSqHs

Re: There’s Plenty of Space for One Trillion More Trees

#19

I read that the great plains were naturally forests, not grasslands. The theory is they are grasslands because long ago the forests were burned to provide habitat for the buffalo. This theory is supported by the Kansas farmers having planted trees, and the trees do quite well. I would imagine that a great deal of forest could be created by replanting the great plains.

You may be remembering incorrectly, the great plains were grasslands many millions of years before humans arrived on the scene. Remember we only left Africa ~100,000 years ago.

Re: There’s Plenty of Space for One Trillion More Trees

#20
So the count of how many trees there are now was off by an order of magnitude.

And we are supposed to give credence to an estimate of how many there were 10,000 years ago? What makes you think that's any more accurate?

This kind of sloppy science is ruining people's confidence in science. I know it's supposed to be an iterative process, always getting better, but there should be some self awareness built in that early iterations should not be relied on in any way!

Post reply on HN