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Phantom forests: Ambitious tree planting projects are failing

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Re: Phantom forests: Ambitious tree planting projects are failing

#91

Post by hutzlibu »

PicassoCTs wrote: post #86
theptip wrote: post #46

> 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…

Thats the problem with all these projects though, they are situation brittle, depending on a situation not changing for the worse and a constant economic drip keeping them alive. The actual solution would be to saturate humans need for firewood and material - by drone planting the only plant that could keep up, survive and thrive, with it - Variations of genetically modified Bamboo.The past is gone, it cant be restor…

"The actual solution would be to saturate humans need for firewood and material - by drone planting the only plant that could keep up, survive and thrive, with it - Variations of genetically modified Bamboo"

Bamboo needs lots of water, and I am unaware of a modified version that does not, so is not really suitable in many areas. How about low tech solar cookers instead?

Re: Phantom forests: Ambitious tree planting projects are failing

#92

Post by JoeAltmaier »

Carbon credits from tree planting? Similar to the famous bounties on rats in old France. Rat plantations made a few rich. Similarly, institutions can claim credit for planting 'forests' that are pointless and failures.

Sure planting trees is generally a low-yield operations, with <50% survival rate typical. But these referenced projects were abysmally low, egregiously low, around a percent or two. Low enough to see that no honest effort was made.

Re: Phantom forests: Ambitious tree planting projects are failing

#93

Post by MichaelZuo »

theptip wrote: post #46

> 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 problems start when each empowered locality starts demanding exemptions to laws that must be enforced consistently to be credible, or even viable.

It's a very difficult problem to resolve as coordination problems get exponentially costly as the number of parties grow.

In organizational terms, once there's two or more layers of middle management, delegating decision making to frontline managers create wicked problems.

Re: Phantom forests: Ambitious tree planting projects are failing

#95

Post by luhn »

gopher_space wrote: post #69
dylan604 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Some great advice that I got: Buy a five gallon bucket, drill an 1/8" hole in the side. That way the water can soak into the ground without having to stand there with a hose for five minutes. Plus you can measure how much water you're giving the tree—I was told one bucket twice a week for the first year, but I'm sure YMMV depending on the tree and your climate.

Re: Phantom forests: Ambitious tree planting projects are failing

#97

Post by pmayrgundter »

hinkley wrote: post #74
pmayrgundter wrote: post #72

Great comments about monoculture and poor incentives. Natural forests have a complexity that doesn't seem worthwhile to brute-force by massive tree planting. There's an obvious spatial complexity for different plant phyla patterns (see a bunch of links below).. a kind of blending between meadows to underbrush to trees, mosses and lichen in rocky areas, mangroves holding onto rivers. And there's plenty of fungus and a…

I just finished Suzanne Simard's book, which if you ignore the timelines (early 90's) of when she thought about these things, reads like your kid discovering a love of your favorite hobby and breathlessly explaining each new discovery as they happen. The new idea I encountered in the book was one of deep rooted trees hydrating the soil by reaching into the water table and pulling it up to the surface. Particularly at…

I love her work :) The co2 isotope-based tracing is genius.

Also reminds me of the nutrient chain in PacNW connects the salmon spawn to becoming tree fertilizer via the bear fishing and discarding partly eaten carcases; they just eat the fatty skin. Deep ecology.

Re: Phantom forests: Ambitious tree planting projects are failing

#98

Post by fnordpiglet »

Maybe the gauge of success isn’t 100% but much lower - a 15% success rate doesn’t seem terrible, as was quoted for several projects. Maybe we better custodianship you can make that better, but I’ve seen quotes elsewhere that even with the most aggressive stewardship up to 70% of planted trees in afforestation efforts die. Maybe carpet bombing with seedlings and being happy with the residual survival is the game and we should be happy? Careful stewardship may not be scaleable, but mass planting is. That 15% delta might be dwarfed by the scale of effort possible.

Re: Phantom forests: Ambitious tree planting projects are failing

#99

Post by robocat »

sitkack wrote: post #71
kokanee wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some would argue that where conditions for trees aren't suitable, the solution is to build a forest there. Forests themselves are the best terraforming tool, if you can get them started by supplying the necessary nutrients, energy, and water. I don't know how feasible it is, but using trees to transform parched landscapes is the mission of a company I interviewed at a while back called Terraformation, founded by the…

To add reference to the claim that, "forests themselves are the best terraforming tool", one can take the example of Ascension Island. With the introduction of outside trees that formed an ecological foothold, they started cooling humid air and reinforcing the soil so that other plants and trees can flourish. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension_Island#Botany https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-11137903 O…

Looking at the satellite photos, a lot of the Island is still quite barren.

Strangely enough, the Google maps satellite imagery is almost useless. Use Apple maps instead. If not on an Apple device, you can access Apple maps via https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ascension+island (note: satellite imagery is not available this way on my iDevice).

Here is another BBC article, which I think is far more balanced and talks about the negative issues of the biological cost of the planting: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36076411

The last volcanic eruption was 1508 or so. I did a quick Google to find some information on how long takes it generally takes for vegetative regeneration after volcanic eruptions. Looks like it depends on type of eruption and rainfall: “Mount Kelud in East Java has erupted on a 15–37-years cycle for the past centuries [snip] Within 3 years of the eruption, stem diameters were 3–10 cm. [snip] being able to establish itself rapidly in the extreme conditions that prevail after a recent ash deposition event (given the short return period of eruptions), but by enriching the ash deposits with nitrogen, paves the way for grasses to take over, which in turn delay succession to other woody vegetation” (not sure if the landscape was purely volcanically virgin). Obviously it can also takes centuries in the example of Ascension. A study in Hawaii looked at the order that types of vegetation took hold: https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/science/5/chap8...

Re: Phantom forests: Ambitious tree planting projects are failing

#100

Post by dghlsakjg »

chaostheory wrote: post #60
ethagknight wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is great insight that I haven't considered. IN parts of the US you can plainly see miles of monoculture forests in all directions thriving (in an industrial sense) because they are actively managed. Look around Panama City, FL, (link below) for a good example. https://www.google.com/maps/@30.2640043,-85.4463662,3277m/da...

Isn’t most of the Western portion of the US comprised of monoculture forests due to the historical lack of rain compared to the Eastern half?

No.

The western half of the US has many monoculture forests where forestry companies manage them with thinning, herbicides and selective planting.

Natural forests in the west are diverse and contain many species of trees. They are different trees than you see in the east, and many of the coniferous species appear similar.

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