Plans to plant billions of trees threatened by undersupply of seedlings

https://www.uvm.edu/news/story/plans-plant-billions-trees-threatened-massive-undersupply-seedlings

by geox • 3 years ago

102 84 3 years ago

This is an interesting problem area, I recently talked with Mast about it - they started as Droneseed, and soon realized the whole seed-seedling-planting-managing process (not to mention funding) was pretty busted.

https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/17/from-root-to-crown-mast-re...

It's also really data-intensive, or it is if you want it to be effective. There's a lot of forestry and climate science that goes into whether a planting effort will be successful, not to mention a hell of a lot of back-breaking labor. But hopefully this sector will get the attention it needs now that people are seeing how badly it's been neglected in recent decades.

mistrial9• 3 years ago

quick - bio-engineered seedlings must be the answer!

The article does ask important questions, but also repeatedly mentions "investment" and "investors". People, the forests do not grow money. "Thirty-five million dollars" is a fortune in the forest, yet our living world is dying for lack of simple things, and death by a thousand cuts. How can one billion dollars be spent on a single recreation facility[0], and no money for forestry? Because the system is not reflecting real value, it reflects self-referential money value.

Beware of investors. These science people are lining up for what? -- [0] New Athletics stadium in Las Vegas to reportedly cost ...

Sportsnaut https://sportsnaut.com › las-vegas-athletics-stadium-cost May 27, 2023 — The total stadium cost is estimated at $1.5 billion, for a new ballpark that will have a retractable roof and seat 30,000 people.

asdff• 3 years ago

Even better would be a drone that can irrigate, limb a tree, spread compost, and use directed energy on unhelpful pests while ignoring beneficial insects. We have the technology today to build a drone that can do all of these things, there's just no market for it so it doesn't exist or else it would already.

SoftTalker• 3 years ago

Even in the best of circumstances, a tree takes years if not decades to mature. That isn't a timeline that many investors are attracted to.

hosh14• 3 years ago

I’m glad planting trees is happening. And yet, I think the execution will not be that great.

In my neighborhood park, there were a bunch of new trees planted this year. And yet, it looked like someone just sprinkled trees without a care about the specific species, sun, and water.

There were places that were great ideas for planting — west sides of pathways to help block the blazing afternoon Phoenix sun.

And yet, there places they planted too close to existing trees, where they won’t even get sun (plants compete for sunlight, not root space).

They didn’t bother to dig basins or to mulch (both harvests water, helps retain moisture, and feed the trees).

The species are not appropriate for the lower Sonoron, but it is what people expect for “trees” in the cultural idea of “parks”. There were no concept of designing for canopy layers (at least, overstory vs understory), much less adding shrubs or flowers to help round out the ecosystem. (“Diversity” is not really about different species of trees, but rather, the ecological function of each plant at the different canopy layers, working together to form a stronger, more resilient ecosystem).

Instead, they got their planting numbers up and everyone can pat themselves on the back for Doing Something.

nickserv3• 3 years ago

This won't get resolved until collectively we move from "planted X millions of trees" to "X millions of trees have flourished for 5/10/15 years".

The problem of course is that it's a) much more difficult and expensive to keep track of survival rates, and b) provides no immediate green-washing credentials (politicians, corps, looking at you).

Thankfully there are some NGOs that are doing it right, proper analysis of the site, selection of diverse species, and yearly visits to measure survival rates.

It's just that presently, these are the minority.

hosh14• 3 years ago

Have you ever heard of Scientific Forestry? It was something documented in James C Scott's Seeing Like a State. Here's a long-form essay summerizing the ideas in the book: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/07/26/a-big-little-idea-call...

These forests were planted during the late colonial era by the French and German. The great naval powers at the time were running out of trees tall and straight enough to make masts. They cut down natural old-growth forests, and planted trees in a way that makes it easier to count. They grew better, and called it a success. However, that first generation grew well because they used up the nutrients banked by the natural forest. The subsequent generations did not grow as well.

So over the centuries or so of trying this, they tried things like, adding in insects, and measuring their rate of growth. But it all stems trying to force a complex system into something that is legible, but the results are its own folly.[1]

Frankly, our climate and global ecosystem is a complex, adaptive system [2][3][4], and to think that we can reduce solutions based on a single metric, such as atmospheric CO2 numbers, is a disaster in the making from our collective hubris.

[1] https://www.science.org/content/article/germany-s-trees-are-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin_framework#Complex

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_adaptive_system

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia_hypothesis

antisthenes• 3 years ago

There were places that were great ideas for planting — west sides of pathways to help block the blazing afternoon Phoenix sun.

It's interesting that you miss the forest for the trees here.

There really are no trees that are "great" for where you live, because without human intervention like what you described, there really are no trees that sustain themselves in the Lower Sonoran area. It is essentially a desert.

So the long term solution is really just slowly depopulating the Phoenix area or having landscapes that are appropriate for a desert, and planting trees where water isn't so scarce as to be unsustainable without human babysitting.

And yet, there places they planted too close to existing trees, where they won’t even get sun (plants compete for sunlight, not root space)

Competing for sun isn't really a thing in a desert, because canopies in that landscape are a liability rather than an advantage. They contribute to water loss, which is extremely scarce.

If anything, having partial shade is good protection for young trees, which are more susceptible to variations in drought and heat.

hosh14• 3 years ago

There really are no trees that are "great" for where you live, because without human intervention like what you described, there really are no trees that sustain themselves in the Lower Sonoran area. It is essentially a desert.

The Lower Sonoron us actually a steppe biome. There are plenty of native trees and shrubs that thrive all on its own with the given rainfall. People see "desert" and picture wastelands like the Sahara or the Gobi. Many people who never been to the area are surprised at how lush both the lower and upper Sonoran are.

As far as human intervention goes, there is a nuance here: there is a big difference between acting upon the world as apart from the ecosystem, and acting within the world as part of the ecosystem.

My neighbor's Pakistani white mulberry is very well suited for growing here in the Sonoron, with some help. Jujube trees (one of the buckthorne family) is very well suited here. So are moringas, with people growing dense, backyard moringa groves here in Phoenix.

There are people who figured out how to grow the classic fruit-bearing trees here. Using dwarf varieties, careful pruning, use of deep mulch basins, chop-and-drop, companion planting, they can do very well here without having to rely on flood irrigation.

Competing for sun isn't really a thing in a desert, because canopies in that landscape are a liability rather than an advantage. They contribute to water loss, which is extremely scarce.

In the park environment I am talking about, despite it being in the Sonoran, it is actually designed like a park you would see in temperate biomes. That means the overstory trees there are large ponderosa pines (which has high water requirements for the area, so they flood irrigate the park during the summer). The tree I was talking about in that park s going to be starved for sunlight is surrounded by the shadows of several of the overstory trees

If anything, having partial shade is good protection for young trees, which are more susceptible to variations in drought and heat.

That's partially correct. There are other ways to work with this. For example, the people who sold my black mission fig to me told me that it doesn't shade itself. Well, it does shade itself, as long as you don't trim the lower branches that forces you to then put the white reflective paint on its trunks.

In the Sonoran, the mesquites and the ironwood act as nursery trees, providing partial shade to support a variety of plants. The Suguoro cactus, for example, requires a nursery tree to help it along when it is young. Then it kills off the nursery tree when it gets mature enough. Ironwood, despite growing extremely slowly, because it acts as a nursery tree for a variety of plants, is a keystone species.

AlotOfReading3• 3 years ago

There are still trees native to the Sonoran though? Palo Verde, desert ironwood, acacia, palms, and the not strictly native but highly adapted mesquite. You'll see these trees planted all over the metro and if you visit someplace like Granite Reef, you'll find entire natural groves of them creating dense shade even in the hottest months. The key to this is obviously water, but far less than you'd need for stands of other tree species (and it can be deeper).

candiddevmike• 3 years ago

Just leave areas alone and let nature do its thing.

Retric• 3 years ago

Across hundreds of years this is largely pointless, but people aren’t worried about that kind of timescale. In the short term planting trees in areas they can thrive can make a signifiant short term impact.

smt88• 3 years ago

There are entire countries that were deforested, and it's essentially impossible for nature to repopulate those forests.

Human intervention destroyed the ecosystem and there is immediate and ongoing harm to that destruction. It's idiotic to suddenly decide to "let nature do it's thing" now when billions of people are threatened by climate change.

abeppu2• 3 years ago

That only makes sense if you're willing to commit to it. "Leave areas alone and let nature do its thing" can't just mean "don't run deliberate tree-planting efforts with short-sighted planing". Actually leaving stuff alone and letting nature work would involve us retreating from the area, not developing the land, not spraying insecticides and herbicides, not introducing invasive species, not polluting the ground water, not putting extra particulates into the air, _certainly_ not continuing to pump carbon into the atmosphere.

So the "just" part of" just leave areas alone, is asking quite a lot. That's not to say it's wrong ... but it's more ambitious than e.g. net-zero goals. In some sense, it's exactly 2x as ambitious as E. O. Wilson's "Half-Earth" proposal.

CuriouslyC• 3 years ago

The cheapest effective solution, but sadly perhaps not fast enough, and definitely not optimal if you're trying to create rather than just preserve habitats.

The way things are going we're going to need to learn how to construct artificial reefs to survive as a species, and quite possibly also artificial game habitats. Planting trees is just one part of that.

hosh14• 3 years ago

There is a big difference between human intervention that sets us apart from the ecosystem (in which we act upon the ecosystem) and human intervention where we work as a participant of the ecosystem (in which we participate within the ecosystem). We can and should use technology, but it is a different paradigm and a different way of seeing.

Some of the things the permaculture folks have been quietly doing for over 50 years have yielded some impressive results. They go far beyond what you'd hear about in the mainstream, and we're only seeing some of it trickle in (such as the ideas of restorative and regenerative agriculture or agroforestry).

devindotcom2• 3 years ago

it doesn't really work that way, unfortunately invasives can take root and replace entire forests before native plants can take root. it's a huge problem in post-wildfire areas.

wddkcs2• 3 years ago

If you are concerned, get involved. It's likely trivially easy for you to get face to face with the person responsible for the plantings, and it's unlikely anything will change in your backyard unless you or another concerned citizen does something.

nickserv3• 3 years ago

It's really not "trivially easy" to get in contact when the operation is run by a government or a corporation (even less).

At best they "hear you" and "will take it into account", then keep on doing what was planned. At worst they treat you like an idiot or a lunatic. And it's not like the company hired to do the work is going to listen to some random person telling them how to do their job.

Only thing I've found works is volunteering for orgs that actually do things right, if you can find one.

That or just planting yourself at 2 in the morning ;-)

vidanay• 3 years ago

All the trees in my mother-in-laws senior housing development died after five years because the original landscaper didn't remove any of the steel wire cages around the root balls.

brnt• 3 years ago

Around these parts, true landscapers appear to be a thing of the past, and landscapers are increasingly people coming over from construction, and /construct/ the garden: pour concrete under tiled surface, build wall, stone beams around border, fill with gravel. No biology appears to be entering the equation anymore.

Scoundreller• 3 years ago

They didn’t bother to dig basins

I thought you weren’t supposed to do this because the roots then grow in circles within the soft soil and eventually girdle/“suffocate” themselves.

But maybe I’m misunderstanding what is meant by “basin”.

hosh14• 3 years ago

Ah! Great question! Let's talk roots.

Trees have different kinds of roots, such as lateral roots and tap roots. What they do depends upon the species, their growth patterns, and how those patterns adapt to their native environment.

Many trees will send out some lateral roots, and depending upon the species, they can be invasive. In the Sonoron, the mesquite is very aggressive about both lateral roots (far exceeding the drip line of the trees) and deep tap root (some mesquites have been discovered with tap roogs going 250 ft in the ground). They also have the added advantage of being a nitrogen fixer.

Fig roots are invasive, though primarily lateral, shallow roots. Jujube (and all buckthornes) are invasive, sending roots that can then grow and pop up as a whole other tree! Mulberries, particularly the Pakistan varieties, also have vigorous, water-seeking roots.

Bamboo are not trees. They are grasses, and grow like grasses with rhizomes. Once established, at around year 5, you would have a running bamboo grove pop up out of nowhere (because they can grow 1 foot a day until they reach their maximum height).

As far as basins, a basin is any depression in the landscape where rainwater can pool. It can be shallow, or deep. Many of the greenways here in Phoenix are large basins that can collect and help absorb our monsoon rains.

What you are talking about with girdling happens with hardwood trees, and not with "basins". When planting a bareroot hardwood tree, you should not plant it in a way so that the root crown goes too much below the ground level. The roots need to be unravelled so that they can grow outward instead of forced back on its self. For hardwoods, they can and do strangle themselves if their roots are allowed to girdle. Contrast that to a fig, whose roots will go whichever way and it will be fine.

Knowing that, you can still create a basin for such trees. You would dig the basin as a ring much further away from the hardwood, possibly as a shallow basin.

liveoneggs• 3 years ago

All landscapers plant trees too close to things because they expect to get re-hired every few years to replace them.

m463• 3 years ago

A neighbor wanted to seed a hill, but some other folks had done it, but they got the wrong mix.

So he checked a lot of places until he found a guy who knew all the native species and hydroseeded his hill. Basically water shot up onto the hill, mixed with seeds and more. stuff just took hold and it worked out.

hosh14• 3 years ago

That's what guerrilla gardners do with their seedbombs do as well. (Not necessarily the hydroseeding, but rather, a selection of native species).

hinkley2• 3 years ago

I know a guy who can rant at length about wetland restoration. Wetland plants have several waves of succession. If you plant A and B at the same time, B never establishes because A takes over. If you plant A and C at the same time, C dies because it needs A to be mature in order to live. Because restorations are an 'event' with an allocated budget, we make a big show of showing up and planting A,B&C all at the same time, when what we really need to do is plant B year one, A year three, and C year five.

Edit: I kinda suspect the correct solution here is to have 3 separate funding sources and to hit each up in turn, so they all get their event.

eimrine• 3 years ago

Haven't read the article but who plants trees like that? If you want to grow a tree, you must go to forest, dug out the baby tree which is not going to survive, like when you see a big number of instances of the tree in relatively small area, then you go in wiser place and dug the baby tree in. Here is how I do it.

agilob• 3 years ago

I read somewhere that birds and squirrels are better at planting trees because they do it at random, their forests grow faster, are more diverse, provide better shelter and are more resistant to fires and bugs.

Can't find the study or news anymore. Anyone help? Could they plant a border of tress for squirrels and birds, so they would do the rest of the job and fill the square?

burnished• 3 years ago

God, I hope this is a genius plan. Something about bird and squirrel labor for reforestation pleases me

jnmandal• 3 years ago

It's true, but also takes way too long for the mission at hand. Trees already grow slowly, and squirrels/birds were going to eat a lot of the seeds which -- as we can see here -- is counter to incentive when there is a dearth of seed. This is not even to mention the ungulates, which will eat most of the young trees. Simply put, a managed plantation will produce better outcomes than "hands-off" rewilding or even a hybrid model. It is better still if the wildlife are managed or contained. Healthy forests have predators to provide pressure on herbivore populations; predators were often intentionally removed in many of the places we are now considering for afforestation.

But that said, theoretically: yes, absolutely, a tree planted as a seed by a squirrel, if it survived to old-age, will likely have grown faster and healthier than the equivalent nursery product tree, which would have endured lots of handling and some shocks at a young age.

If I were to guess at the type of innovation we might see in this space, I would say GMO trees that grow at enhanced speed is more in the vein of what might be deployed. If land were more readily available, like in boreal regions, then you might see some sort of innovation in the form of novel rewilding techniques, like you are suggesting.

wizofaus6• 3 years ago

Wouldn't the big advantage of GMO trees be ones that grow in non-boreal regions? But I gather genetic engineering for most tree species is limited by the slow reproductive cycle (oak trees take 40 years to produce acorns, and they're not even close to the slowest to reach maturity).

peteradio• 3 years ago

I'd be willing to bet the loss from ungulates/rabbits is worse than the squirrels/birds. If we had a way to fence off the individual young trees it would be ideal. I've had to do this for my own young oaks as they will get eaten down to the ground if not fenced.

justincormack• 3 years ago

eg see https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/16/half-the... about Jays planting oaks in UK.

1letterunixname2• 3 years ago

This is as absurd as it is futile because of forest fires, decay, and math.

"TeamTrees vs REALITY!!" https://youtu.be/gqht2bIQXIY

nverno• 3 years ago

Trees have a big impact on local climate. The carbon sequestering part might be futile (but forests play other roles in climate change, like promoting cloud cover which is good for cooling), but reforesting is worth doing for a million reasons- plus everyone likes trees.

1letterunixname2• 3 years ago

1. Show me the evidence.

2. "Local". You're not going to plant a million trees in Manhattan or almost anywhere where people already are.

jjk166• 3 years ago

I feel like the important part of these tree-planting initiatives is setting aside land for trees to grow. If you leave a plot of land alone, climate-appropriate plants will grow soon enough. You might have to do more in special scenarios like reversing desertification, but that's not generally the point o these initiatives, and the number of trees needed for that is much less.

danbruc2• 3 years ago

A trillion trees by 2030, each fixating 30 kg of CO₂ per year [1], with a global CO₂ emission of about 40 trillion kg by 2030 - roughly linearly extrapolated from [2] - that would capture about 75 % of global emissions, much more than I would have guessed. A billion trees on the other hand are just 0.075 % of global or 0.6 % of US emissions [3]. Also according to [1] a billion trees will need 20,000 km², a trillion 20,000,000 km², that are 0.2 % and 200 % of the US land area. And a trillion trees till the end of 2030, that are 369 million trees per day every day, that seems quite ambitious. The numbers used are the first thing a search turned up, I hope they are at least good enough for the orders of magnitude.

[1] https://www.encon.eu/en/calculation-co2-offsetting-trees

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/276629/global-co2-emissi...

[3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/183943/us-carbon-dioxide...

abeppu2• 3 years ago

I think the 30kg/tree varies widely both by species and conditions, and critically given the timeline you've mentioned (by 2030) by _maturity_. E.g. this source estimates 10kg/year for the first 20 years, but if much of that is after year 6-7, even if we could plant a trillion trees by 2030, they would not be close to the levels of carbon fixation you're mentioning.

It's ambitious, but _even if we succeed_, it won't be impactful in the time horizon you're discussing. In 2030 we may have a large proportion of 1-3 year old tiny saplings that may each weigh only a few kg (wet).

(update: forgot the link for source mentioned) https://onetreeplanted.org/blogs/stories/how-much-co2-does-t...

danbruc2• 3 years ago

I intentionally picked the favorable numbers as I was expecting even with those it would turn out to be a pretty futile endeavor, even ignoring things like forest fires. And it pretty much is, at least with a billion trees. And for a trillion trees I can not see how this could realistically happen. I would have to plant a tree every three weeks for the next seven and a half years, 125 trees in total, that sounds not too impossible. But once you consider that everyone in your city will have to the same - and every other human on earth - I don't think it would be too long before I would no longer be able to find a spot for the next tree where it interferes with nothing and can grow for a couple of decades.

smileysteve• 3 years ago

Why are we not considering clumping bamboo or/andor hemp; Both of which take root easier, and grow 3x-5x faster, require less water.

darth_avocado• 3 years ago

Planting trees is in the same category of solutions as recycling. In theory you could plant a quadrillion trees, but realistically it won’t happen and instead the initiative will be used as a way to increase our consumption and destruction of the planet even more.

Reduce, reuse and recycle was the original term. Everyone over indexed on recycling and completely abandoned the first two. (Instead we went the other way and started individually wrapping bananas in plastic)

q845712• 3 years ago

In all fairness it's really hard to make money off of "reduce" and "reuse," and we've decided to use money as the system for allocating all of our resources.

wizofaus6• 3 years ago

Apparently it's estimated there's about 3 trillion trees on earth currently - I'm assuming it historically may have been closer to 4 or even 5 before we gleefully started chopping them all down. But it's hard to imagine a trillion extra trees being compatible with 10 billion humans wanting to have land to produce food with, unless we can genetically engineer trees capable of growing in parts of world humans tend to avoid.

ChatGTP• 3 years ago

So we don’t bother?

voisin2• 3 years ago

What percentage of newly planted trees survive? I suspect it is low double-digits without serious watering and good site preparation, which isn’t the case for any of the tree planting at scale I’ve seen in Canadian sites.

digitalsushi• 3 years ago

One time a farmer-turned-software guy told me a wild claim once that Earth could carry about a billion humans tops, until someone figured out how to suck nitrogen from the air and make ammonia.

I wonder if we're fertilizing all these new trees we wanna plant with air manure.

bluGill4• 3 years ago

It doesn't have to be trees. Grass can also take CO2 out of the air. Then you burn it off next spring, which leaves behind a layer of sequestered charcoal. Keep doing this for decades and you will have removed a lot of CO2 - all in natural prairie fashion.

If you live in the typical single family house you can make a small difference by mowing your law as little as you can get by with (use an electric power). You can also try to mow paths to make it look like the tall grass is intentional as an end run around demands you mow. Let the wild flower grow (but you do have to to watch for and remove invasive plants that will grow and take over destroying the effect you are trying to do). I don't know how to convert your suburban grass to charcoal in a way that won't get the neighbors after you for pollution though.

forinti• 3 years ago

Surely the smoke would be an issue if you did this over a significant area, no?

bluGill4• 3 years ago

Right, but it is also what nature has been doing for millennia

morninglight• 3 years ago

We need a program for training people to rake leaves.

thinkingemote• 3 years ago

Trees almost everywhere will create more trees if left to themselves. One oak tree produces lots of acorns.

The problem is mankind. We like to interfere. In a way many tree planting schemes are an indicator of this interference (hubris?). We just need to let nature do its thing in most places.

There are of course some places that need help and people can help here (watering, stopping logging, species diversity, grazing animal protection etc) but generally nature will do it for us if we let it.

Small scale planting schemes are great for community and education too.

wizofaus6• 3 years ago

One oak tree produces lots of acorns.

But takes 40+ years to do so...

knewter• 3 years ago

Growing up there was an ad on the radio each year around arbor day. A grizzled old man's voice says "when I was growing up, my dad and I would go to the forest each year on arbor day to plant some trees." It encouraged the same behaviour.

A forest is kind of by definition at capacity for how many trees will grow there. Planting a tree elsewhere means it will not suffer from the canopy blocking all it's light.

So many saplings senselessly murdered by well-meaning wordcels.

jshprentz• 3 years ago

The final quote, "... but often, on the ground, it’s one old farmer walking around to collect acorns. ..." reminded me of the the book The Man Who Planted Trees [1] in which a shepard single-handedly reforests a desolate valley by planting acorns and other seedlings.

The book inspired an animated film of the same name [2], which won an Academy Award in 1988. I remember seeing this at an animated film festival about 35 years ago in the Biograph Theater in Washington, DC. Today I rewatched it on YouTube [3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Planted_Trees

[2] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093488/

[3] https://youtu.be/epTqUnKsuUY

PlunderBunny• 3 years ago

Interesting fact: The government agency responsible for the national roads in New Zealand (i.e. big roads that aren't the responsibility of the local government) is the largest purchaser of native tree seedlings in New Zealand (I can't find a source for this online, but I am reliably informed it's true).

I've seen a lot of motorway berms that were previously grass, converted to native plants. This not only captures carbon, but reduces carbon emissions by taking away the need to mow the grass, and it doesn't require 'new' land.

g3ger1ub• 3 years ago

I'm glad this is happening because there is a lot of desertification going on with a lot of establishments globaly

Plans to plant billions of trees threatened by undersupply of seedlings

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