[extropy-chat] Trees

[Dan Clemmensen]

BillK wrote:

>On Sat, 8 Jan 2005 23:28:07 -0800, spike wrote:
>  
>
>>Mostly growing new forests where now are grassy plains.
>>
>>    
>>
>
>There are already many 'plant a tree' campaigns all around the world. 
>For one example, see:
><http://www.earthday.net/goals/trees/treeplanting.stm>
>"In our Global ReLeaf® campaign our goal is to help people around the
>world plant one billion new trees in the next five years. In the
>United States the goal of our Trees Across America is to help get one
>tree planted for every American by 2007."
>(US population - about 300 million)
>
>  
>
Spike proposed converting a couple of otherwise-unused  states in the 
western US into
tree farms, and did the math. The problem with this approach is water. 
As an alternative,
we can encourage the reconversion of marginal farmland in the eastern 
US: this actually makes
economic sense. We can also encourage trees rather than grass in the 
suburbs of the eastern US.
My house sits on 2 acres, 1.5 acres is wooded. This was treeless 
farmland until about 1950.
The natural progression moves from soft-wood through quick-growing 
hardwood to slow-growing
dense hardwood. My gut feeling is that without any management at all 
this progression sequesters
progressively more carbon per acre. If I desired to sequester carbon 
more aggressively, I would
simply collect most of the fallen leaves annually: This is done in 
denser suburbs in my area. Unfortunately,
the leaf collecting authorities then turn around and give the leaves 
away to gardeners, etc., who in a
mass act of environmental abuse then encourage them to rot and release 
the sequestered carbon back
into the atmosphere! Some people have no respect for the environment.

The effective re-forestation of the US east is a very real phenomenon. 
If we could achieve re-forestation
of other areas that were de-forested by civilization, we would sequester 
carbon more easily than we can by
attempting to build forests in semi-arid locations. The prime candidate 
areas include Greece, Rome, areas of
India and China, and much of Europe, all of which were heavily forested 
before human intervention.