[extropy-chat] Trees

[Extropian Agroforestry Ventures Inc.]

 From a productive point of view add trees and plants  with economic value.
Ecology has to pay its way for being  more labour intensive.

Black Walnut and Oak  for long term (50 year ) growth.
Poplar to cut wind and harvest at 3-10 years depending on your level of  
water and nutrient inputs.
Hawthorn, buffaloberry, acacia, larch, chokecherry, raspberry, 
blackberry ,  for nutraceuticals.

We've done that over the last 15 years.
There is perennial wheat , hemp and other alternative additions which 
would turn a suburban acreage
into a useful place that is still  people friendly.
Forages that can be mower mulched into nutraceuticals for people or pets 
are better than just plain grass.

Of course, the factors rainfall/water and upper/lower temperatures will 
limit some choices.
There are mycorrhizal  additions to make most any soil work workable.

In areas such as ours trees are limited by any competition for water by 
surrounding  plants.
You have to create your ecosystem in stages.




Dan Clemmensen wrote:

> 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.
>
>
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