Replanting logged forests with diverse seedlings accelerates restoration

https://www.technologynetworks.com/applied-sciences/news/replanting-logged-forests-with-diverse-mixtures-of-seedlings-accelerates-restoration-378916

by myshpa • 3 years ago

378 143 3 years ago

technologynetworks.com

bluerooibos• 3 years ago

Who would have thought that replicating nature would yield the best results...

The Miyawaki method is probably relevant to this discussion - https://www.creatingtomorrowsforests.co.uk/blog/the-miyawaki...

nxobject• 3 years ago

Another text I really love as well that focuses on teaching "applied ecology" is "Garden Revolution" by Weaner and Christopher. Since I've never taken biology of any sort, it was a good primer on things like ecological succession (in temperate climates), parameters of plants that might completement each other, etc. The authors have worked on large-scale restoration and sustainable landscaping projects, and it shows.

swader9995• 3 years ago

The other way to do this is to leave seed trees on the block in addition to replanting with 3-4 other species. They do this in British Columbia now.

When a block is logged, cones from that block are taken to regrow seedlings to plant there. It doesn't work as well if you try to seed from different elevations or far away areas.

ccooffee• 3 years ago

Someone logged a 500 hectare plot in Borneo. They split this into 125 sections and planted 0, 1, 4, or 16 "tree species that are frequently targeted for logging". After 20 years, satellite imagery shows that the more tree species you planted, the more recovered the land appears to be.

I'm left wondering:

1. Why did they plant only tree species that are frequently targeted for logging? This makes the whole experiment very suspect. The linked article talks a lot about restoring forests, but why restrict the tree species to those that are profitable to log?

2. Is the satellite imagery actually representative of on-the-ground truth? A lot of logging land in western America gets replanted with logging-friendly trees in very regular grid patterns. These areas may look like forests from satellites (or to uninformed ground-level visitors), but the regrown tree farms do not behave like forests. The dense growth crowds out the ground-level plants, which in turn makes the entire tree farm a poor habitat for local fauna. If your goal is to grow more trees for lumber, tree farms are great. But I'm not sure the claims about "forest restoration" are honest/true here.

liotier• 3 years ago

Between clear-cut horror and ideal pristine old growth, there is a world of managed forests that fix carbon with an economically sustainable model. Not the best biodiversity but mixing sixteen species makes the initiative top tear already.

unglaublich• 3 years ago

And generally, these forests are subdivided in plots of different 'age'. Every year, they will log 1/20th of the forest or so. The wildlife might be able to move from an affected area to one of the bordering areas.

In fact, this model comes quite close to natural destruction of forests, where old trees would fall over, and wildfires would rage.

The only difference is that the process is not random, but nicely planned and managed to allow _humans_ instead of _wildfires and storms_ to reap the full-grown timber.

soperj• 3 years ago

1. Why did they plant only tree species that are frequently targeted for logging? This makes the whole experiment very suspect. The linked article talks a lot about restoring forests, but why restrict the tree species to those that are profitable to log?

Because the whole point of tree planting is forest management. That's why whenever there's a forest fire they spray it with glyphosate so that other trees don't grow, then they plant GMO trees that can live in glyphosate doused soil.

drone3• 3 years ago

Glyphosate is not soil active, so there are no "trees that can grow in glyphosate-doused soil."

The primary reason for broad herbicide treatment as part of site prep is to avoid low-value, or ecologically opportunist species that thrive in disturbed soil/land, and prevent either the target species from growing, or create an environment which lacks the diversity necessary for the region. For example, sweetgum, huisache, black locust, chinese tallow (as examples from specific regions in the US), will all take over and completely dominate a deforested section and prevent oaks, pines, etc. and appropriate forb for wildlife without consistent, ongoing burns.

FWIW, there are no "trees which are GMOd to live with glyphosate application" - you're thinking non-tree crops. Nearly every softwood and hardwood tree is susceptible to damage from Glyphosate.

mschuster91• 3 years ago

Why did they plant only tree species that are frequently targeted for logging? This makes the whole experiment very suspect. The linked article talks a lot about restoring forests, but why restrict the tree species to those that are profitable to log?

Because that is what private land owners will do, they'll want to plant primarily what they can sell. This research likely intended to reduce the immediate damage from logging.

kmeisthax• 3 years ago

Interestingly enough, this is also part of the reason for Canada's horrible wildfires a few months back: https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/16/murder-offsets/#pulped-an...

toast0• 3 years ago

Why did they plant only tree species that are frequently targeted for logging? This makes the whole experiment very suspect. The linked article talks a lot about restoring forests, but why restrict the tree species to those that are profitable to log?

Logging companies typically log a parcel and replant for logging again in the future. They might be convinced to do things differently, especially if the outcome is better for them, but it would be hard to convince them to plant trees that won't be commercially viable when they come back to log again.

If diversity is good for the environment and the loggers, that seems ideal. If diversity is good for the environment and about the same for the loggers, they might be convinced.

Not all the parcels will end up being relogged, but that decision is unlikely to be made at the time of replanting.

harywilke• 3 years ago

This is an aside. This [0] is what an attempt at balancing logging, locals, and forest conservation ~150 years ago looked like. The checkerboard effect [1] is pretty striking. This strategy ended up being a disaster for some animals, famously the Northern Spotted Owl.

[0] https://www.google.com/maps/@43.4146826,-123.52657,129879m/d... [1] https://osupress.oregonstate.edu/blog/checkerboard-effect [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_spotted_owl

llbeansandrice• 3 years ago

Why did they plant only tree species that are frequently targeted for logging?

Because the main purpose of replanting trees to is be able to harvest them again in the next few decades. Private land owners generally aren't interested in creating old-growth forests, they're trying to make money.

It's not exactly ideal, but ending up with more biodiversity is likely a good thing even if it will be logged again later.

If you want more old-growth forests there's going to have to be a _lot_ more subsidies to private owners to literally pay them to not log their land.

voisin4• 3 years ago

Private land owners generally aren't interested in creating old-growth forests, they're trying to make money.

In Canada the vast majority of logging is on crown land.

rootusrootus• 3 years ago

Private land owners generally aren't interested in creating old-growth forests, they're trying to make money.

To be clear, in the western US this is by design. Large swaths of private land are zoned for forest. Aside from a few niche instances of grandfathering, you cannot build on them. They're useful for recreation and logging, and that's all that's allowed.

The gov't wants them to be logged regularly. If they really wanted old growth forests they'd make it public land (it's not especially expensive land, either, right after a patch gets logged it's not uncommon for the owner to put it on the market fairly cheap).

adasdasdas• 3 years ago

Why do we want old growth forests over harvestable forests? Is there an ecological advantage

greenie_beans3• 3 years ago

1. Why did they plant only tree species that are frequently targeted for logging? This makes the whole experiment very suspect. The linked article talks a lot about restoring forests, but why restrict the tree species to those that are profitable to log?

Because forest management is for logging. They will log those trees once they mature to the best value when considering DBH, the market, and opportunity cost.

joshvm• 3 years ago

Re satellite. At Sentinel resolution (10-20m) not much, maybe enough to distinguish plantation from natural forest spectrally. At Planet (3m) and below you can start to see large individual trees.

It's very difficult to accurately measure biodiversity from space. Drone imagery might get you species visually but until we have widespread hyperspectral (see ESA CHIME) 12-13 bands is what most people work with.

thaumasiotes6• 3 years ago

the regrown tree farms do not behave like forests. The dense growth crowds out the ground-level plants

Crowding out ground-level plants is the entire point of being a tree; it's pretty normal for forests to have clear ground.

Here's what a redwood forest looks like: https://www.westwindvistas.com/Redwood%20Forest%20Floor.htm

rgrieselhuber• 3 years ago

Eventually people will figure out that monoculture was a horrible and anti-nature idea.

grlass• 3 years ago

The issues from the Great Green Wall [1] are worth looking at

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall_(China)

hasmanean• 3 years ago

I’ve heard monoculture forests are worse for forest fires too.

Having dead decaying logs on the forest floor probably helps because fungi are naturally fire resistant.

iamcasen• 3 years ago

How is this not a complete and obvious no-brainer? As advanced as our culture is in some ways, it is clearly quite idiotic in many other ways.

wredue• 3 years ago

It always helps having raw experimentation on your side.

jvm___2• 3 years ago

The Curiosity Daily podcast had a related topic this past week. There are plans to plant 1 billion (or 1 Trillion) trees at various levels of government (WEF is the 1Trillion number). So researchers went out to try to find saplings from local nurseries that could supply the diversity of trees that would be needed. They found that less than half the nurseries could supply saplings - and very few were 'climate change friendly' saplings, most were decorative or other non-climate-friendly trees.

“Plans to plant billions of trees threatened by massive undersupply of seedlings.” by Joshua Brown. 2023. https://www.uvm.edu/news/story/plans-plant-billions-trees-th...

“A lack of ecological diversity in forest nurseries limits the achievement of tree-planting objectives in response to global change.” by Peter W. Clark, et al. 2023. https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article-abstract...

“Trees Help Fight Climate Change.” Arbor Day Foundation. N.d. “Benefits of Planting Trees.” Tree Advisory Board. N.D. https://www.bgky.org/tree/benefits

mym1990• 3 years ago

Can you expand on the difference between climate change friendly and non climate change friendly trees, for the noobs like me?

jvm___2• 3 years ago

The money is in growing saplings of white-pine, the ones commercial re-planters will buy - because they grow fast and can be turned into toilet paper in 25(?) years. Growing saplings of local 'slow' growing, non-harvestable species doesn't make you $$$.

"In essence, forest nurseries tended to maintain a limited inventory of a select few species, electing to prioritize those valued for commercial timber production over species required for conservation, ecological restoration, or climate adaptation."

"Yet, in their 20-state survey, the team only found two tree nurseries that had inventory of red spruce, a species from which many millions of seedlings are needed to meet restoration goals. “Remarkably, only 800 red spruce seedlings were commercially available for purchase in 2022,” the team reports in their new Bioscience study, “—enough to reforest less than one hectare.”

developer93• 3 years ago

If a plant isn't native, the insects and animals that eat or use it aren't around, those that are can't use it, and it's of limited use to the ecosystem. Not to mention it's interactions with other plants.

destron• 3 years ago

... of course the nurseries don't have seedlings to plant one trillion trees. Growing seedlings of the appropriate species would have to be part of that effort.

prawn• 3 years ago

There are volunteer efforts in some places to spread the load in starting seedlings. Not sure how effective it would be though in contributing to an effort of that scale where you need commercial scale to make a dent.

hanniabu• 3 years ago

This seems pretty obvious, I'm amazed this is coming as a surprise

bradly• 3 years ago

It isn't mentioned in this article but one example of this is deforestation of the a Eastern White Pine. They quickly realized the problems deforestation at that scale and attempted to build pack the forests quickly by use a very similar, but much faster growing pine. Turns out that was a really bad idea.

sp332• 3 years ago

No one said it was a surprise. It's a demonstration.

erikhopf• 3 years ago

There are companies like Terraformation that have been doing this for a while. Beyond the biodiversity angle, seed banking seems to be very important to the long term success of regrowth projects.

greenie_beans3• 3 years ago

i invested in their republic.co fundraising: https://republic.com/terraformation

but then did more research, because i've been interested in forestry for a while and was geniunely curious and wanted to understand my investment more.

i pulled my investment once i learned that these sort of projects don't actually work. terraformation targets land in areas that aren't meant to be forests. also decided to pull it because i don't completely understand the space. (sure, "planting trees will solve climate change" seems easy enough and makes me feel good because "i'm planting trees!" but nah, not really, let's maybe rethink this...this is coming from somebody who spends a lot of time in the woods and finds trees to be an important part of my life.)

this person researches this space: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=DbjysqUAAAAJ&hl=en

this is one of the bigger studies: https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&h...

elsewhen• 3 years ago

In reading the paper, I don’t think that you can conclude that tree planting programs don’t work, just that the details matter.

atourgates• 3 years ago

I did a quick look to see if this only worked in tropical forests, or if this would be true in, say, Western North American forests.

I didn't really find an answer.

A study[1] in Virgina found that planting multiple varieties of trees was beneficial because it allowed the variety that was most suitable for that location to thrive, and survive problems that might affect other varieties.

A study[2] in Washington State tested a couple varities of common conifers planted in pairs, and found more conventional "trees are affected by competition" result.

This study[3] performed in the inter-mountain West found that some conifers _may_ benefit from being mixed with aspens, but didn't seem nearly as conclusive as the Borneo study.

If anyone can find a more conclusive study about temperate Western forests, I'd love to see it.

[1] https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/releases/tree-species-diversity-...

[2] https://cdnsciencepub.com/doi/10.1139/X09-040

[3] https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111...

myshpa7• 3 years ago

If anyone can find a more conclusive study about temperate Western forests, I'd love to see it.

I didn't. But there's no reason why it shouldn't work there.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/2167048/fore...

Forest study in China finds mix of trees can absorb twice as much carbon as areas with one species

More than 60 scientists from China, Switzerland and Germany were involved in the research, testing a hypothesis based on observations in the field.

“The study shows that forests are not all the same when it comes to climate protection – monocultures achieve not even half of the desired ecosystem service,” Schmid said. “The full level of mitigation of global warming can only be achieved with a mix of species. In addition, species-rich forests also contribute towards protecting the world’s threatened biodiversity.”

Such forests were also less vulnerable to disease and extreme weather events, which are becoming increasingly frequent as a result of climate change, Schmid said.

rolph• 3 years ago

there was a time when logging an area, and subsequent monospecific replanting had a name.

it was called a tree farm

there was a commercialized ignorance of what forest actually was.

RetroTechie2• 3 years ago

"Such forests were also less vulnerable to disease and extreme weather events, which are becoming increasingly frequent as a result of climate change, Schmid said."

That might well be an underestimated aspect. We don't know how climate will change locally, what pests will spread where, what species will turn out best adapted to future conditions, or what species turn out to be keystones in specific ecosystems. So we should strive for having as diverse a set of flora anywhere. Success factors are varied, complex & interconnected.

Climate changes so fast that past 'performance' of species in an area is of little value. Those trees are going to stand there 20, 50 or 100y from now. What will local climate be then? Take your guess / throw the dice.

swader9995• 3 years ago

BC can have three our four species in play on the coast, interior and east typically has pine and spruce. You could argue for balsam but that is crap wood and it grows back on its own typically. I don't know about tropical reforestation, but in Canada the notion that we are replanting with only mono species isn't true. They leave seed trees standing and source cones directly from the logged blocks. It's very well done and highly regulated. Blocks that don't grow back are replanted again until they do.

Canada replants 600 million trees annually, USA about 1 billion.

Trees grow so much faster than they did a decade ago. CO2 is to 'blame'. I help maintain ski runs at my favorite ski hill and it's ridiculous how much more work it is now. Alpine areas that never in history had trees are beginning to get overrun.

rcostin2k2• 3 years ago

They grow faster but weaker, with lower density (cf. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2018.07.045)

voisin4• 3 years ago

Roughly where are you in BC? I am in Cranbrook and haven’t seen the seed trees left standing in logged blocks but maybe I’ve missed them somehow.

Isn’t part of the issue that historically there would’ve been more deciduous trees that acted as natural fire breaks and now loggers only are allowed to replant coniferous?

nerpderp82• 3 years ago

The sub-alpine line is rising in elevation due to increased warming.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7696691/

comboy• 3 years ago

Forest is a complex ecosystem and based on some books [1][2] my understanding is that fungi plays a huge role in them. They provide a lot of things that trees need in exchange for what they need, they also create kind of a market which allows trees even from different species exchange their resources. Different trees have different strong sides and can make use of different conditions. Perhaps this, thanks to the huge forestweb underneath allows them to thrive.

Also, trees like to grow slow and solid. Older trees from the same specie will feed small tree hidden in their shadow and provide it necessary resources so that when some bigger tree falls and it can take it place, it can also grow faster. It's possible that when there's competition between species they grow faster because there's a fight for sunlight. The year's growth will be bigger and wood would be less dense (but it is sold by volume).

1. The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben

2. Entangled Life, Merlin Sheldrake

farnsworth• 3 years ago

I strongly recommend "The Hidden Life of Trees". I listened to the audiobook multiple times while hiking/cycling through the woods and it changed the way I will see trees forever.

hosh2• 3 years ago

There’s a more thoughtful way of designing this. In the permaculture world, these would be called “guilds”. Species are selected with an understanding of canopy layers (so that plants don’t compete for sunlight and can still fill in spaces at each canopy layer), and ecological function (such as, nitrogen fixer, dynamic accumulators, pollinator attractors, habitats, etc)

If you randomly mix up species in temperate forests that are all competing in the same canopy layer, I can see more competition. A study done where say, a mix of overstory, understory, and shrub (such as berries), would be more insightful.

voisin4• 3 years ago

I’d love to see a resource where someone could select their location and have example guilds like this provided. Every time I’ve looked it seemed like the only way to find out was to take a permaculture design course which is well beyond the limits of my interest.

pstuart• 3 years ago

That seems quite reasonable -- I'm guessing the more challenging part is finding economic consensus with the landholders.

hinkley4• 3 years ago

Suzanne Simard has a bunch of chemical analysis that says yes, and most of her testing was in the PNW and western Canada (BC and... Alberta?)

A lot of the other literature on the complex relationship of soils and trees (and trees and trees via soil life) were instigated by her observations.

She was trying to get NW foresters to stop bathing everything in herbicides before replanting clearcuts. They always struggled more than anticipated.

voisin4• 3 years ago

Related: https://stopthespraybc.com/

screye• 3 years ago

I can see benefits tied to wildfire R0 (in infectivity terms). A few fire resistant plants might play a role in decelerating the rate of wildfire spread and limit scope of damage.

darklycan51• 3 years ago

I don't understand why loggers clear entire sections of forests instead of leaving every hectare x amount of old "mother" trees

BengineeringELM2• 3 years ago

In general they do leave "seed trees " but they only need as few as 3 trees per acre to effect the spaces mix in the regrowth.

Those 3 trees aren't nessesary though. The Forrest floor is loaded with seeds that can survive longer than a decade waiting for the right time to germinate. In many cases the sunlight hitting the ground is the trigger they need, and in most cases a "clear cut" will be a 9 year old forest 10 years later.

karaterobot• 3 years ago

I'm not an expert, but I had thought that observing that monocultures created a weak forest ecosystem was one of the foundational concepts behind modern forestry—a centuries old discipline. This seems like an obvious corollary to that. I would have assumed it yesterday, before reading this article, and I assume most people would have thought the same. Again, I'm not an expert, so I'm likely missing something. And sometimes you just need a study to provide evidence for common sense.

kderbyma• 3 years ago

it's a blinding glimpse of the obvious

anon848736282• 3 years ago

Just one of those situations where science needs to get the ducks in a row and ensure incontrovertible proof.

Cthulhu_3• 3 years ago

Yeah, this is one of those "well duh" headlines, doesn't take a scientist to figure it out.

AnimalMuppet• 3 years ago

Or, to say it in reverse: Replanting logged forests with a monoculture hinders restoration.

Putting it this way emphasizes what "normal" is.

WalterBright• 3 years ago

This is not surprising in the least. Also, genetic variety within a particular species should help a lot.

CatWChainsaw• 3 years ago

If you own property with a lawn, do what you can as well with native plants for native pollinators.

salynchnew• 3 years ago

Shouldn't be surprising.

The Miyawaki method shows success when a few principles are followed: -Planting naturally-occurring communities of plants, not monocultures (bonus points for including microfauna and soil microbes) -Planting locations are semi-randomized, with room for plants to expand and reseed. -Stands of trees are protected/watered for first 3-5 years. -Local communities are engaged and have a vested interest in protecting/maintaining stands of trees for the first few years.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/24577389?mag=the-miyawaki-metho...

atoav3• 3 years ago

My brothers MA thesis was about comparing the multiple model forests that have been planted throughout the EUs different climate zones (I didn't even know such a thing existed, bur it makes sense).

His focus was looking at resilience against weather, insects etc. and mixed forests fared significantly better throughout all climate zones.

As someone from the alps, a thing that should not be forgotten is how important a diverse tree structure can be for stabilizing soil, especially in mountain areas. And those areas can expect more extreme wheater conditions due to climate change, especially in the form of rain. Mudslides can become a real economic factor in such regions.

Mixed forests are also better at stabilizing the soil because the root structures are less uniform.

So the best moment to plant mixed forests is 20 years ago, the next best is now.

Edit: For non-wood people, the reason why there aren't more mixed woods is that harvesting is easier in non-mixed environments (although that also has changed with newer methods and tech).

chiefalchemist• 3 years ago

His focus was looking at resilience against weather, insects etc. and mixed forests fared significantly better throughout all climate zones.

It makes sense. The diversity means that while one genera is suffering from some Hostility X or Y (e.g., insects) the others might not be, or at least as much so.

Diversity is a form of hedging your bet.

Lutger5• 3 years ago

Hedging your bet is one part, another big one is creating habitat for predators. Pests often arise in monocultures because there just isn't any suitable habitat for the organisms that eat them.

A part of that habitat is food, so ironically and perhaps counter intuitively, a good agro-ecological practice is to farm your pests. This provides a source of food (but not in your main crop) to attract the predators that you want to help control the pest.

This is the reversal of a negative spiral where you control pests by killing them, thus preventing predators to settle in your land and making it a very nice place for the pests to multiple. And they will, because you can never kill them all - unless you keep using massive amounts of pesticides. This is why monocultures often need a lot of pesticides to work, its very hard to do without.

asddubs• 3 years ago

You just have to look at how utterly the Harz pine forests have been completely destroyed by the bark beetle to see what monocultures get you. It's just huge swaths of lands filled with nothing but dead trees

HarryHirsch• 3 years ago

There's the additional complication that when the beetle or the windstorm come there's suddenly an overabundance of wood on the market, which depresses prices. You'd need to do forest maintenance but cannot afford it, market forces are against it. It's like the Schweinezyklus but worse.

Biologist1233• 3 years ago

I have heard estimates of 100 million trees dead in the Harz. The common refrain is that this was caused by climate change, but also choice of monoculture was a major contributing factor as the area was historically covered by mixed deciduous. Furthermore, choice of forest type will affect soil moisture retention, so reduced rainfall would have been buffered by better choice of forest type.

Loss of those trees was an economic disaster. I’m not sure it’s an environmental disaster yet - especially as replanting seems to be with better reference to the agro-climatic zone.

pjc50• 3 years ago

I was not aware of this, and found this very informative https://en.harzinfo.de/pure-nature/the-forest-calls-initiati...

rootw0rm• 3 years ago

afaik it helps guard against particularly devastating wildfires, too.

mtnGoat• 3 years ago

The best way to deal with fires is not to. The problems the west is facing are due to so much fire suppression for tire last century and a half left too much fuel near the ground, we are now learning to let them burn.

wesapien• 3 years ago

I was just listened to a podcast on this and they said planting a bunch of trees don't make a forest especially tropical ones. There's just too much going on there.

taylorius5• 3 years ago

No offense meant at all to your brother, it sounds like an interesting investigation. That said, the answer to these sorts of eco-questions always seems to be that the way nature has worked for millions of years is actually the best way (for loads of reasons we didn't know) - and if we mess with it too much, there will be some problems. This just seems kind of inevitable though. If nature's way didn't work, it wouldn't be happening. I suppose finding the reasons behind it being optimal are where the "meat" of such an investigation is. Interesting stuff.

dagmx4• 3 years ago

Your comment bothers me because it is based on very shaky premises.

Nature doesn’t work in the most optimal way, so it’s not always best to replicate it. Tons of things happen in nature that may wipe out important ecosystems. I suppose one could argue that at a long enough time scale it will even out but that time scale can be millennia. In the meantime, nature can wreak tons of havoc.

Nature (and by that I mean ecosystems because nature is a vague) also doesn’t behave in necessarily intuitive or easily observable ways either. What might seem “obvious” at first can be very wrong.

Nature (and again I mean ecosystems) also doesn’t exist in vacuums. What may have worked for centuries can be upset by even the most subtle of temperature shifts, and those might be caused by effects hundreds of miles away.

Unchecked nature is also not always going to be conducive to human needs either.

The entire field requires constant observation and inference. Even the ways of indigenous people that are fetishized as natures way by many, are scientific in nature. They’re the result of many years of observation, experimentation, learning and modifying how nature works to fit our needs.

atoav3• 3 years ago

I just know what he told me about it verbatim, but the "meat" of his investigation was that he did statistical analysis on vast amounts of (LIDAR-based) tree-height data and comparison of storm damages. On top there were many other GIS-data layers included, so in addition to that simple finding the "meat" is that he found multiple concrete combinations of circumstances that are especially benefitial to resilience.

Not that a skilled and experienced ranger might not have known some of these combinations as well, but the data-based approach can help planing better where to plant what specifically, as opposed to just mix it based on chance.

Lutger5• 3 years ago

Well, yes and no. Yes, in the sense that 'nature' is what organisms learned in millions of years and the emergent processes of the ecosystems in which they 'learned' things. And because this is so vastly complex, we often don't understand it and our interventions will have unintended consequences.

No, in the sense that humans are actually part of these ecosystems and it is possible for us to understand these processes and work with them. And this is the point of the research posted here: planting native seedlings is superior for restoration than 'just leaving things to nature'.

There's a technical side to this and a 'worldview' side, where there are two competing concepts of 'nature': one defines it as 'everything except humans' and the other includes humans as being part of nature, a useful part even.

saiya-jin• 3 years ago

We had in Slovakia in 2004 a small catastrophe in our tiny higher mountains (High Tatras) - wind up to 110 kmh IIRC, and literally large swathes of pine/spruce forests that were on higher grounds were cut like with lawnmower. They often broke in half with bare trunk still standing, not even ripped out of the ground. Then parasitic beetles had a feast and their population exploded.

Main reason was stated as monoculture planted decades ago, since these forests are pretty and they were used also for treating respiratory illnesses (clean mountain air with strong pine sap smell really helps, sort of natural aromatherapy).

Almost 20 years passed, its still a sad sight. More logging, some ad hoc growth but forest definitely didn't regrow in any meaningful form, rather fast growing bushes took over. There was a lot of fight between forest / natural park management and ecologists on how to proceed, and everybody (including forest) lost.

Lutger5• 3 years ago

In some tree monocultures, you can just see the soil is covered with layers of organic matter that just isn't decomposing fast enough. This is because there isn't the diversity in the soil food web required to process it, reflecting the lack of biodiversity above the ground. Such soils often have a very low ph and poor nutrient cycling.

BengineeringELM2• 3 years ago

Check out the silvicultural guide for the northeast:

https://www.fs.usda.gov/research/treesearch/45874

It turns out most logging in the northeast already yields a diverse ecosystem as quickly as the next year, and no planting is nessesary.

Forresters can target different species mixes in the regeneration by using different harvesting methods.

Pretty cool stuff.

cookiengineer• 3 years ago

I can recommend reading about the reforestation laws in Germany.

Why? Germany was running out of forests to harvest around 1400, and the oldest law that is still in effect is from 1442 (Forstordnung of the Bistum Speyer) . All forests in Germany are artificially created, and there are a lot of things involved to make this happen.

We have rain plans that limit the amount of how much water farmers are allowed to use which are on higher altitudes on the mountains/plains. We have the Wasserwirt which is responsible to flood the farming plains regularly (completely under water), and redistribute their water "lakes" to other fields down to lower altitudes. We also have the Foerster whose job is to decide which trees to harvest, which ones need to be replaced, and what to do with the dead trees.

All of those variables are planned carefully and involve a lot of data, especially the water flooding and rain plan parts.

There are a lot of nice documentaries about this on arte and NDR in case anyone is interested about these kind of topics.

Also about corruption and the forest mafia in Romania, which is a huge discussion topic in Brussels for years, because Ikea and other furniture producers down the line keep buying illegally harvested wood.

prennert• 3 years ago

One thing that struck me when visiting Germany in summer was how logging seemed to be selective, leaving much of the trees standing.

I passed a forest by train and despite logs piled up next to it, and logging vehicles around, you could not tell from the train that the forest was being logged. While in Scotland, if they harvest a forest, they do it like harvesting wheat. They just leave a wasteland of stumps behind. Looks horrible, must be bad for the ecosystem and I am wondering if mudslides will be more common now, since a lot of forest is on hillsides.

ovih• 3 years ago

Fascinating context, thank you for sharing!

Some other countries whose history has something to say about reforestation/afforestation: Australia, South Korea, UK

meerita• 3 years ago

As a reflection of my passion for plants, every time I trek through a forest, I gather seeds and nurture sprouts from them, replanting them each year. Last year, I successfully planted 25 trees, and over the course of four years, I've planted approximately 100. This year, in the upcoming spring, I aspire to plant 50 more.

WaitWaitWha• 3 years ago

"...plots replanted with a mixture of 16 native tree species showed faster recovery of canopy area and total tree biomass, compared to plots replanted with 4 or just 1 species. However, even plots that had been replanted with 1 tree species were recovering more quickly than those left to restore naturally."

I am not trying to be obtuse or misanthropic.

Please, someone can explain why was this study needed? Was there some hidden new discovery?

Asking, because if I walk down the dirt road and ask any farmer, they will tell me, if I sow seed in a field, it will grow faster, than I leave it to nature's chance. If I sow mixed crops (crop & cover crop), I will get potentially better yield. I thought it was a specific species of trees thing, but the paper does not seem to be stating it.

husamia• 3 years ago

"diverse" is the key here and I doubt most understand what it really means..

Replanting logged forests with diverse seedlings accelerates restoration

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