111–120 of 285 posts
Is this a case where robots could do almost all work? Define an area, load the saplings and send the robot to bore holes, put the sapling, fill, repeat.
I don't understand the downvotes. Can someone explain? Is a valid question, looking for an answer from a person with more knowledge.
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There's a really interesting article about how Yellowstone (a national park in the US) reintroduced wolves into the ecosystem, reducing the dear population, altering the ecosystem for the better: https://www.yellowstonepark.com/things-to-do/wolf-reintroduc... https://youtu.be/ysa5OBhXz-Q
Like all things, there is another side to the story too. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/10/opinion/is-the-wolf-a-rea...
"But by insisting that wolves fixed a broken Yellowstone, we distract attention from the area’s many other important conservation challenges. The warmest temperatures in 6,000 years are changing forests and grasslands. Fungus and beetle infestations are causing the decline of whitebark pine. Natural gas drilling is affecting the winter ranges of migratory wildlife. To protect cattle from disease, our government agencies still kill many bison that migrate out of the park in search of food. And invasive lake trout may be wreaking more havoc on the ecosystem than was ever caused by the loss of wolves."
Great read, thank you for posting!
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> Do you mean "chaga" the mushroom? Yes, because it only grows on birch trees, but harvesting the mushroom can damage the trees. That was sort of the point. :-)
Ah. So, who on Iceland cultivates chaga mushrooms? What ongoing efforts might they have that overlap with the birch foresters? (connecting the dots)
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The farm lobby isn't standing in the way of terraforming Mars.
Well maybe by the time we get there it will. The thing about mars is that we can't just export the parts of society we like and leave out the rest. When humans colonize a new 'utopia', we tend to bring all the normal human problems with us too.
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It appears a simple solution of allowing hunting to occur would solve the problem. Why is hunting restricted?
I don't know what the case is in NE US, but in my town in British Columbia, the deer population is out of control in the metropolitan area, and every time a cull is mentioned, animal rights activists put a stop to it through loud and effective lobbying. It's quite irritating.
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…
If they legalized sheep hunting, farmers would build fences.
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…
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The etymology of the word (think deserted island) would imply it has more to do with the lack of life than the reason for a lack of life.
Etymology of desert: from Latin desertus, from desero (“abandon”) From dē- (“away, from”) + serō (“I bind, join”). From Proto-Italic sizō, from Proto-Indo-European si-sh₁-, the reduplicated present of *seh₁- (“to sow”). https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/desert#Etymology_3 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/desero#Latin https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sero#Latin
In noun form I've heard of things like food deserts to describe urban area without grocery or restaurants. Also places like Antartica are sometimes described as deserts. Also ocean deserts to describe areas without fish.
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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.
It appears a simple solution of allowing hunting to occur would solve the problem. Why is hunting restricted?
If you're not allowing hunting on your property, it would also be good (albeit expensive) to fence it, so deer cannot easily move through, to reduce their available forage.
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I don't know what the case is in NE US, but in my town in British Columbia, the deer population is out of control in the metropolitan area, and every time a cull is mentioned, animal rights activists put a stop to it through loud and effective lobbying. It's quite irritating.
I suppose wolves wouldn't be popular in a suburban environment either.