Great comments about monoculture and poor incentives.
Natural forests have a complexity that doesn't seem worthwhile to brute-force by massive tree planting. There's an obvious spatial complexity for different plant phyla patterns (see a bunch of links below).. a kind of blending between meadows to underbrush to trees, mosses and lichen in rocky areas, mangroves holding onto rivers. And there's plenty of fungus and animal participation to consider as well.
I like to listen to permaculture people and their approaches.. thinking of the water tables, clay and soil types. I think there's probably also some new thinking to be done about how functional water cycles differ from arid areas and developing long-term plans to coax water back up with strong cloud-seeders, from coastlines and river basins towards inland deserts.
That all leads to healthier rivers and tidal estuaries, which are keystones for many maritime ecosystems, due to feeding and breeding migrations e.g. of salmon, crab, eels.
I guess I'm saying we're missing the forests for the trees :)
I just finished Suzanne Simard's book, which if you ignore the timelines (early 90's) of when she thought about these things, reads like your kid discovering a love of your favorite hobby and breathlessly explaining each new discovery as they happen.
The new idea I encountered in the book was one of deep rooted trees hydrating the soil by reaching into the water table and pulling it up to the surface. Particularly at night when evaporation rates drop off. I'd read years ago that some African cultures ascribe this power to fig trees (possibly from Wangari Maathai), but I've never seen anything but anecdotal evidence of this happening anywhere else. She anthropomorphized these things but I suspect that some of the activities she saw could more boringly be ascribed to osmotic pressure. Sugars and water are going to leak out across a gradient at some rate even if you try to stop it. Especially across a barrier that is designed to pass water in the opposite direction.
I love her work :) The co2 isotope-based tracing is genius.
Also reminds me of the nutrient chain in PacNW connects the salmon spawn to becoming tree fertilizer via the bear fishing and discarding partly eaten carcases; they just eat the fatty skin. Deep ecology.
Natural forests have a complexity that doesn't seem worthwhile to brute-force by massive tree planting. There's an obvious spatial complexity for different plant phyla patterns (see a bunch of links below).. a kind of blending between meadows to underbrush to trees, mosses and lichen in rocky areas, mangroves holding onto rivers. And there's plenty of fungus and animal participation to consider as well.
I like to listen to permaculture people and their approaches.. thinking of the water tables, clay and soil types. I think there's probably also some new thinking to be done about how functional water cycles differ from arid areas and developing long-term plans to coax water back up with strong cloud-seeders, from coastlines and river basins towards inland deserts.
That all leads to healthier rivers and tidal estuaries, which are keystones for many maritime ecosystems, due to feeding and breeding migrations e.g. of salmon, crab, eels.
I guess I'm saying we're missing the forests for the trees :)
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