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Iceland's attempts to replant its forests

nytimes.com

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Re: Iceland's attempts to replant its forests

#31

Post by cr1895 »

avar wrote: post #10
23443463453 wrote: post #4

It's funny how so many Liberal minded types are overrunning Iceland gushing about how beautiful and stark the landscape is, when in reality they don't realize they are admiring just another devastated landscape of Europe. It's a general bias Europeans heavily have as they laud the beauty and natural state of Europe, while there is really not a single natural old growth forest anywhere on the whole continent and most…

It's not just another devastated landscape of Europe, it's the single most naturally devastated landscape on the entire continent. The National Museum of Iceland in Reykjavík has a permanent exhibition on the subject that I highly recommend. Since colonization a little over a millennium ago most of the topsoil has been washed out to sea, wast swaths of the country that used to be fields or forests are now just bare r…

>it's the single most naturally devastated landscape on the entire continent.

Isn't half of it technically on another continent?

Re: Iceland's attempts to replant its forests

#32

Post by Robotbeat »

I wonder if massive temporary greenhouses over sections of the land would help get trees established. It'd protect areas from wind (erosion), sheep, and cold temperatures until the soil was remediated and the trees were high enough to avoid hungry sheep. They already grow saplings in greenhouses.

Re: Iceland's attempts to replant its forests

#33

Post by TallGuyShort »

avar wrote: post #6

For reasons I won't go into the farming lobby is really strong in Iceland. Sheep run free-range around the entire island, if you'd like to grow something that sheep like to eat you need to fence it in. It's not like pretty much anywhere else in the western world where people who own grazing animals need to fence them in. Thus the sheep range far and wide and destroy Iceland's native low-lying forests. Iceland's nativ…

>> It's not like pretty much anywhere else in the western world where people who own grazing animals need to fence them in.

It's an exception and not the rule, as you're saying, but I know of at least a few spots in the Rocky Mountains in the US where farmed cattle graze openly and property owners have to let them. The ones I'm thinking of I think became that way because it was a permanent condition of the sale of the property in smaller parcels (i.e. the original owner parceled it up for cabins but retained grazing rights in perpetuity). But it's in areas where they actually want to keep vegetation in check to mitigate forest fires.

Re: Iceland's attempts to replant its forests

#34

Post by zeveb »

terda12 wrote: post #2

Just wanted to say, props to NYT for the beautifully designed article.

Except, as I indicate in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15515968, the images are extraordinarily low-res with JavaScript turned off.

'Well, turn it on!' is certainly one solution, but of course enabling JavaScript doesn't just let me view images (something HTTP & HTML do just fine anyway), but also enables execution of potential malware, tracking & other nastiness.

Re: Iceland's attempts to replant its forests

#35

Post by robin_reala »

zeveb wrote: post #20

As an aside, all the images are blurry with NoScript. Any idea how to get around this without enabling JavaScript (and bringing in all of its issues)?

If you’re OK with pixellated then add to your user CSS:

  .image img.g-lazy { filter: none !important; }
If you want the originals and can run user JS then something like:

  window.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded',() => {
    document.querySelectorAll('.media-viewer-candidate').forEach(el => {
      el.src = el.dataset['mediaviewer-src']
    })
  })

Re: Iceland's attempts to replant its forests

#36

Post by interfixus »

zeristor wrote: post #16
interfixus wrote: post #3

Possibly worth remembering: Iceland (and Greenland, where the vikings hung on until the fourteen hundreds) had significantly warmer climate a milennium ago.

Indeed the little ice age of the middle ages is what made Greenland uninhabitable. Birch is a pioneer species, they produce millions of seeds a year, they chased the retreating ice cap as melted northwards in Europe. It would appear they need to be planted out, perhaps they need soil to take. Otherwhise it should be a fairly simple case of just broadcasting billions of birch seeds over Iceland.

I know. I live among birches in soutern Scandinavia. One thing they need, though: Water, and plenty of it. I'm not really sure the Icelandic ground delivers.

Re: Iceland's attempts to replant its forests

#38

Post by vidarh »

avar wrote: post #6

For reasons I won't go into the farming lobby is really strong in Iceland. Sheep run free-range around the entire island, if you'd like to grow something that sheep like to eat you need to fence it in. It's not like pretty much anywhere else in the western world where people who own grazing animals need to fence them in. Thus the sheep range far and wide and destroy Iceland's native low-lying forests. Iceland's nativ…

> Sheep run free-range around the entire island, if you'd like to grow something that sheep like to eat you need to fence it in. It's not like pretty much anywhere else in the western world where people who own grazing animals need to fence them in.

This is the case in at least Norway as well - it's certainly not unique to Iceland. Though I assume environmental effect of it in Iceland is compounded by the climate.

Re: Iceland's attempts to replant its forests

#39

Post by refurb »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #33
avar wrote: post #6

For reasons I won't go into the farming lobby is really strong in Iceland. Sheep run free-range around the entire island, if you'd like to grow something that sheep like to eat you need to fence it in. It's not like pretty much anywhere else in the western world where people who own grazing animals need to fence them in. Thus the sheep range far and wide and destroy Iceland's native low-lying forests. Iceland's nativ…

>> It's not like pretty much anywhere else in the western world where people who own grazing animals need to fence them in. It's an exception and not the rule, as you're saying, but I know of at least a few spots in the Rocky Mountains in the US where farmed cattle graze openly and property owners have to let them. The ones I'm thinking of I think became that way because it was a permanent condition of the sale of th…

Yes, out west many states have "free grazing" laws.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_range

Re: Iceland's attempts to replant its forests

#40

Post by ckinnan »

avar wrote: post #6

For reasons I won't go into the farming lobby is really strong in Iceland. Sheep run free-range around the entire island, if you'd like to grow something that sheep like to eat you need to fence it in. It's not like pretty much anywhere else in the western world where people who own grazing animals need to fence them in. Thus the sheep range far and wide and destroy Iceland's native low-lying forests. Iceland's nativ…

There is actually a similar problem in the Northeastern United States. Deer are overpopulated (in my area 6x traditional level) because they have no predators and hunting is restricted. The deer eat all of the hardwood saplings. In many mid-Atlantic forests there are very few 10-20 year old hard wood trees, they don't survive the deer.
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