[HN Gopher] The world has more trees than it did 35 years ago (2...
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The world has more trees than it did 35 years ago (2021)
Author : bilsbie
Score : 95 points
Date : 2022-09-12 20:37 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.goodgoodgood.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.goodgoodgood.co)
| dexwiz wrote:
| I wonder what the ratio of this is good samaritan tree planting
| versus timber industry. Timber plantings account for a large
| portion of US land. Timber is a very popular investment among
| long term land owners. Not all land is suitable for farming, and
| timber is a relatively passive way to extract value form the
| land.
|
| Additionally timber likes to make claims like "we plant 2 trees
| for every 1 harvested." What they don't tell you is that half the
| trees won't make it to the next clear, and often
| smaller/weaker/sick trees are culled before a full clear to make
| room for better ones to grow.
| legitster wrote:
| At least in the West, the vast majority of forestry land is
| managed by the NFS. Private land is really only used for
| Christmas tree farms or specialty trees for the paper industry.
|
| For public lands, the timber industry is responsible for their
| own replanting, but it's largely irrelevant. More timber is
| lost to wildfire than logging every year, so most replanting
| falls on the Forest service anyway:
| https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/reforesta...
|
| _Edit_ : Apparently this is all wrong and out of date!
|
| While the NFS still owns the majority of forestry land in the
| West, it only accounts for a tiny portion of the overall lumber
| produced. From the CRO:
|
| > Since the 1990s, FS timber production has decreased, totaling
| around 2 billion board feet annually since FY1999.56 In 2011,
| NFS supplied 2% of U.S. wood and paper products. The decline is
| attributable to a multitude of factors, including (but not
| limited to) changing legislative directives and related forest
| management policies and practices--such as increased planning
| and procedural requirements--as well as changing market
| dynamics for wood products, public preferences, and litigation.
|
| Basically, it became too hard to log NFS land, so logging
| companies turned to private or state lands instead (and states
| set their own criteria for how private forestry land needs to
| be replanted).
| soperj wrote:
| > More timber is lost to wildfire than logging every year
|
| Gotta wonder how much of that is because of the way they
| replant? (ie: spray with round up, and then plant GMO pine,
| eliminating fire break species like aspen).
| pluc wrote:
| You're failing to account for all the "buy one we plant a tree
| // for every N$ spent we'll plant a tree" promotions finally
| coming to fruition
| xwdv wrote:
| Wow, they actually did it? I figured those were just empty
| promises that no one would follow up with to see if it was
| actually done.
| bombcar wrote:
| Companies sell it - but as pointed out they're sometimes
| charging to plant trees they would have planted anyway.
| dexwiz wrote:
| I lump those into good samaritan planting. Also I am dubious
| on how many of those promotions just end up subsidizing
| replanting lumber tracts. I am trying to find numbers but
| anything by the timber industry just seems to tout "we are
| replanting more than we harvest on a national level," but
| doesn't seem to differentiate who is planting what.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| I wonder how much of this is The Great Green Walls of Africa
| and China...
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| I was under the impression that the Great Green Wall of
| Africa doesn't really exist at the moment, and that no
| project goals were ever reached.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| True - the GGW of China has 88Bn trees. That's compared to
| 390Bn in the Amazon Rainforest.
|
| The GGW of Africa only has 1Bn trees so far.
|
| So not as noteworthy.
|
| I would imagine planting a forest 1/5th the size of The
| Amazon is the major driver here...
| r721 wrote:
| Here's an article from 2020:
|
| >What happened to Africa's ambitious green belt project?
|
| https://www.dw.com/en/what-happened-to-africas-ambitious-
| gre...
| jonas21 wrote:
| > _Additionally timber likes to make claims like "we plant 2
| trees for every 1 harvested." What they don't tell you is that
| half the trees won't make it to the next clear, and often
| smaller/weaker/sick trees are culled before a full clear to
| make room for better ones to grow._
|
| Sure, but the number of trees doesn't matter so much -- the
| amount of carbon sequestered by those trees is more important.
| Presumably, thinning out the weak trees allows the stronger
| trees to grow larger.
|
| The US timber industry is actually pretty good for sequestering
| carbon because their economic incentives lead them to:
|
| - Select fast-growing species of trees
|
| - Harvest the trees before they reach their terminal state
| (when they stop acting as a carbon sink), then replant new
| trees.
|
| - Promote the use of timber products as substitutes for carbon-
| intensive building materials, like concrete.
|
| There was an interesting life-cycle analysis of this published
| a few years back:
|
| https://www.fpl.fs.usda.gov/documnts/pdf2011/fpl_2011_lippke...
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > Timber plantings account for a large portion of US land.
|
| Really? I can't imagine it's very big compared to agriculture,
| but maybe that's my midwestern bias? Do you have any figures
| handy (specifically for commercial timber rather than timber
| for other purposes e.g., hunting)?
|
| > Additionally timber likes to make claims like "we plant 2
| trees for every 1 harvested." What they don't tell you is that
| half the trees won't make it to the next clear, and often
| smaller/weaker/sick trees are culled before a full clear to
| make room for better ones to grow.
|
| That sounds pretty slimy, but the headline is that there are
| more trees. If timber is driving it, I would think the bigger
| concern would be over the homogeneity of the trees and the
| incumbent ecosystem damage?
|
| Lastly, I would guess (perhaps wrongly) that palm oil and
| banana plantations are driving the inorganic growth (I haven't
| yet read the article--shame on me, etc--so perhaps I'm
| speculating unnecessarily)
| Manuel_D wrote:
| I think the idea is that timber is a lot less labor
| intensive. Agriculture almost certainly produces more $ per
| M^2, but it takes a lot of work planting, fertilizing, and
| harvesting every year. Timber plantings, judging by what the
| above commenter wrote, probably consists of planting saplings
| from a tree nursery then waiting a decade or two for them to
| mature.
| misterprime wrote:
| There could also be a higher risk in an agricultural crop
| completely failing due to unlucky weather compared to the
| risk of a timber crop failing.
| jameshart wrote:
| Forests have a nasty habit of catching fire though.
| jameshart wrote:
| This article has some great visualizations of US land use:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-us-land-use/
|
| About a quarter of US land is dedicated to 'unprotected'
| timber. About ten percent of that belongs to one single
| business - https://www.weyerhaeuser.com/
|
| Agriculture is a little less (about a fifth), pasture is a
| little more (about a third) - although that includes range
| land which is barely 'land use' at all.
| legitster wrote:
| Not sure where you are getting your math here. From the
| article: "Weyerhaeuser Co. is the largest private owner of
| timberlands in the U.S. With 12.4 million acres, the
| company controls 2.3 percent of all commercially available
| timber"
|
| We have some Weyerhauser "timberland" by us - I can say
| they are much more like intensive agriculture than forests.
| I wouldn't worry about replanting on them - you better
| believe Weyerhauser uses every square foot of their land to
| grow trees on.
| sthu11182 wrote:
| beat me to posting that. I do agree its a great
| visualization.
| [deleted]
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| This is both surprising and unsurprising, but also potentially
| misses the point. If the trees lost are in the Amazon and that's
| a giant filter for the planet, then it doesn't really matter if
| we planted trees somewhere else if the environmental impact isn't
| directly offset. Also, it was only about 45 years ago that we had
| _rivers catching on fire_ so an improvement over that doesn 't
| mean that we've magically fixed all of our environmental issues.
| 40four wrote:
| Why _wouldn't_ it matter if we've planted trees elsewhere?
| Nobody is suggesting we've _magically_ fixed every
| environmental issue, but wouldn't you rather see trends like
| total number of trees (or number of rivers catching on fire, as
| you put it) trend in the right direction? I take it as a
| cautiously optimistic signal that people / governments are
| paying attention to the problems at hand, and making progress.
| This is a good thing, unless you really ARE hoping for some
| sort of magical one off fix.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| It's not that it isn't positive, but as another poster said
| astutely, a tree <> tree. Love me some trees, glad we are
| planting them, but that doesn't mean that putting a rando
| tree in my front yard is actually having any meaningful
| impact over _not_ cutting down a tree in the Amazon.
| senko wrote:
| Do you have influence over those that cut down a tree in
| the Amazon? If so, it would definitely be better if you
| could persuade them to stop.
|
| If you don't, planting a rando tree in your back yard still
| does more good for the planet than not doing so.
| tern wrote:
| There are huge geopolitical forces fighting to preserve
| the Amazon. The cost of deforestation is quantified and
| states pay millions if not billions (I forget the
| numbers) to people in order to leave it untouched.
|
| Of course, it's political and 'we're not doing enough,'
| etc. but individuals have more influence over the Amazon
| than most things.
|
| Great podcast on the subject:
| https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/people-i-mostly-
| admire...
| lupire wrote:
| Preserve is a long way from restore, though.
| tomrod wrote:
| AFAIK we are more like 53 years past that point
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuyahoga_River
|
| EDIT: Ah! you updated to 45 from 35. That makes more sense.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| You did the homework, I estimated.
| guilhas wrote:
| "Sadly, the research also confirms a large-scale loss of our
| planet's most biodiverse ecosystems, particularly in the tropical
| rainforests."
|
| Single species trees planted for paper is not the same as native
| trees and ecosystems that existed for 1000s years and that we
| keep destroying for some IKEA furniture
| anotheraccount9 wrote:
| Should we make a distinction between numbers of trees in a forest
| versus trees on a "farming tree"? Would there be an ecological
| difference?
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| Tree <> Tree
|
| Meaning: a 4 year old tree in the Amazon is not equivalent to a
| 100 year old tree in the Amazon.
|
| We might have more trees, but I doubt we have the same CO2
| recycling capacity that we had 35 years ago.
| oasisbob wrote:
| The writer is clearly conflating canopy coverage area with
| individual trees.
| skitter wrote:
| Though I don't think looking at e.g. Pando and adding one to
| your count is particularly useful in this context.
| tooltower wrote:
| What would be a better measure? Tons of carbon locked up in
| the wood? The amount of carbon they can remove from the
| atmosphere on an average day?
| pvaldes wrote:
| yes, and yes.
| Y-bar wrote:
| Yes. And I'm willing to bet that biodiversity is not so good in
| many of these "forests" which should probably be called
| something like "plantation".
| Kaibeezy wrote:
| Maybe they applied the principle of: _little trees, fresh as a
| breeze._
|
| Maybe not.
| dexwiz wrote:
| Trees are overhyped when it comes to CO2 capture/recycling.
| Algae already outproduces trees globally by 2x. It is also much
| easier to industrialize. For example, algae ponds could be
| built alongside fossil fuel plants to capture carbon on site.
|
| Oil is predominately captured algae that died, sank to the
| bottom of the ocean, and was sealed in by salt deposits/other
| nonpermeable layers. Coal is carbon captured by trees, but it
| only formed in a relatively narrow period after cellulose
| evolved but before bacteria/fungus evolved to eat it. Oil will
| continue to form, but it's unlikely any new coal will form in
| the future.
|
| https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/60/9/722/238034
| jandrese wrote:
| In theory younger trees should consume more CO2 as they are
| still growing. Older trees that are maintaining a steady state
| should consume a net of almost 0 CO2.
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| Exactly. That's why sustainable forestry is a great way to
| capture both CO2 and building materials, which will store the
| carbon for decades.
| Scarblac wrote:
| But the 100 year old tree that was removed (and everything
| growing on it and in the soil near it) added a lot of CO2 to
| the air, and it's unlikely that was grows back now will be as
| rich in biodiversity and CO2 binding capacity than the old
| one.
| NAHWheatCracker wrote:
| Forgive me if I misunderstand, but the carbon is in the 100
| year old tree and when it's cut down and turned into
| something it's still there. So that carbon is sitting the
| walls of a house, furniture, or sheafs of paper, isn't it?
|
| Disregarding cutting the tree down to just burn it for
| heat, obviously.
| GenerocUsername wrote:
| Many trees grow continuously until they literally kill
| themselves with unsustainable weight.
|
| Big trees likely add more biomass per year than young trees
| dangus wrote:
| It's not all about CO2, preserving habitats and biodiversity
| is another concern.
| peyton wrote:
| There's a lot of underhandedness in how climate change is
| marketed to mass audiences that I think we could do
| without.
| [deleted]
| hourago wrote:
| > Older trees that are maintaining a steady state should
| consume a net of almost 0 CO2.
|
| They are a storage of CO2. If we replaced all old trees with
| new ones we will gain a lot of potential for CO2 capture but
| at the cost of releasing massive amounts of CO2 to the
| atmosphere.
|
| You are right. But I think that the point was to notice that
| we may have lost many good trees even if we are trying to add
| new ones.
| standeven wrote:
| The CO2 is only released if we burn them. If we use the
| wood for building materials or other goods with long-term
| storage, the carbon continues to be locked up.
| pvaldes wrote:
| And if we let them growing and rooting for another 100
| years instead we would have a much faster CO2 sink.
| [deleted]
| pvaldes wrote:
| This would not matter, because a dozen of those trees still
| weight like 0,00001% of what the old tree has stored.
| oasisbob wrote:
| I believe this piece is referring to this 2018 Nature paper:
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0411-9
| [deleted]
| 13of40 wrote:
| A couple of years ago I was playing with the King County
| (Washington) online parcel map and found out you can get pretty
| decent resolution aerial photography of Seattle and its
| surroundings from 1936. One of the things that struck me most was
| that a lot of the areas that are heavily wooded now were very
| much less so back then, presumably because 1936 was only a few
| decades removed from when they clearcut all of the old growth
| forest. If you think about it, that means someone like my
| grandfather who grew up here in that era would have had a much
| different understanding of the idea of a forest than myself, and
| not in an especially good way.
| [deleted]
| Terr_ wrote:
| There's also some interesting Kitsap history there, with
| respect to shipyards and cutting down most of Bainbridge
| Island.
| enviclash wrote:
| Yes but. Forget about simple linear relations. Where are those
| trees? What is their biogeochemical role? How change in them and
| the surfaces they occupy interacts with global dynamics in Earth
| system components? These are some of the questions that matter.
| peyton wrote:
| I think broad trends matter more than little details.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Very comforting but most probably false. In 2021 we had big
| wildfires in Australia, Russia, US, and Brazil chopping at warp
| speed...
| proee wrote:
| Do more trees equal more forrest fires? What, if anything, can be
| done to prevent mass fires down the road as we plant more trees?
| Should we be promoting controlled burns or thinning out of
| forests?
| dexwiz wrote:
| Don't plant eucalyptus trees. California is full of eucalyptus
| imported from Australia. They are oil soaked trees that drop a
| large amount of debris, both in the form of twiggy branches and
| the bark the peals off. This is great fire fuel and is in part
| the reason behind California's wild fires. Obviously they
| aren't the sole reason, but selecting proper trees can go a
| long way in managing fire risk.
|
| https://firesafemarin.org/plant/eucalyptus
|
| https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/ornamental/trees/eucalyptus...
| tomrod wrote:
| Typically letting fires burn is the best way to prevent future
| large forest fires.
| subsubzero wrote:
| I know the US has more trees than 100 years ago:
| https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/america-trees-now-century-ag...
|
| The US east coast has seen massive gains in tree plantings.
|
| I wonder if the gains in the US offset the loss in the amazon?
| malfist wrote:
| Fun data point from Kentucky. When Daniel Boone discovered the
| cumberland gap and made way for settlers to settle in Kentucky,
| kentucky was ~80% forest land, and most of that was because
| native americans burned sections of kentucky for crops and
| living space.
|
| ~~100 years ago, kentucky had below 50% forest coverage, today
| it's over 90%, more than it's ever been in recorded history.~~
|
| These numbers came from a speech the head of ketucky's forestry
| service gave to my college polsci class, they disagree with
| what google says is the truth. These numbers may be false.
| bombcar wrote:
| Does that mean all inhabited areas of Kentucky are in 10% of
| the land?
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Everything I can find online says Kentucky is about 48-52%
| covered by forest/timber. Maine is the most heavily forested
| state at ~89-90%.
| malfist wrote:
| I'm seeing that on google too. My numbers came from a
| speech the head of kentucky's forestry service gave to my
| college political science class. He may have been wrong,
| I'm gonna edit my post if I still can to make it clear my
| numbers might be wrong.
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| I wonder if there's any benefit for a (poor/non-rich) country
| planting a bunch of trees now and ransoming them when the climate
| is truly fucked...
| renewiltord wrote:
| No thanks to Europe
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/01/europe-l...
|
| Europeans are deforesting at an alarming rate _and_ they are
| increasing the rate of deforestation. It is time for Europe to
| pay nations with responsible forestry (e.g. India) for the work
| the latter are doing to protect the Earth 's ecosystems.
| timellis-smith wrote:
| I expect this trend to increase now that we've passed peak
| farmland https://ourworldindata.org/peak-agriculture-land
| Melatonic wrote:
| As animals that likely evolved based on the benefits of tree
| dwelling it would be pretty ironic if we were also their demise
| tern wrote:
| I think it's vital to start shifting the default narrative around
| this type of thing to match current historical understanding.
|
| The Amazon rainforest is a _garden_.
|
| North America was deforested by humans thousands of years ago,
| and many trees were planted by people.
|
| "Biodiversity" is an imprecise term in a way that muddles the
| broader relevance. We're losing previously _managed_ forest (high
| biodiversity in a way that's relevant to humans) and gaining
| "wild" land, which often enough is not as beneficial, even as
| merely a carbon sink.
|
| The real story is that we've lost the ability to cultivate the
| land in a way that serves our interests, plus there are almost 8
| billion people around now.
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