Activists and scientists have been proving that homogeneous forests aren't a net positive for either carbon sequestration or biodiversity for a very long time. I feel like there should be articles...
Activists and scientists have been proving that homogeneous forests aren't a net positive for either carbon sequestration or biodiversity for a very long time. I feel like there should be articles about this from at least the 90s, but here's a Mongabay article from 2008 on the subject Monoculture tree plantations are “green deserts” not forests. While the subject may sound like it's only talking about tree plantations in the vein of palm oil or eucalyptus, they compare the existence of these forests to forest utilized or stewarded by indigenous communities. We can then compare some of these explanations to actual consequences and forestry practices in Europe and the United States.
The takeaways from the Mongabay article are:
...old-growth forests store carbon for centuries, whereas plantations and young forests are actually net emitters of carbon due to the disturbance of the soil and the degradation of the previous ecosystem.
Basically, taking a short-term view of the utility of any forest is undoing, or having the opposite effect, of what was intended by near-sighted policy (or bad faith greenwashing). If we continue to used the band-aid approach, we'll never really solve the underlying issues.
Another study in the Amazon showed an overall loss of 25 percent of species from primary forest to plantations. Bird, amphibian, and lizard biodiversity fell by 40 to 60 percent.
Europe has largely stopped monoculture forest planting as a replacement for native forests. One of the benefits of this is reduced competition for scarce resources during droughts, possibly a reduction in droughts as different tree species help water retention in soil, and then the biggest benefit is of course a reduction in forest fires. The USDA has a brief explanation in this report (PDF, page 5) explaining that old growth forests tended to have more fire-resistant trees and were slower burning than homogeneous forests (which also tended to be planted more densely) that typically had younger trees unable to tap into resources deeper in the ground, impacting their health, fire resilience, and ability to live up to their potential (literally) in such a highly competitive environment.
...according to researchers, primary forest converted to oil palm plantations caused an 83 percent loss in biodiversity.
Not all trees are equal and tree plantations are not a replacement for heterogeneous forests (even if you statistically accounted for trees 1:1, rather than density of an area).
But it's good to see some of these concerns being raised again and getting some traction among mainstream media and policy making (CoP28).
I don't have time to find my sources, but I do recall several studies that basically came to three related conclusions: Old-growth forests capture more carbon than new-growth New-growth natural...
I don't have time to find my sources, but I do recall several studies that basically came to three related conclusions:
Old-growth forests capture more carbon than new-growth
New-growth natural forests capture more carbon than planned, planted ones
One of the biggest factors is that natural forests also provide habitats for animals, and help build living soil. All of the life in natural forests is part of what enables this greater carbon capture.
One of the more interesting things I have learned to be aware of over the past years is that being able to present scientific or academic findings as evidence to a claim is not the same thing as...
One of the more interesting things I have learned to be aware of over the past years is that being able to present scientific or academic findings as evidence to a claim is not the same thing as expertise in the subject. To say "science is wrong" would be incorrect, of course, but the one thing we really need to understand about science and academia is that, for the most part, every paper out there is going to be about one very specific thing. But real world systems with one variable quite simply do not exist. There are always multiple things at play, and in many case there are hundreds or thousands of different forces that are carefully balanced up against eachother. That is why expertise is important; you need people who have understanding about as much as the whole system as possible to be aware of issues that may arise when you are attempting to make changes to that system.
Absolutely agree. This is a really important way of looking at things. It's important not to let a single news article regurgitate only a single facet of an issue; the better articles explore...
Absolutely agree. This is a really important way of looking at things. It's important not to let a single news article regurgitate only a single facet of an issue; the better articles explore related facets, or comparable research, supporting works from the past, and whatever else to provide a breadth of understanding, whether they're seeking to inform or persuade (there have been other Tildes threads on "persuasive" news outlets, so I'll skip that discussion here).
The same issue that exists with click-bait titles exists within the single-topic, narrow-focus articles themselves. We should be better than that. It only takes a little while to search for some related works to tie into the article's thesis.
Activists and scientists have been proving that homogeneous forests aren't a net positive for either carbon sequestration or biodiversity for a very long time. I feel like there should be articles about this from at least the 90s, but here's a Mongabay article from 2008 on the subject Monoculture tree plantations are “green deserts” not forests. While the subject may sound like it's only talking about tree plantations in the vein of palm oil or eucalyptus, they compare the existence of these forests to forest utilized or stewarded by indigenous communities. We can then compare some of these explanations to actual consequences and forestry practices in Europe and the United States.
The takeaways from the Mongabay article are:
Basically, taking a short-term view of the utility of any forest is undoing, or having the opposite effect, of what was intended by near-sighted policy (or bad faith greenwashing). If we continue to used the band-aid approach, we'll never really solve the underlying issues.
Europe has largely stopped monoculture forest planting as a replacement for native forests. One of the benefits of this is reduced competition for scarce resources during droughts, possibly a reduction in droughts as different tree species help water retention in soil, and then the biggest benefit is of course a reduction in forest fires. The USDA has a brief explanation in this report (PDF, page 5) explaining that old growth forests tended to have more fire-resistant trees and were slower burning than homogeneous forests (which also tended to be planted more densely) that typically had younger trees unable to tap into resources deeper in the ground, impacting their health, fire resilience, and ability to live up to their potential (literally) in such a highly competitive environment.
Not all trees are equal and tree plantations are not a replacement for heterogeneous forests (even if you statistically accounted for trees 1:1, rather than density of an area).
But it's good to see some of these concerns being raised again and getting some traction among mainstream media and policy making (CoP28).
I don't have time to find my sources, but I do recall several studies that basically came to three related conclusions:
One of the more interesting things I have learned to be aware of over the past years is that being able to present scientific or academic findings as evidence to a claim is not the same thing as expertise in the subject. To say "science is wrong" would be incorrect, of course, but the one thing we really need to understand about science and academia is that, for the most part, every paper out there is going to be about one very specific thing. But real world systems with one variable quite simply do not exist. There are always multiple things at play, and in many case there are hundreds or thousands of different forces that are carefully balanced up against eachother. That is why expertise is important; you need people who have understanding about as much as the whole system as possible to be aware of issues that may arise when you are attempting to make changes to that system.
Absolutely agree. This is a really important way of looking at things. It's important not to let a single news article regurgitate only a single facet of an issue; the better articles explore related facets, or comparable research, supporting works from the past, and whatever else to provide a breadth of understanding, whether they're seeking to inform or persuade (there have been other Tildes threads on "persuasive" news outlets, so I'll skip that discussion here).
The same issue that exists with click-bait titles exists within the single-topic, narrow-focus articles themselves. We should be better than that. It only takes a little while to search for some related works to tie into the article's thesis.
Without paywall: https://archive.is/2JIMw