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Tree planting: Where can I do it and which type is best?

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Tree planting: Where can I do it and which type is best?

#31

Post by ptah »

hangonhn wrote: post #6

Slightly tangentially related, for those of us who are into gardening and coding, there is a plant monitor made by Xiaomi called Xiaomi Flower Care that will monitor moisture, light, temperature, and soil fertility. It works over Bluetooth and can be purchased on Amazon for as low as $8 per probe but the vendors will often charge around $25. You see a lot of rebranded ones but they're all the same from Xiaomi. It wor…

awesome! it would be good to have a database with information on what each type of plant you have needs and then alert if conditions are bad for that particular type

Re: Tree planting: Where can I do it and which type is best?

#32

Post by mytailorisrich »

pmontra wrote: post #17
jerkstate wrote: post #7

I did a rough spreadsheet some time back based on this 1998 EPA carbon sequestration worksheet [1] and found that an average person from a high carbon output country needs about 600-1000 trees to offset their carbon output. There are about 3 trillion trees for a population of 7 billion people for an average of 428 trees per person, so that means you have to make up the delta of about 172 to 572 trees over the course…

There is one thing that I don't understand. I plant 1000 trees, I sequester the CO2 I create by driving, heating my home and all the activities done by third parties to keep me alive (food, hospitals, etc). But that CO2 is still under the sky and most of it will be released when the trees die. It's not like we're pumping it back into oil fields or coal mines and never see it again. So this 1T trees initiative is a st…

> most of it will be released when the trees die

The idea is not to just plant trees but to increase the number of trees on the planet over the long term so that effectively the CO2 absorbed does not go back to the atmosphere.

This is aimed at reducing CO2 in the atmosphere and has to go hand in hand with reducing emissions.

Re: Tree planting: Where can I do it and which type is best?

#33

Post by dsr_ »

guelo wrote: post #25
maxencecornet wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an average person from a high carbon output country needs about 600-1000 trees to offset their carbon output. This seems really doable for the average person!

Most people don't have acres of land to plant trees in.

Which is why you outsource the tree planting to a place that has room for trees -- and it's more efficient because they can grow trees better than you can, anyway.

nationalforests.org, the Arbor Day Foundation... there are probably lots of good options.

Re: Tree planting: Where can I do it and which type is best?

#34

Post by hillz »

pmontra wrote: post #17
jerkstate wrote: post #7

I did a rough spreadsheet some time back based on this 1998 EPA carbon sequestration worksheet [1] and found that an average person from a high carbon output country needs about 600-1000 trees to offset their carbon output. There are about 3 trillion trees for a population of 7 billion people for an average of 428 trees per person, so that means you have to make up the delta of about 172 to 572 trees over the course…

There is one thing that I don't understand. I plant 1000 trees, I sequester the CO2 I create by driving, heating my home and all the activities done by third parties to keep me alive (food, hospitals, etc). But that CO2 is still under the sky and most of it will be released when the trees die. It's not like we're pumping it back into oil fields or coal mines and never see it again. So this 1T trees initiative is a st…

If a tree is planted, grows, and then for example is burned down and paved over, that'd be true. But if a tree grows and eventually dies in a forest, it'll be replaced with new trees naturally, cancelling out the CO2 leaked from the tree dying. This C02 can also be stalled by harvesting the tree and using it in some way that stops C02 from being released for a longer time than natural.

Re: Tree planting: Where can I do it and which type is best?

#35

Post by 0-_-0 »

dx87 wrote: post #14
rebuilder wrote: post #4

My wife and I have a property with a good bit of forest. It's mostly fir trees and birch. Every now and then I wonder if there's some way to increase the co2 uptake of the forest, but the question appears surprisingly complicated, and so far my conclusion has been to just leave it be. Has anyone looked into this?

There was an article posted recently that said the best way to increase the co2 uptake is by cutting down the fully grown trees and planting new trees. Full grown trees don't absord as much co2 as a tree that is still growing, and the needles that some trees drop make the ground acidic, preventing new trees from growing. The problem is that you have to find something to do with all the wood so the captured co2 doesn'…

> [...] as a tree that is still growing

Do trees stop growing?

Re: Tree planting: Where can I do it and which type is best?

#36

Post by aresant »

jerkstate wrote: post #7

I did a rough spreadsheet some time back based on this 1998 EPA carbon sequestration worksheet [1] and found that an average person from a high carbon output country needs about 600-1000 trees to offset their carbon output. There are about 3 trillion trees for a population of 7 billion people for an average of 428 trees per person, so that means you have to make up the delta of about 172 to 572 trees over the course…

No easy way to plot this - planting trees to sequester CO2 may or may not have a net positive impact at scale for a variety of reasons:

1) The timescale is very long - a single tree to drive carbon neutrality is MOST optimistically pegged at 40 - 100 years depending on species. With expanding populations planning or guaranteeing execution on that time scale is limited. AKA it's very unlikely that most efforts, unless planted in an evergreen protected land will actually drive a net positive impact.

2) Forest soil and topsoil (from dropped branches, leaves, etc) can sequester up to 2x as much carbon as the actual trees themselves and is typically counted in the "net negative" C02 impact. But warming temperatures creates a negative feedback loop increases the rate of C02 release from soil.

3) Governments, in their effort to drive commercial tree planting, are accidentally driving the wrong incentives - farmed forests are Effectively the only sure fire way towards atmospheric CO2 reduction is cutting consumption

(1) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/epa-declares-burni...

(2) https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/trees-carbon-emissions-bo...

Re: Tree planting: Where can I do it and which type is best?

#38

Post by Sharlin »

pmontra wrote: post #17
jerkstate wrote: post #7

I did a rough spreadsheet some time back based on this 1998 EPA carbon sequestration worksheet [1] and found that an average person from a high carbon output country needs about 600-1000 trees to offset their carbon output. There are about 3 trillion trees for a population of 7 billion people for an average of 428 trees per person, so that means you have to make up the delta of about 172 to 572 trees over the course…

There is one thing that I don't understand. I plant 1000 trees, I sequester the CO2 I create by driving, heating my home and all the activities done by third parties to keep me alive (food, hospitals, etc). But that CO2 is still under the sky and most of it will be released when the trees die. It's not like we're pumping it back into oil fields or coal mines and never see it again. So this 1T trees initiative is a st…

This is correct. At this point, we need to buy all the time we can, in addition to all other measures. In commercial forestry trees, are usually harvested when they’re 60 to 80 years old, but they remain net carbon sinks long after that if allowed to grow. Proper forest management practices minimize carbon re-emission from rotting plant matter.

Re: Tree planting: Where can I do it and which type is best?

#39

Post by Jolter »

cabaalis wrote: post #37

"You should not plant trees on ... grassland that has never been ploughed..." Can anyone shed some light on the reason behind not planting in open grassland?

Presumably because the Trust are tasked with conservation of nature, they cannot recommend converting one land use to another, because that would run contrary to their task.

Re: Tree planting: Where can I do it and which type is best?

#40

Post by grandridge »

pmontra wrote: post #17
jerkstate wrote: post #7

I did a rough spreadsheet some time back based on this 1998 EPA carbon sequestration worksheet [1] and found that an average person from a high carbon output country needs about 600-1000 trees to offset their carbon output. There are about 3 trillion trees for a population of 7 billion people for an average of 428 trees per person, so that means you have to make up the delta of about 172 to 572 trees over the course…

There is one thing that I don't understand. I plant 1000 trees, I sequester the CO2 I create by driving, heating my home and all the activities done by third parties to keep me alive (food, hospitals, etc). But that CO2 is still under the sky and most of it will be released when the trees die. It's not like we're pumping it back into oil fields or coal mines and never see it again. So this 1T trees initiative is a st…

trees sequester a lot more carbon into the ground than just into the physical tree itself
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