(Roughly) Daily“The one who plants trees knowing that he or she will never sit in their shade, has at least started to understand the meaning of life”*…
A long-running experiment is testing tree mixes to develop the healthiest forests… Yes, and, as John Parker and Justin Nowakowski explain, it turns out that what and how we plant matters enormously…
Around the world, people plan to plant more than 1 trillion trees this decade in an ambitious effort to slow climate change and reduce biodiversity loss. But if the past is prologue, many of those planted trees won’t survive. And if they do, they could end up as biological deserts that lack the richness and resilience of healthy forests.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
The United Nations declared 2021-2030 the Decade on Ecosystem Restoration to encourage efforts to repair degraded ecosystems. Tree planting has become a centerpiece of that effort, championed by initiatives such as the Bonn Challenge and the Trillion Trees Campaign.
However, many tree-planting commitments have a critical flaw: They rely too heavily on monoculture plantations – vast areas planted with just a single tree species.
Monoculture plantations are generally one-way tickets to producing wood. But these high-yield plantations are high risk and can be surprisingly fragile. When drought, pests, or forest fires strike, entire monoculture plantations can fail at once. In one example, nearly 90% of 11 million saplings planted in Turkey died within three months due to drought and lack of maintenance.
Forests are more than just timber factories. They regulate water, store carbon, provide habitat for wildlife, cool the landscapes around them and even provide human health benefits.
Rather than gambling on a single species and hoping for the best, science now points to a smarter path that captures both ecological and economic benefits while minimizing risk: mixed-species plantings that mirror the biodiversity of a natural forest, ultimately creating forests that grow faster and are more resilient in the face of constant threats.
We are community and landscape ecologists at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. Since 2013, we and our colleagues have been rigorously testing this idea in a large, ecosystem-scale experiment called BiodiversiTREE. The verdict is striking: Trees in mixed forests don’t just survive – they outgrow their monoculture counterparts and support dramatically more biodiversity…
[Parker and Nowakowski outline their project, unpack it’s (impressive) results, and explore the challenges to sclaing their example. They conclude..]
… The stakes are high. Restoration has become a major global investment, with hundreds of billions of dollars already being spent annually. Getting it wrong means wasted resources and missed opportunities to address some of the most pressing environmental challenges of our time.
If the world is going to plant a trillion trees, we believe it needs to do more than just put seedlings in the ground. It needs to rethink what a forest should be.
The goal isn’t just to grow trees. It’s to grow forests that last.
Eminently worth reading in full: “Don’t just plant trees, plant forests to restore biodiversity for the future,” from @johndparker.bsky.social and Justin Nowakowski in @us.theconversation.com.
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As we see the forest, we might send observant birthday greetings to a man who spent a good bit of time in and around forests, John James Audubon; he was born on this date in 1785. An ornithologist, naturalist, and artist, Audubon documented all types of American birds with detailed illustrations depicting the birds in their natural habitats. His The Birds of America (1827–1839), in which he identified 25 new species, is considered one of the most important– and finest– ornithological works ever completed.
Print depicting a raven (Plate 101) from Birds of America #Audubon #biodiversity #birds #culture #ecology #forests #history #JohnJamesAudubon #Science #SmithsonianEnvironmentalResearchCenter #TheBirdsOfAmerica #trees
The Marginalian
Fine Art America
Charring Auh
William Kretschmer
Laszlo Xalieri
Jane Tomlinson - Artist 🌻⭐️
John James Audubon