81–90 of 139 posts
To replicate a forest means to replicate the entire mechanics and settings that forests thrive in, not just replicating the presence of plants/trees alone.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"i'm no ecologist or scientist, but i've read that grasslands can hold water too. just google "do grasslands store water"" Well, I am also not a formal educated ecologist, but I am friends with some (including regular heated discussions) and have had a strong interest in the subject since years. So yes, grasslands do hold water. But afaik it is a really tiny amount compared to trees. Also just compare how deep the ro…
i agree that humans have changed a lot. and i also agree that you should look at the current data. you should also look at the failures of reforesting areas that weren't historically forests. what is the data of reforestation failure vs success in those areas? if you're interested in this topic, i've learned a lot from the authors of this paper (paper is also good and relevant to our discussion and points to a lot of…
Definitely.
I am also interested in the linked paper, but for some reasons it fails to download for me.
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>I have plenty of incentive to keep the trees in my own yard from dying, yet I lack the expertise. So they die. I need an arborist. I don't mean to be rude, but how brown is your green thumb? I get killing house plants, but killing a tree growing outdoors seems like something you'd actively have to do. The most common "mistake" I've seen are lack of care with lawn equipment like weed whackers. Are they just not being…
Underwatering a recent transplant is pretty common. I'll just hold a hose on the area until I get bored.
=) I really wish I could make a lot of my decisions based on this alone.
If you have a short attention span, that's not good.
Yet, at the same time, if you zone out for an hour and doing this daily, that's not good but in an opposite manner.
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>I have plenty of incentive to keep the trees in my own yard from dying, yet I lack the expertise. So they die. I need an arborist. I don't mean to be rude, but how brown is your green thumb? I get killing house plants, but killing a tree growing outdoors seems like something you'd actively have to do. The most common "mistake" I've seen are lack of care with lawn equipment like weed whackers. Are they just not being…
I'm no expert gardener but I can't help but wonder if it could be animals/pests eating the leaves before the tree is tall enough? Or gnawing all the bark, etc. Also trees might not be a good match for the soil, there's clay the roots can't penetrate, etc.
However, I have pecan/oak trees in my area. Every spring, I get free saplings from the nuts that actually germinated and sprouted in a lot of my pots that I use for my container garden. If I were to actually try to get one of these nuts to grow, it would never take. Yet every spring, Mother Nature gives me freebies that I feel guilty about plucking when it comes time to prep for the next round of veggies instead. I have an almost perfect spot to let another tree grow to full size. If it weren't for the remaining stump from where the shitty developer planted Bradford Pears, I'd transplant some of the Live Oaks saplings in their place.
> Not surprisingly, those locals often reacted badly. For example, in northern Malawi, they broke fences and burned a growing forest to get back the common grazing land on which the trees had been planted. In two Nigerian projects, villagers cut all the planted non-fruit trees for firewood, while protecting those that bore fruit. Recommended reading: "Seeing Like A State" by James Scott. The first section on Scientif…
The problem is with the incentives. We reward organizations for planting trees when we should be rewarding them for growing trees. Anecdotally, paper mills don't seem to have a problem successfully growing monocrop forests on their own properties because they actually have a reason to care about the success of replanting their own land.
I have plenty of incentive to keep the trees in my own yard from dying, yet I lack the expertise. So they die. I need an arborist. Unfortunately the arborists in my town are incentivized to get me to pay their company to cut my trees down and replace them with new ones every 10-15 years or so. We really just need more foresters, with a broader mission that extends beyond simply government-owned park land, who can hel…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
i agree that humans have changed a lot. and i also agree that you should look at the current data. you should also look at the failures of reforesting areas that weren't historically forests. what is the data of reforestation failure vs success in those areas? if you're interested in this topic, i've learned a lot from the authors of this paper (paper is also good and relevant to our discussion and points to a lot of…
"it's a fascinating topic! appeals to my social science and nature interests" Definitely. I am also interested in the linked paper, but for some reasons it fails to download for me.
I think trees need a forest. The best place for a tree to grow is under a mature tree of its own species. But even trees of different species help prevent damage to each other from winds and storms. Perhaps instead of trying to plant a new forest, we should be jealously conserving and expanding what forest remains. Harvesting timber by clear-cutting should be illegal, and while the logging industry has adjusted somewhat to conservation, wealthy landowners still do it all the time.
> Not surprisingly, those locals often reacted badly. For example, in northern Malawi, they broke fences and burned a growing forest to get back the common grazing land on which the trees had been planted. In two Nigerian projects, villagers cut all the planted non-fruit trees for firewood, while protecting those that bore fruit. Recommended reading: "Seeing Like A State" by James Scott. The first section on Scientif…
It's possible that I learned the idea of forest death from it rather than a college class.[1] The German word for it is waldsterben and there seem to be few English language resources about it.[3]
My recollection is that monoculture forests promote forest death. Diversity is critical to a thriving forest.
[1] Or both. I was an Environmental Resource Management major.