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Forestation + Saving the World

Started by WanderWonder, August 12, 2020, 01:13:13 AM

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WanderWonder

Hey all, joined f. f. 4 years back when I started college for forestry. Graduated from Southern Illinois University. I'm now out of college and started a business called Forest Monk, LLC. in Illinois. We do forestry education, consulting, and forest gardening.
Forestation has been proposed as a big-time solution toward carbon mitigation. 1 trillion trees have been proposed as a tree planting goal by lead researcher Thomas Crowther for the UN's trillion tree campaign division. Last year Thomas Crowther's lab discovered that humanity had underestimated how many trees there were on Earth at 500 billion. They discovered there are 2.8 trillion-3 trillion that exist. We've been asked as foresters to plant the most trees that have ever been planted with little knowledge as to how well our trees will succeed with uncertain environmental conditions ahead. Educating people how to do it properly is of upmost importance in my mind. 
I want to learn all of your tricks for collecting tree seeds, seedlings, etc and growing them. I want to learn your tricks for how to grow trees and sustain landscape-level plantings. I want to learn the ins and outs of nursery growing. I want to then take what I've learned comprehensively in my journey and create a curriculum for autonomous forestation (where I can teach anyone to take part in an informed way). 
Tree planting's been proposed to save the planet and it needs to be done right. With that in mind, 30% of monitored tree plantings by the campaign have succeeded. Context, context, context. 70% failure is a problem I'd like to help solve.
What are your thoughts? Forestry is now one of the most important jobs for our current and upcoming generations and I think that needs to be made plain and clear to our communities!

Don P

Trees do absorb carbon but they do not sequester it.

Heresy  :D

What the forestry and wood products community is trying to promote is a false solution to a much deeper problem. When we grow a tree it does absorb and tie up carbon for at best a century or three. What we are trying to convince ourselves of is that it can offset the digging up and releasing into the air deeply stored carbon that has been buried and unavailable to the atmosphere for several hundred million years. These are two related but different carbon cycles, one recalcitrant, the other labile. One deeply stored, the other a shallow cycling loop.

If you grow that forest, dig a pit a few thousand feet deep and bury that forest, now you are sequestering that carbon you've pulled out of the atmosphere. If you grow that forest and either use the wood in a structure that lasts a century or two or let it fall on the forest floor and rot we have tied up the carbon for a woefully short period compared to the carbon we are supposedly offsetting.

I'm not saying in any way that it is not worth doing or not a noble enterprise, just be aware of the self serving side of the solutions being passed around. I personally have no fear for the planet. It can and has survived and "recovered" from conditions that we cannot. It is in no real long term danger, we however probably are.

WanderWonder

Hi Don,
Thanks for your reply! I appreciate your light humor.
The short-term storage of carbon in wood has been discussed with BECCS (Bioenergy and Carbon Capturing Systems) as a way to create more char that can be buried. This requires another type of land use which requires land-use change.
https://www.crowtherlab.com/our-research/ - this is research from Thomas Crowther's lab. 

As much as I love trees and forestry, bog ecosystems store much more carbon than forest ecosystems compared to area of land. Lots of other ecosystems have been asked by land managers to be maximally facilitated to their carrying capacity so as to provide the most ecosystem services the lands can and capture carbon. 

With so many cool ecosystem service options, I'd choose to plant millions of trees over the course of my life hahaha.

Southside

So, if we plant all of the open ground with trees, where will we grow our food? 
Franklin buncher and skidder
JD Processor
Woodmizer LT Super 70 and LT35 sawmill, KD250 kiln, BMS 250 sharpener and setter
Riehl Edger
Woodmaster 725 and 4000 planner and moulder
Enough cows to ensure there is no spare time.
White Oak Meadows

Don P

I think they've shown that mob grazing puts more carbon in the soil than trees do, now we have a methane problem. If the washin don't get you the rinsing sure will  :D.

I'm making biochar out of scraps at the barn. OK I'm picking out the grilling charcoal, grab whatever I need for melting aluminum and smashing the small stuff for the garden. That is I guess a middle loop, it "should" be tied up for centuries. I think the jury is still out on that. For one it is light so it surfaces and is washed into waterways easily. I'm not sure that we know the long term of that. I do like the concept of biochar and wonder if our "birthright" isn't the volatiles and the carbon belongs to the depths. Of course that is a tough thing to bury, that carbon is the finest fuel.

I think the main problem with the world is about 7 billion people need to go away. One way or the other that will happen unless we do like bunnies and do it all at once. I'm not entirely convinced we are any brighter. We plugged along for millenia with few problems with lower population on current sunlight for energy. That is the true carrying capacity. When we started digging up stored solar energy we started having problems.

mike_belben

Quote from: Southside on August 12, 2020, 12:59:43 PM
So, if we plant all of the open ground with trees, where will we grow our food?
Well Jim, i recon we could mail order it from china or some other peoples republic like every other thing we once produced.


By the time these saviours are done with us there wont be enough carbon to grow a crop anyhow.  Cornell says it takes 40x more carbon than nitrogen and we know how much nitrogen it takes!  The rest is a special blend of political manure id rather not step in today.



Praise The Lord

mike_belben

Youve got noble ambitions forest monk, nothing against you personally.
Praise The Lord

WanderWonder

Quote from: mike_belben on August 12, 2020, 03:04:50 PM
Quote from: Southside on August 12, 2020, 12:59:43 PM
So, if we plant all of the open ground with trees, where will we grow our food?
Well Jim, i recon we could mail order it from china or some other peoples republic like every other thing we once produced.


By the time these saviours are done with us there wont be enough carbon to grow a crop anyhow.  Cornell says it takes 40x more carbon than nitrogen and we know how much nitrogen it takes!  The rest is a special blend of political manure id rather not step in today.





Hi Southside and mike!
This link shows their research: https://www.crowtherlab.com/our-research/. 1 trillion trees can be planted in degraded landscapes that are not going to reduce the amount of land we have to grow food. Agricultural lands were considered essential for human survival. Plus, agriculture in urban areas and suburban areas is intensifying how much food can be grown in small acreage.
Check out this TEDx talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSH63qgpGoY by Thomas Crowther himself. This man has said that he is open to hearing anyone's perspective on this and knows there are lots of different opinions.
I'm open to everyone's ideas. When I present this information, I seek only to share and discuss - so, thank you everyone for discussing. Your input is heard by me. Thomas will say it if you watch the TEDx talk: we need all of the solutions to work together and find what works for the site's context.

Southside

I went to the link and obviously there is a lot of info there. What is the definition of a "degraded landscape"?  Also, what is the longer plan for those areas? What I mean is succession and the issue of suddenly having massive even aged stands of what will become monocultures through survival of the fittest if nothing else?  

Of course then there is the issue of the increased fuel load and what is truly man made environment change. One need only to look at the demise of the New England Cottontail to see what impact re-forestation will cause.  Another example can be seen in the shift in the moose and deer population in Northern Maine.  Read Helen Hamlin's "Nine Mile Bridge" for a true time capsule experience, then visit the area for yourself and see how changing the landscape, for the better or the worse, has wide ranging consequences that will last a century and is once again reverting. 

Not calling you out, just looking at the whole picture as I see it from personal experience.  
Franklin buncher and skidder
JD Processor
Woodmizer LT Super 70 and LT35 sawmill, KD250 kiln, BMS 250 sharpener and setter
Riehl Edger
Woodmaster 725 and 4000 planner and moulder
Enough cows to ensure there is no spare time.
White Oak Meadows

Texas Ranger

A trillion trees is ambitious, I mean we have: There are just over three trillion trees on Earth, according to a new assessment.

Earth's trees number 'three trillion' - BBC News
The Ranger, home of Texas Forestry

Don P

I have trouble with big numbers, I run out of toes. So a trillion doesn't sound that hard. Between the two of us we planted around a million in just a few years, on that fast syp rotation they are probably close to harvest age now.

You mentioned forest farming, I think there is potential to answer a piece of Jim's question there. In those plantations we were planting a monoculture, which is the way our simple minds tend to work. My wife has become involved with a group that is playing with non timber forest products. There is potential under the canopy for other things to grow, some food, some medicine, all of which is grabbing some of that carbon Mike is showing the plants voracious need for in his pic. Years ago I saw a pic of how we look at a pond and how the asian cultures looked at it, they saw potential for layering many different things to grow and eat where we stock a relative few species. To some degree you probably can have both trees and food coming off the same plot. Scaling that up and getting what you need and enough of it is another thorny question.

So yes, I agree, keep working the problem but be mindful that to succeed ultimately that carbon that's been dug up from the deep somehow needs to get back there. These certainly help but I don't believe are the long term solution. We had an earthquake the other day. When the big conveyor belt slides Winston Salem under my feet, that is sequestration  :D.

Southside

FWIW on my own land we practice silvaculture where practical using our dairy herd, by far that is the best dirt I own, I call it my savings account.  Mind you we are talking mixed timber ground that has been in timber for anywhere from 30 - 100 years and I had to thin it out in order to get sunlight down to the surface so grass, legumes, and forbs would grow, and that they did.  The organic matter content of the soil is high, no compaction, it holds water well, and unlike so many tillable acres around is very much alive on a microbial level.  

The end result has increased and diversified wildlife and songbird populations, (along with an eagle nest this year that has created mixed feelings - watched a Guinea get snagged one day right up by the house) in addition to growing timber and giving me an annual cash return that my cows grazing generates.  

To me the solutions, just like the truth, are somewhere in the middle.  Push too far to one side or the other and the results are not as beneficial.
Franklin buncher and skidder
JD Processor
Woodmizer LT Super 70 and LT35 sawmill, KD250 kiln, BMS 250 sharpener and setter
Riehl Edger
Woodmaster 725 and 4000 planner and moulder
Enough cows to ensure there is no spare time.
White Oak Meadows

peakbagger

If and when carbon tax comes in there are whole lot of folks ready to pounce on converting former biomass power plants which are readily available for scrap value and converting them to gasify the volatiles from wood for power generation and then take the remaining char and start sequestering it by burying it as a soil amendment. Blend in organic waste like manure and it captures much of the methane formed and the soil become terra preta. 


SwampDonkey

The tax is already here, including the use of the char as a soil amendment. I'd say I've seen it used by the train loads here for at least 10 years. Wood ash is used as fertilizer and lime in a big way in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and PEI. I don't have to go far from the house and show you piles of the stuff around here. :D
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

Don P

Ash is the minerals left after you burn the carbon and release it to the atmosphere. 

SwampDonkey

Yes, but the ash is full of char to since it is black and not grey ash. So a mix I would say. There's always ashes unless you screen it.
"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

SwampDonkey

"No amount of belief makes something a fact." James Randi

1 Thessalonians 5:21

2020 Polaris Ranger 570 to forward firewood, Husqvarna 555 XT Pro, Stihl FS560 clearing saw and continuously thinning my ground, on the side. Grow them trees. (((o)))

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