Very true, I worked for a municipal tree planting organization in which we plant an assortment of native trees and shrubs . Thus more mindful than just 2-3 species. We also plant in green areas in the city that are not being used for recreation instead of turning over grass lands or ecologically important areas. In fact it is due to the publicity from the tree planting that help us get more funding to protect prairies, scrublands, and wetlands which are lower on peoples radar.
My biggest problem with planting tree actions is that companies in my country "buy" the safed CO2 that planted trees could potentially safe in the future, instead of reducing CO2 themselfes...
@@blablup1214 an economy needs an incentive to do anything, the incentive must always allow for growth, simply saying “stop expanding and using so much fossil fuels” is not going to work, because you’re basically shutting off growth, by making them PAY for efforts to improve research and to restore CO2, weirdly, everyone kind of wins, because it’s a law that people who own factories will grumble grumble about, but won’t cause collapses in sectors where usage of it is basically essentially to make any profit Edit: to be honest though it’s actually kind of resting on China, if they don’t do anything to slow down co2 we’re all fucked, they’re by far the biggest producers and do fucking nothing about it
@@ShortKingofKings Yes. It is completly okay if you do research or allow groth... But what our comapnies do is just bullshit. Often they produced as much CO2 as before. But for exmaple they buy "non existing trees in India". Those trees aren't even grown yet, but they already use the saved up CO2 of that tree to reduce the Co2 in Germany ? It is just not helping .... Yes the world is very depending on China. Or lets say the top 10 producers of Co2 that make up arround 67% of all CO2
Finally they talked about it. It's not enough to plant a tree, you need to create an ecosystem, including not only forests, but also meadows and swamps. But we need to remember that real forests can be restored only instead of fields, which we use to grow food. I think until we find an alternative way to produce food, we will not be able to restore true forests. But the fact that this is being done, although in small volumes, is already pleasing
In some places it may be possible with a long process of effort to reverse desertification which was originally caused by artificial land clearance and such. That would be a very long process though as the land has degraded so badly you can't just go back to the large original native species in one step again. You would need to introduce species that can deal with the marginal soil while helping to bind it together, add humus, increase water retention, and so on then reintroduce the original native species slowly as conditions improve sufficiently to support them. In many ways the process is going to be more like an assisted version of what nature does when colonising new land created by sandy deposits from the ocean for example. You need to start with the extremophiles that can deal with that poor quality land and start to build up both the biomass and soil quality. There are similar species that can begin the processes for inland areas that have been stripped of their native flora and in the process ended up having much of the nutrient rich layers eroded away. Nature colonised crappy soils in that area at least once in the past to make them as rich as they once were if we can identify the appropriate species and if necessary help colonisation by those suitable organisms we can perhaps accelerate that process happening again somewhat but you are probably looking at many decades to a few centuries to get those areas back to what they were in former forests and jungles that have been desertified through reckless clearance. After all the very reason those areas promptly died entirely when people tried to clear them for farming or whatever is that they had essentially been locally terraformed by biological mechanism to exist in the first place. Terraforming is not exactly a rapid process even with the benefit of human assistance it is going to take a while to restore the conditioning mechanisms that once made it possible for those areas to host the biodiversity that had previously been established.
You should look up the concept of permaculture and food forests. Essentially you plant a variety of perennial food bearing/support species of trees, shrubs, and vines, in an effort to create a diverse, resilient, ecosystem instead of one big monoculture. Right now it's only mostly being practiced on small scale farms but I'd love to see more research into scaling it up. Our current monocropping techniques are heavily subsidized and require barrels upon barrels of pesticides so any alternatives are worth exploring.
@@SupahGeck Yes, I know about this type of farming. It is eco-friendly. But I think this is well suited on a subsidiary farms only, because it requires a lot of manual labor to plant and harvest as minimum. I wanted to say more about hydroponics or in vitro meat, if these methods can provide us with nutritious foods with sufficient content of various vitamins. Since modern food production is more about mass than quality
If everyone went fully plant based vegan with their diet, then theoretically that can free up up to 75% of the currently used land for animal agriculture and growing food, which would be the size of the USA and Brazil. You can use all that land to return it back to nature and use human help/tech to speed up the recovery of fully functional ecosystems in those areas. Basically you dont need new ways of growing food to significantly alleviate our problems, altough any optimization in growing food would be even better. Maybe we will be able to fee up even more land from that remaining 25%.
We live in an area where the Emerald Ash Beetle have devastated our woodlands. On our plot with roughly 15 acres of forest we have an estimated loss of 30-40% of our trees. We're looking into what can be replanted in their place and will definitely keep diversity and native species in mind!
where are you located? I'm currently reading a book called "Restoring the Acadian Forest: a Guide to Forest Stewardship for Woodlot Owners in the Maritimes" and although it focuses on the natural forest ecosystem of NE America/ Eastern Canada, it has great tips on general forest management and regenerating natural forest ecosystems after large-scale disturbances a generally applicable takeaway from this reading would be to harvest only the more valuable dead ash trees (straight, healthy trunks); leave some deadwood standing for wildlife habitat and carbon storage; in the more affected areas, create favorable conditions for the regeneration of other species that are typical to your area's climactic forest ecosystem
@@francois-xavierdessureault8039 I'm in southern Illinois. Unfortunately we can't leave very many standing due to the risk to family and friends that walk the woods. They are actually rotting toward the top, and when there are moderate to strong winds it can make the tops tumble down on some unfortunate victim. All the trees we cut down though we leave in the woods, so that would store the carbon for a while. Thanks for the advice and book recommendation. I'll check it out now. Hope your weekend is great!
Unless you want to increase or change the species composition of your forest you don't need to plant anything. When EAB moved through our forests the stressed ash trees responded by producing lots of seed so we now have a ton of ash seedlings. Some of our ash have survived just as dutch elm disease did not get all the elms, EAB isn't getting all the ash. There is always a lot of dormant seed in forests soils, one issue is that brambles and shrubberies may sprout up faster than the tree seedlings slowing the natural regeneration of the forest in which case plating may be a good idea.
@@opossumlvr1023 I love the thought that the ash trees will survive, as they are a favorite in my family. I've heard of some level of tolerance and resistance against the EAB as well. In the mean time though I would like to fill in some of the emptier parts of our forest patches. I don't think our woods have that much diversity as of now. I see a majority of maple, thorn and the occasional oak, spruce, cypress, and persimmon. I'd like a large mix of at least 3-4 more species mixed in. So I guess my goal is to change the forest composition a little bit toward a more diverse landscape.
@@Mintstar_Oceanpop Forest and tree management requires long term thinking which most people lack. You do it for your kids and grand kids. You can see this lack of foresight in the vast majority of street and yard trees. Huge branch scars where large limbs have been pruned off giving fungus a place to grow and rot out the tree. The problem would not exist if people would prune their trees when they are small resulting in a spindly charlie brown looking tree for 10-20 years but amazing for 100 plus years.
Really, it’s very rarely necessary to actually plant anything at all. By far the most efficient thing we can do to restore ecosystems is to just stop what we were doing to disrupt them in the first place and get out of the way. The only exception is when we’ve made something locally extinct and there’s no natural seed bank, then we may need to introduce some from elsewhere to kick start the regeneration process. Even then, though, it’s far FAR better to sow seeds than to plant trees as even very young transplants find it much harder to form links with symbiotic soil microbes than seeds germinated in situ.
This is a great video, but I do have a small peeve. Harvesting the trees, does release some carbon from the unused roots an leaves, but all the timber is still stored carbon. If not used for burning, It can be stable for years. Worth noting that the machines used to harvest aren't usually carbon neutral, tho
This is true! But most of the products made from this timber aren't, say, long-lasting furniture you'd pass down through the generations...they're much shorter-lived products.
But what percentage of your household is made of wood? The amount of wood that enters your home for long term storage is relatively small - and about equal to what you throw out. However, your energy needs to cool and/or work your house are significant each year. If you could extract it form the air and burn it off for heat during the winter - that would be more carbon neutral than pumping up carbon from below the soil and releasing it in the atmosphere. So the best strategy should be a ban on subsurface carbon extraction (oil, natural gas, etc). And then to make our energy needs circular with whats available alternatively to carbon, and the remaining part should be circular with the carbon in the air.
Thank you for talking about how the ecosystem is more important than the tree. I'm in the middle of turning both my lawns into ecosystems. Native flowering plants and shrubs that produce berries, peppers, and seed pods for my front yard. Along with the oaks that were already there, it stays pretty to make HOA. A native short grass that I can get away with not cutting most of the year. While less pretty, but vital plants for other critters and a patch of tall grass in the back. Even, some are looked upon as dangerous but are host plants for important pollinators. I can't do much but I always try to think from an ecosystem stand point. Thanks to that I regularly see native anoles and skinks in the spring and summer time
Thank you for this. There are way too many low-knowledge but well-intentioned people out there that are taken for a ride in ways they think they are actually helping. See both silly Mr. Beast initiatives in Team Trees and Team Seas. It's so performative. People want easy, simply to understand answers that they can throw some money at and ignore to feel like they are "doing something positive". There is very little patience for "Well, it's a complex multi-faceted issue and throwing money at it, in of itself at least, isn't guaranteed to do anything, and worse yet can result in awful unintended consequences. The truth is that unless you are a politician or have access to politicians, there isn't a whole lot you can do to make meaningful change. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try of course, but rather that you need to help in ways that show promise of actually helping." That's not very sexy or reassuring.
"Team Seas" just sounds so much cooler than "Team Invest in Waste Managment Systems for Low Income Regions in South East Asain Countries so the Plastic Doesn't End Up In the Sea in the First Place"
@@gckbowers411 But the whole point is they aren't temporary solutions. They don't solve anything. They don't even put a dent in the goal they are trying to accomplish. That's the problem.
@@Tinil0 Removing plastic is a temporary solution to how much plastic there is in the ocean. Replanting trees is a partial solution to re-wilding deforested areas. Less efficient than a scientifically-crafted permanent solution backed by all governments, more efficient than nothing.
@@gckbowers411 Removing plastic, in the way that they are at least, is a rounding error on how much plastic is in the ocean. Plating trees, in the way that they are at least, produces MORE carbon in the short term, and in the long term creates monocultures that are fundamentally broken ecosystems. In some ways you are right, perfect shouldn't get in the way of good, the problem is that these initiatives were started by youtubers that understand nothing of environmental science and they chose methods that are more or less wastes of money that only exist to make people feel good about donating. There are plenty of other options that also aren't perfect but still help more.
Sadly often it's not about good intentions, but more like: "Oh no, people finally realize our company is horrible for the environment" "Just plant some tree's, that's the cheapest way to keep them quiet"
Just doing the research isn't enough ^^ But it is a step that shouldn't be skipped, yes. Though, considering timelines, an expert survey may be a good substitute (Pareto Principle and all that)
Trees planted in cities have lots of benefits. They provide shade, absorb emissions from cars, they can prevent floods by drinking excess rainwater (often floods in older cities results in mixing of sewage and rainwater into our rivers), make streets safer for pedestrians etc. walkable city by jeff speck goes into this in more detail.
The peat big example is taken straight from recent history: there’s “empty” land in the north of Scotland that’s boggy and remote, it’s so “useless” you can’t live there, or grow crops. In its wisdom, the government of the time (this was only 30 or so years ago) decided to incentivise a tree planting scheme to make three land more productive. The trees were planted, but they were the wrong trees in the wrong place, and they were all the same and planted in rows. Naturally, they struggled and died. In the meantime ecologists had started to study the unspoiled areas of bog and they discovered… one of the largest and most important natural carbon stores on the planet. Scottish peat bogs are up their with tropical rainforests in the rankings. Draining the wetlands to plant the trees released vastly more carbon than the sickly trees were ever going to be able to draw down. Humans really do suck sometimes.
US Government has done this repeatedly over the past 200 or so years--timber=economic value that "empty" grasslands "lack." There's also the thing where the feds encouraged enclosure and discouraged burning the prairie like it needs to be--this has meant there are way, waaaaaay too many trees on the Great Plains that interfere with what should be one of the largest carbon sinks on the planet. Trees use far more water than the grass does, which contributes to the groundwater problems we have (deep wells are the worst offenders, but scrub brush and trees draw up a lot of groundwater themselves or get it before it has a chance to sink down). Even trees which are technically native but are in the wrong place (ie, somewhere they wouldn't have been able to germinate or survive past sapling stage without human intervention), or wich are in too great a concentration, will suck the soil dry.
Good that you mentioned trash. This is a really big problem when we creating complex perennial plantings. I think that before planting plants, large fines for garbage should be introduced. After all, tall grass cannot be swept, such as a short lawn)
Ever since I was a child, I loved learning with the Friz. Another great video. It seems like common sense when approached like this, but I guess to enough people, a tree is a tree and that's not the case
TH-camr Fraser Cain recently bought a chunk of land in Canada that used to be a tree farm and is currently thinning out the farm trees and planting a variety of native ones.
My big thing is that we're so focused on saving the rainforest and not much is said about old growth trees in the US. Acres of trees are cut down to clear space to build subdivision full of single family homes when it would be a much better use of space and resources to build multiunit strategies.
And it's beneficial on so many fronts! Denser cities means more options for getting around like walking or cycling, which is great for your health, and being around people can be helpful for mental health and it can help build communities, to name a few upsides :)
@@emilmuhrman in most places, "denser" just means allowing townhomes, low rise apartments, and local shops that can be walked or cycled to (instead of restricting to single family homes with minimum lot sizes) - not highrises and multi-lane roads with minimal greenspace like some people fearmonger. With good planning, having denser neighbourhoods allows *more* people to have access to parks and areas that preserve natural habitats (instead of requiring a vehicle to drive outside the city).
@@geoff5623 But living with cramped in with neighbours on all sides and only rely on public parks when outside sonds like a dystopia. Small towns or even better rural allows for a way better less stressful life. But you rely on a car, which is a small price to pay for a good life.
@Emil Muhrman no-one is trying to get rid of small towns, and it's fine if someone wants to live in a small town or have acres to themselves (I have family that lives on a horse farm). I'm hardly cramped in, living in a 4 unit building with a small yard and garden, and I actually like my neighbours. The local parks vary from open grass with a tennis court and playground, to extensive mostly untouched Pacific Northwest forest. For some (many!) people, living in a highrise apartment is the least stressful way to live, because they have little to take care of and plenty of amenities. Car-centric low-density suburban development is just the worst compromise between having space and living in a city. Most people do live in cities and they can be made better for people and nature.
Actually tree farms do store carbon, especially if they are being cut down for lumber, as long as it isn't used for firewood that carbon will be stored in the wood of for example houses, furniture, etc which can last a long time, also provided they replant the trees. I know it's not that simple but i'm just saying tree farms aren't necessarily bad at least as far as carbon capture is concerned.
I don't think the video implied it was bad, just that it's not as good as it could be. 2:08 "[Tree Farms] do pull carbon from the air ... [but] they store less carbon and are more prone to disease and drought, which also severely limits their carbon storing abilities"
A large share of the carbon in tree farms isn’t turned into solid lumber and used for long-lasting construction though, a lot of it becomes processed products like sawdust, paper, IKEA furniture, etc. that isn’t designed to last. And all of *that* carbon typically returns to the atmosphere within 3 years.
@@CheepGuava but papers & furnitures do get recycled tho, so are u saying the carbon returns to the atmosphere in 3 yrs (such a nominal amount of time) because most paper, furniture actually get incinerated or something?( Not arguing ,Just curious)
@@rbn1111 I can try to dig up the original source I heard this from if TH-cam will allow me to link it, but basically “can be recycled” doesn’t always lead to “is recycled.” I’m pretty recycling conscious but scraps of paper still make it into the trash. Big companies are probably much less vigilant with properly recycling their waste. And again, cheap disposable furniture and other processed wood materials often just end up in the trash to decompose or get incinerated. Solid lumber is only ~60% of the tree’s usable product.
That is really well put! Our crew filmed a project that aims to reduce emissions from deforestation at the same time as increasing sustainable development in communities. We also wanted to show that we need more than planting trees per se to solve our problem. Many reforestation projects focus only on monoculture forests, which leads to other problems. We're happy to see projects that promote community empowerment, and we hope to see more about them in the near future.
Harvesting for timber that's used as building materials means it'll be out of the air for a very long time. Log farms are actually a good pipeline to sequester carbon into housing and other building projects.
That would be true if modern wooden constructions lasted more than a century but a drive through deprecated suburbs will show you that in actuality they painfully make it past 50 and rarely past a hundred. Trees can last longer than that and store carbon deep into the root network by staying in place longer in a stable ecosystem. Not to mention the carbon intensive industrial chain of forestry, transport, woodworking, transport, warehousing, transport, carpentry, teardown, transport, landfilling or incineration that it will experience across its entire useful lifespan. Did I mention transport ? :)
@@Soken50 Construction will continue no matter what, so I would rather it be a sink for carbon. Wooden structures are pretty capable of enduring for thousands of years as is evident by ancient temples in Asia. They need to be cared for of course, like anything else. The supply chain of anything is carbon intensive. Cement is, and so are any other pieces of construction. Those will not be resolved without green energy, so it's really nothing that's unique to logging. Most forests are torn down not for timber but for farmland. You want to save forests? Pay the nations who have the most forests to maintain and grow them as an international common utility, and redistribute food fairly so we don't have to keep massively increasing farmland while wasting so much of the product.
@@ShiroKage009 I'd rather they built durable constructions capable of withstanding disasters instead of the cheapest wood chips and glue bathed in flame retardant they can find. While wooden construction "can" last millenia it's made of sturdy beams of slow growth wood, not oversized popsicle sticks made from fast growing pine. Limestone and clay bricks are much better for the environment than construction lumber.
@@ShiroKage009 Earthquakes are rarely what tears down matchstick houses in the US, a strong wind or a fire though and all you're left with is a concrete slab...
Even cutting trees can be good. When you cut trees most of the carbon is still in wood, so if you make for example wooden furniture and plant next tree it is better for fight against global warming. Of course if you are not destroying old forest.
In New Zealand, we have this massive swamp which noone ever really talks about, or even knows about, we usually talk about forest or desert parks instead of the swamps, but actually swamps can store heaps of carbon, just as much or even more carbon than our forest parks do!
Swamps are also important for removing organic nitrogen from the system (turning back into N2), which can matter if there's a lot of agricultural pollution.
Swamps/bogs with the anaerobic decomposition of organic matter into peat is in fact the most carbon dense storage ecosystem. It literally burries carbon under the water and sediments. And the good news is that we dried a lot of them to make agricultural areas so just by rewilding watercourses we could greatly increase carbon storage and biodiversity without doing much of anything ourselves, water will just take its course and bring all the critters along with it to restore biodiversity as well.
Kingsley Dixon is a really cool dude who's research I admire, I'm glad to see he supports a content creator I also admire. It is amazing how conscice you are able to reduce such complex topics and it's so extremely important to make these important knowledges accessible for the general public.
Another problem that hasn't been mentioned here is the Albedo effect. Planting trees in areas that are often snow-covered might lead to a net-warming of the planet because snow reflects more of the incoming radiation than forests because it's brighter.
Very few trees have much of an ability to grow in places where that would be an issue to begin with, though. Excepting in grasslands, savanna & steppes.
I've planted a lot of acorns and conkers/horse chestnuts in the last three years. All of them where there's forest(or forest has been cut down). Hopefully some of them will make it to be a part of a diverse forest.
One of the more unspoken aspects of reforesting and foresting is the fact that due to increase temperatures trees might grow quicker, which sounds great on the surface level. However a tree absorbs more carbon its its growth phase, meaning that as tree as growing quicker and spending less time in the growth phase and that results in less carbon being absorbed. Neem trees are being chosen as widely popular tree for tree planation despite the fact these trees only have between 3-5 years of growth, which means these tree are to be frank woeful compared to other trees like Red Maples, Oaks and other trees.
I would think that the tree absorbs and holds an amount of carbon proportional to the weight of the tree. It absorbs the most during the growth phase because it's increasing its weight. By growing faster, it absorbs faster. It can't really grow faster while still using the same amount of carbon per unit time.
Yes. Yes! YES!!!!!!! I can’t agree with this strongly enough. Thank you so much for making this video, I will be sharing it everywhere. So much harm is done by well-meaning tree planting
Yesss. thank you. As a student majoring in forestry, I actually have to explain this to people because it's not as easy planting trees everywhere. You have to not only consider the carbon sequestration, but the survival of organisms within a forest because they all interconnect with one another.
The limit to this seems to be that you can't grow more than 1 forest in a particular area of land. Isn't some kind of regular chopping down and storing the trees carbon in the form of wood (that doesn't get burned) necessary in order to continue sequestering more and more carbon in a particular area instead of it being a one-and-done-can't-store-anymore deal?
Trees plant themselves, right? Stop mowing or paving or whatever, if that biome doesn't want to be a tundra or a desert for some good reason, One thing will lead to another and sure enough, there'll be a tree there. Soil conservation projects, special trees we want to plant, ok but this stuff is making me crazy.
Of course, if you want people to take global warming as an existential threat and not yet another conservation project, you've got to remember to treat it as such.
I agree with the general point, but also thought that planting trees to then use for lumber, was to also "capture" carbon in a material that can then be used for construction. Especially since I thought trees do most of the carbon capturing when they're growing, as they sequester carbon from the enviroinment to use for their wooden trunks. Does a forest with fully-grown trees that stay mostly stable still sequester a good quantity of carbon from the air each year?
And that's why suburbia isn't "natural" nor "ecological" despite what people believe. Low-density housing destroys forests that get paved with roads with a few trees between houses, when a forest with its own ecosystem is required.
OMG yes, finally some edutainers said it. I've argued about this for years with people who said we just have to plant trees to solve climate change, despite me pointing out the biodiversity, fracturation of habitats, monocultures, commercial plots,... And they'd still insist it's the right approach by pointing at some questinable carbon offset program like established titles or non profits like team trees, it's so depressing. At least now I'll be able to refer them to this video. One thing you haven't mentioned but also plays a role is the change in albedo resulting in ecosystems absorbing more heat, forests are a lot darker than grasslands and thus trap more heat near the surface rather than reflecting the majority of it.
Good to know. Where i live in Texas there's a lot of deforestation going on. It seems to me that stopping it would be far safer, and easier, than planting new new forest.
i heard someone say anglo america is in love with wanting to plant trees to make forests because of big timber. lots of north america was grasslands/prairies before european colonization. if we want to combat global warming AND maintain biodiversity, we have to use plants native to the local ecology
I think I've also read that microorganisms in the ocean like algae, plankton, and also seaweed (which of course isn't a microorganism) actually capture way more CO2 than trees do
when we planting trees we are doing that mostly not because of CO2 reasons... we just need wood for humanity's everyday life... thats why we are focused on genetically modified fast growing species with good tolerance against most common deseases and pests
I mean, if you cut down a tree and use the lumber to build a house or make furniture, its carbon wont get reintroduced to the environment for up to a century or more, and it frees the land for new trees that can suck up even more carbon.
Why does chopping down a tree release the carbon it stores? As long as it isn't burned for firewood, wherever the wood ends up still stores the carbon right? If you replant another tree in the space of the old one, isn't that better than planting just one tree?
The carbon doesnt all get released from the poles - a lot of it does stay stored in whatever it gets turned into. But it does get released from the rotting branches and stumps!
@@MinuteEarth That applies to natural old groth forests as well, as there is a lot of carbon emitted from dead things. Might not be the same but if you replant when you harvest then it will sequester more carbon in the long run if you use the wood for building since you are using several forests worth of logs over the single forest that is left alone.
I think better solution would be returning carbon to earth. Because the problem is that we are mining carbon and other resources and then releasing carbon into the air and even if we plant forests there still will be more carbon then it was. If we planted trees and than harvested them and put them underground we would free the space for new trees to be planted and put carbon back into the ground. Trees can burn, die or be harvested but if wood gets put into the ground chance of carbon escaping is much smaller.
I planted a baby tree in my late 20s, and I'm now 50. The tree is a tower today! It's a pine tree in my back yard, and it blocks the view of what used to be a creepy neighbor. It took years for the tree to get big enough to block that view, and the creepy guy moved away long ago soon after we put up a fence. Regardless, my tall tree somehow makes me feel safe. I know that's silly, but it's stood like a guard outside the house for so many years. The birds like it too. We found a robin's nest in it with blue eggs once. We gave it a little fence of its own to protect the eggs from our dogs that season. Anyway, there used to be a huge puddle that would gather in the yard any time it rained, and the tree soaks up that water now, so we have a lawn instead of a puddle thanks to our tree! I know this isn't exactly on topic, but it's my only good tree story really. And my comment is mainly just for the algorithm. I want lots of people to hear this video's message.
One thing I want to add, which I got from Andrew Millison (www.youtube.com/@amillison), is that you can use trees to protect crops from wind and boost yields. So in addition to planting native trees where they used to be, we can plant them to not only store carbon but boost crop yields
@@sapientisessevolo4364 Ah, yeah with windbreaks there's a trade-off between their crop protection abilities and the land they take up. Hence the use of cypress, tall and thin.
I'm so glad that somebody has made this video and brought up this reality. We are so desperate to find something good to pat ourselves on the back for, we'll call nearly anything a good deed, especially if it allows us to continue other destructive behaviors.
Are there recommendations for making forests with more human-compatible food production? My nearby parks are like 95% pine, oak, hickory (not the palatable species), birch, willow, etc, with only the occasional pecan, persimmon, paw paw, mulberry, blackberry, gooseberry, currant. I would trade the 50ft tall oak trees in my yard for 50ft tall pecan trees any day.
@@azzy-551 Yes, I know acorns can be processed into flour but that isn’t as “accepted” as being human food as other nut trees. As far as syrup goes, most places won’t let you tap without permission or a license.
I'm happy to learn that it's much more than just planting trees, but what can we as the viewer do to help? Promoting awareness is important, but I want to know what I can do at an individual level to help solve the problem.
To decrease the temp rises, we need to increase reflectivity, e.g. by turning roofs white, restoring the ice in the poles, white roads no cloud chemicals tho, that's just asking for disaster right?
I would definitely file that under the efficiency improvements to our constructed environment. White roofs are amazing for hotter climates as they reflect a ton of heat which also lowers fhe cooling burden which has 2 benefits, less AC's concentrating heat and generating heat, and less electricity generation which means less fossil fuels burned to generate electricity means less emissions. (Unfortunately we still burn a ton of fossil fuels for electricity) Another thing we could do is eliminate pointless electrical loads such as light pollution (dark sky light fixtures prevent light from going directing into space without even touching the ground and being useful) and electronic billboards like times square. (I am genuinely curious how much carbon times square releases a year just to be a distopian advertisement space)
brilliant as always, although I feel that the most important point hasn't been pointed out, is that the solution is obviously EMITTING LESS CARBON. sure its helpful to counteract ones carbon footprint by taking responsibility (tree planting, carbon footprint subscription services etc) but those individual focused solutions offered by private industries would never work in counteracting the emissions of the big polluters nor force them to emmet less carbon. we don't need to enhance the planet's defences, we need to eliminate what's making it sick.
It’s far more complicated than that. It’s a whole field actually called “restoration ecology”. Many times it is not possible or ideal to plant what was there before. Sometimes we don’t know. As close to the “original” as possible sometimes require using a different plant (although native). Hell a lot of time, you can’t even just plant it right away. In many cases you need to plant something else before planting what you want
I have a small piece of land in north Carolina that used to be a grassland over a hundred years ago. Within the last 50 years, it has transformed itself into a native woodland full of pine and oak. There's only a handful of open parts to it now, Its best to usually let nature take its natural course while giving a helping hand here and there
Depends, if it is naturally a grass land then it might need fires to maintain itself. I like forest as much as the next guy but we should try to maintain what used to be here
@@alejandromartinez3475 And big grazing herd animals which gept grasslands open and fertile by trampling, eating and popping all the small shrubbery and young trees but humans decimated them all.
Thank you for this video. It has given me a new perspective on tree planting. But dont throw the baby out with the bathwater. Planting trees is still maybe the quckest and most reliable method of storing carbon. Its about time we started planting trees that are CRISPR engeneered to store as much carbon as possible and to grow as quckly as possible under the new condition the genus has been planted in. And then to select locations where the ecosystem isn’t as rich and carbon heavy to manipulate it and plant the trees there. There are still ways. Planting trees simply has to get more sophisticated to work.
Just a side note on protecting out planet from environmental damage: regarding carbon it's not only about storing it, it's also very much about not releasing it in the first place. Great video nonetheless.
One bit that you didn't respect was that tree farms that are harvested for building materials, etc are carbon sinks in another way. Much of the wood harvested from these trees is typically used in construction that will stay as a carbon sink for 50 or more years. In the meantime, a new crop of trees can be grown to be harvested again and again every 20 years or so, each time storing more carbon. In this way tree farms can actually be some of the BEST carbon sinks. Obviously native forests are good for other reasons, nd much of tree farming is used for short lived paper products, etc that don't act as good carbon sinks, but it is a bit disingenuous to say that tree farms in general are bad carbon storage systems, when they are actually among the best, if not the best, when managed well.
If the timber is used to build stuff it's still stored carbon. It also leaves space so new trees can be planted. Plant trees, cut them down and "store" them, plant new trees, cut them down....
Isn't most plantation timber used in building and construction? So we are effectively storing CO2 in the frameworks of our houses. We could also burn produce from plantations in anoxic conditions to produce biochar which can be used as aggregate in plantation soils and infrastructure.
If you make everything from wood you're also storing carbon. Wood house, wood furniture, wooden plates and spoons, wooden bowls...etc. Leaving a forested region alone is like trying to bail water from a sinking ship but once your bucket is full setting it down and leaving it. Instead of dumping it out then scooping up more water.
Grasslands are actually much more efficient at carbon storage than trees. Trees store the majority of their carbon above ground, which means that most is just released back into the atmosphere once they die. Grasslands store the majority of their carbon underground, meaning most stays underground when the grasses die.
That is why Arbor day is nice when you get trees for donating. They give you a pretty good variety of trees that are native to the area, grow fairly quickly, and help support the local ecosystem.
The implication that Ms. Frizzle would be as careless about how she plants trees as she is about misplacing the field trip permission forms is slander that I just won't tolerate.
Since I was 5, my career has been forestry and tree care. I have helped regenerate native ground cover, on depleted soil and in years of drought. By thinning out the predominant tree species and mulching much of the material back onto the baren soil. The soil was slowly fertilized and ground covering plants native to the ecosystem took hold. My thinning and removal methodologies are based on the fire cycle of this forest, my end goal is to do 75% of what a ground fire would do. And mulching is one of the most beneficial ways to help the forest floors. It can turn dry dusty soil black in 3 years of drought. Trim the dead limbs off a tree, it will capture more carbon. Cut out sapplings too close to better established trees, the remaining trees do better. It also allows sunlight to hit the forest floor.
There are over 36 trees and bushes in my yard, not including what we try to grow to eat and the ivy that tries to choke out everything. It's all about slow additions. Since I am in charge of the food gardening, I try companion planting so we might actually get produce before the pests do. The top two "Everyone's best friend" are marigolds and nasturtiums. Both can repel/attract certain pests to protect the other plants in the bed without harming them. They are also eatable, though in my experience marigolds taste like nothing and don't do anything to my tea so I lean more towards the peppery taste of nasturtiums. This year, I hope to get another raspberry plant to help my double gold, since it only produced a handful this year. Since this type rides the line of the two different ways to take care of a raspberry, I have the option of choosing either a red/gold or a black/purple without much worry. And I think we finally found the area in the yard that the average tomatoes will grow (we've only had success with the cherry breeds.) I'm excited for this year's garden...as soon as we cut back on that ivy again.
I can just hear Bob Ross in my head. "And over here will put a happy little tree with happy little arms... that kind of look like horns... will just call those happy little demon trees a happy little accident"
2:18 The carbon continues to be stored within the wood until it rots or is burned. If the wood is being used for construction, or carpentry or any sort of craft, then it still continues to act as a carbon store. Wood plantations are just as effective, if not more so, than natural forests at storing carbon.
I'm wondering how wood houses could play into the carbon storage of farmed forests. Like that could in a way give you far more effective carbon storage per acre. But I could also imagine that it's not enough to offset a diverse and thriving ecosystem
So Ecosia and Treecard are doing it right! They work with local tree planting organizations to plant diverse ranges of native trees in endangered areas torn down by deforestation!
2:18 Chopping the trees afterwards doesn't sound necessarily bad. A lot of the carbon in them remains in the lumber that becomes furniture and construction materials. That way, we could be maximizing the amount of trapped carbon per square meter. Also, it is a lucrative activity, so you don't need people's charity to make it happen.
Well said. Grasslands particularly are so under studied and thus under valued for their part. It also had always bothered me that here in the US conservation will pay to plant trees in what usually amounts to swampy farmland. I rarely see any amount of trees actually doing well but gov will still claim it works and the farmer got paid for unfarmable ground so it won't change.
It looks like Miss Frizzle needs to go on a field trip to learn how to plant trees properly. I like trying to grow miniature trees in pots. The obsession started when I spat a lemon seed from my lemon water into a potted spiderplant. And you can miniaturize trees with what's called a 'heading cut'. Then as the tree grows you sculpt the branches outwards and downwards to maximize the available space for food and foliage to grow. You can also make what's called an espalier, where the tree you plant is trimmed on one side so it fits snug with a wall or other hard surface and then carefully train the branches outwards against the wall in distinct rows. These two techniques allow someone to plant trees in locations they normally wouldn't fit in outside, and fit a small potted tropical fruit tree into your home. There's also a youtuber who grew coffee in his livingroom; MI Gardener, and his videos about doing this are worth a watch. He rigged up lights, a system for moving the trees outside with little effort, and then used pot size and pruning techniques to keep the trees from getting too tall. Coffee needs iron and volcanic soil though. I managed to get a small bag of the latter from Chewy but it cost like 30 bucks for a 4 liter bag. The former hasn't been a problem because I have iron pipes in my building that are rusting. Anyway, I'm glad you touched on agroforestry. Food forests are fascinating projects to hear about. And by the way all you gardeners out there, no till or low till farming methods also help soil retain water. Only till or dig when you have no other choice.
When all that Mr.Beast thing was going around, this is what I told people. Also something bugged me was that why was there a Dollar donation thing? I know a few people who've been planting trees for about 50 years. They never asked for money. What did Mr.Beast achieve?
Nice that someone cares about carbon. There are many forest farmers in my region. Forest farmers are people who plant trees to collect carbon and then in 40 to 80 years use that carbon for energy production. Because faster success was sought, trees were planted that can be harvested in 40 years. Unfortunately, climate change has killed the trees. Only the areas where the slow-growing trees (80 years and more) remain. Planting trees to protect the local climate is tedious and costs time and money. But the previous generations have taught us to protect the forest so that it protects our climate. Forest is always a matter for generations. In these time intervals you have to think about it.
Very true, I worked for a municipal tree planting organization in which we plant an assortment of native trees and shrubs . Thus more mindful than just 2-3 species. We also plant in green areas in the city that are not being used for recreation instead of turning over grass lands or ecologically important areas. In fact it is due to the publicity from the tree planting that help us get more funding to protect prairies, scrublands, and wetlands which are lower on peoples radar.
Do you live in montreal
My biggest problem with planting tree actions is that companies in my country "buy" the safed CO2 that planted trees could potentially safe in the future, instead of reducing CO2 themselfes...
@@blablup1214 an economy needs an incentive to do anything, the incentive must always allow for growth, simply saying “stop expanding and using so much fossil fuels” is not going to work, because you’re basically shutting off growth, by making them PAY for efforts to improve research and to restore CO2, weirdly, everyone kind of wins, because it’s a law that people who own factories will grumble grumble about, but won’t cause collapses in sectors where usage of it is basically essentially to make any profit
Edit: to be honest though it’s actually kind of resting on China, if they don’t do anything to slow down co2 we’re all fucked, they’re by far the biggest producers and do fucking nothing about it
@@ShortKingofKings Yes. It is completly okay if you do research or allow groth... But what our comapnies do is just bullshit. Often they produced as much CO2 as before. But for exmaple they buy "non existing trees in India". Those trees aren't even grown yet, but they already use the saved up CO2 of that tree to reduce the Co2 in Germany ?
It is just not helping ....
Yes the world is very depending on China. Or lets say the top 10 producers of Co2 that make up arround 67% of all CO2
@@KevinMcFlying I worked in Mississauga so close by
Finally they talked about it. It's not enough to plant a tree, you need to create an ecosystem, including not only forests, but also meadows and swamps. But we need to remember that real forests can be restored only instead of fields, which we use to grow food. I think until we find an alternative way to produce food, we will not be able to restore true forests. But the fact that this is being done, although in small volumes, is already pleasing
In some places it may be possible with a long process of effort to reverse desertification which was originally caused by artificial land clearance and such. That would be a very long process though as the land has degraded so badly you can't just go back to the large original native species in one step again. You would need to introduce species that can deal with the marginal soil while helping to bind it together, add humus, increase water retention, and so on then reintroduce the original native species slowly as conditions improve sufficiently to support them. In many ways the process is going to be more like an assisted version of what nature does when colonising new land created by sandy deposits from the ocean for example. You need to start with the extremophiles that can deal with that poor quality land and start to build up both the biomass and soil quality. There are similar species that can begin the processes for inland areas that have been stripped of their native flora and in the process ended up having much of the nutrient rich layers eroded away. Nature colonised crappy soils in that area at least once in the past to make them as rich as they once were if we can identify the appropriate species and if necessary help colonisation by those suitable organisms we can perhaps accelerate that process happening again somewhat but you are probably looking at many decades to a few centuries to get those areas back to what they were in former forests and jungles that have been desertified through reckless clearance.
After all the very reason those areas promptly died entirely when people tried to clear them for farming or whatever is that they had essentially been locally terraformed by biological mechanism to exist in the first place. Terraforming is not exactly a rapid process even with the benefit of human assistance it is going to take a while to restore the conditioning mechanisms that once made it possible for those areas to host the biodiversity that had previously been established.
You should look up the concept of permaculture and food forests. Essentially you plant a variety of perennial food bearing/support species of trees, shrubs, and vines, in an effort to create a diverse, resilient, ecosystem instead of one big monoculture. Right now it's only mostly being practiced on small scale farms but I'd love to see more research into scaling it up. Our current monocropping techniques are heavily subsidized and require barrels upon barrels of pesticides so any alternatives are worth exploring.
@@SupahGeck Yes, I know about this type of farming. It is eco-friendly. But I think this is well suited on a subsidiary farms only, because it requires a lot of manual labor to plant and harvest as minimum. I wanted to say more about hydroponics or in vitro meat, if these methods can provide us with nutritious foods with sufficient content of various vitamins. Since modern food production is more about mass than quality
If everyone went fully plant based vegan with their diet, then theoretically that can free up up to 75% of the currently used land for animal agriculture and growing food, which would be the size of the USA and Brazil. You can use all that land to return it back to nature and use human help/tech to speed up the recovery of fully functional ecosystems in those areas. Basically you dont need new ways of growing food to significantly alleviate our problems, altough any optimization in growing food would be even better. Maybe we will be able to fee up even more land from that remaining 25%.
just wanted to credit you for your concise and intelligent comment
We live in an area where the Emerald Ash Beetle have devastated our woodlands. On our plot with roughly 15 acres of forest we have an estimated loss of 30-40% of our trees. We're looking into what can be replanted in their place and will definitely keep diversity and native species in mind!
where are you located? I'm currently reading a book called "Restoring the Acadian Forest: a Guide to Forest Stewardship for Woodlot Owners in the Maritimes" and although it focuses on the natural forest ecosystem of NE America/ Eastern Canada, it has great tips on general forest management and regenerating natural forest ecosystems after large-scale disturbances
a generally applicable takeaway from this reading would be to harvest only the more valuable dead ash trees (straight, healthy trunks); leave some deadwood standing for wildlife habitat and carbon storage; in the more affected areas, create favorable conditions for the regeneration of other species that are typical to your area's climactic forest ecosystem
@@francois-xavierdessureault8039 I'm in southern Illinois. Unfortunately we can't leave very many standing due to the risk to family and friends that walk the woods. They are actually rotting toward the top, and when there are moderate to strong winds it can make the tops tumble down on some unfortunate victim. All the trees we cut down though we leave in the woods, so that would store the carbon for a while.
Thanks for the advice and book recommendation. I'll check it out now. Hope your weekend is great!
Unless you want to increase or change the species composition of your forest you don't need to plant anything. When EAB moved through our forests the stressed ash trees responded by producing lots of seed so we now have a ton of ash seedlings. Some of our ash have survived just as dutch elm disease did not get all the elms, EAB isn't getting all the ash. There is always a lot of dormant seed in forests soils, one issue is that brambles and shrubberies may sprout up faster than the tree seedlings slowing the natural regeneration of the forest in which case plating may be a good idea.
@@opossumlvr1023 I love the thought that the ash trees will survive, as they are a favorite in my family. I've heard of some level of tolerance and resistance against the EAB as well. In the mean time though I would like to fill in some of the emptier parts of our forest patches.
I don't think our woods have that much diversity as of now. I see a majority of maple, thorn and the occasional oak, spruce, cypress, and persimmon. I'd like a large mix of at least 3-4 more species mixed in.
So I guess my goal is to change the forest composition a little bit toward a more diverse landscape.
@@Mintstar_Oceanpop Forest and tree management requires long term thinking which most people lack. You do it for your kids and grand kids. You can see this lack of foresight in the vast majority of street and yard trees. Huge branch scars where large limbs have been pruned off giving fungus a place to grow and rot out the tree. The problem would not exist if people would prune their trees when they are small resulting in a spindly charlie brown looking tree for 10-20 years but amazing for 100 plus years.
Tl;dr: don’t maximize tree planting, plant thoughtfully relative to the ecosystem.
Really, it’s very rarely necessary to actually plant anything at all. By far the most efficient thing we can do to restore ecosystems is to just stop what we were doing to disrupt them in the first place and get out of the way. The only exception is when we’ve made something locally extinct and there’s no natural seed bank, then we may need to introduce some from elsewhere to kick start the regeneration process. Even then, though, it’s far FAR better to sow seeds than to plant trees as even very young transplants find it much harder to form links with symbiotic soil microbes than seeds germinated in situ.
This is a great video, but I do have a small peeve. Harvesting the trees, does release some carbon from the unused roots an leaves, but all the timber is still stored carbon. If not used for burning, It can be stable for years. Worth noting that the machines used to harvest aren't usually carbon neutral, tho
This is true! But most of the products made from this timber aren't, say, long-lasting furniture you'd pass down through the generations...they're much shorter-lived products.
Georgia-Pacific would take issue with that. As in where do you think the lumber for the housing industry comes from?
Also the systems to move that timber then process it into products, then again moving those products to markets tend to be carbon intensive as well
@@XDarkxSteel then leave all ground fallow.
But what percentage of your household is made of wood?
The amount of wood that enters your home for long term storage is relatively small - and about equal to what you throw out.
However, your energy needs to cool and/or work your house are significant each year. If you could extract it form the air and burn it off for heat during the winter - that would be more carbon neutral than pumping up carbon from below the soil and releasing it in the atmosphere.
So the best strategy should be a ban on subsurface carbon extraction (oil, natural gas, etc). And then to make our energy needs circular with whats available alternatively to carbon, and the remaining part should be circular with the carbon in the air.
Thank you for talking about how the ecosystem is more important than the tree. I'm in the middle of turning both my lawns into ecosystems.
Native flowering plants and shrubs that produce berries, peppers, and seed pods for my front yard. Along with the oaks that were already there, it stays pretty to make HOA. A native short grass that I can get away with not cutting most of the year.
While less pretty, but vital plants for other critters and a patch of tall grass in the back. Even, some are looked upon as dangerous but are host plants for important pollinators.
I can't do much but I always try to think from an ecosystem stand point. Thanks to that I regularly see native anoles and skinks in the spring and summer time
Thank you for this. There are way too many low-knowledge but well-intentioned people out there that are taken for a ride in ways they think they are actually helping. See both silly Mr. Beast initiatives in Team Trees and Team Seas. It's so performative. People want easy, simply to understand answers that they can throw some money at and ignore to feel like they are "doing something positive". There is very little patience for "Well, it's a complex multi-faceted issue and throwing money at it, in of itself at least, isn't guaranteed to do anything, and worse yet can result in awful unintended consequences. The truth is that unless you are a politician or have access to politicians, there isn't a whole lot you can do to make meaningful change. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try of course, but rather that you need to help in ways that show promise of actually helping." That's not very sexy or reassuring.
"Team Seas" just sounds so much cooler than "Team Invest in Waste Managment Systems for Low Income Regions in South East Asain Countries so the Plastic Doesn't End Up In the Sea in the First Place"
Good solutions>temporary solutions>bitching about temporary solutions
@@gckbowers411 But the whole point is they aren't temporary solutions. They don't solve anything. They don't even put a dent in the goal they are trying to accomplish. That's the problem.
@@Tinil0 Removing plastic is a temporary solution to how much plastic there is in the ocean. Replanting trees is a partial solution to re-wilding deforested areas. Less efficient than a scientifically-crafted permanent solution backed by all governments, more efficient than nothing.
@@gckbowers411 Removing plastic, in the way that they are at least, is a rounding error on how much plastic is in the ocean. Plating trees, in the way that they are at least, produces MORE carbon in the short term, and in the long term creates monocultures that are fundamentally broken ecosystems.
In some ways you are right, perfect shouldn't get in the way of good, the problem is that these initiatives were started by youtubers that understand nothing of environmental science and they chose methods that are more or less wastes of money that only exist to make people feel good about donating. There are plenty of other options that also aren't perfect but still help more.
Like with everything else, we just need to do diligent research to mitigate unintended consequences.
Good intentions are the start, but must be complemented with knowledge and respect for a complicated problem
Sadly often it's not about good intentions, but more like:
"Oh no, people finally realize our company is horrible for the environment"
"Just plant some tree's, that's the cheapest way to keep them quiet"
th-cam.com/users/clipUgkxFr9SPcXtE-Lki1ZBDG9oI-3r-oTe5eA_
@@fred_bauer Yep it's all about PR to help drive more revenue. Capitalism is anti-environment at its core.
Just doing the research isn't enough ^^ But it is a step that shouldn't be skipped, yes.
Though, considering timelines, an expert survey may be a good substitute (Pareto Principle and all that)
Trees planted in cities have lots of benefits. They provide shade, absorb emissions from cars, they can prevent floods by drinking excess rainwater (often floods in older cities results in mixing of sewage and rainwater into our rivers), make streets safer for pedestrians etc. walkable city by jeff speck goes into this in more detail.
You should plant cabbages 😂😂😂
except cities try and chop em down as fast as they are an expense whenever there is a bad storm especially if they are around hydro lines or houses.
@@ADobbin1 I live in Arizona and if you aske me we have too many trees. It's a dessert, not a forest. The trees are taking too much water.
@@feynstein1004 physics isn't a real science.
@@forral1614 😂😂😂
The thought never occurred to me that someone would attempt forestation in a non-forest environment.
Right? Who’s planting in peat bogs anyway??
That is pretty much the intuitive approach. Pick some land with no trees, assuming that's a good thing no matter what.
The peat big example is taken straight from recent history: there’s “empty” land in the north of Scotland that’s boggy and remote, it’s so “useless” you can’t live there, or grow crops. In its wisdom, the government of the time (this was only 30 or so years ago) decided to incentivise a tree planting scheme to make three land more productive. The trees were planted, but they were the wrong trees in the wrong place, and they were all the same and planted in rows. Naturally, they struggled and died. In the meantime ecologists had started to study the unspoiled areas of bog and they discovered… one of the largest and most important natural carbon stores on the planet. Scottish peat bogs are up their with tropical rainforests in the rankings. Draining the wetlands to plant the trees released vastly more carbon than the sickly trees were ever going to be able to draw down. Humans really do suck sometimes.
@@ellieban Chesterton's Fence applies well to this. Until you know exactly how an ecosystem works, you shouldn't disrupt it.
US Government has done this repeatedly over the past 200 or so years--timber=economic value that "empty" grasslands "lack."
There's also the thing where the feds encouraged enclosure and discouraged burning the prairie like it needs to be--this has meant there are way, waaaaaay too many trees on the Great Plains that interfere with what should be one of the largest carbon sinks on the planet.
Trees use far more water than the grass does, which contributes to the groundwater problems we have (deep wells are the worst offenders, but scrub brush and trees draw up a lot of groundwater themselves or get it before it has a chance to sink down). Even trees which are technically native but are in the wrong place (ie, somewhere they wouldn't have been able to germinate or survive past sapling stage without human intervention), or wich are in too great a concentration, will suck the soil dry.
agreed, I've seen big piece of land in the city close to the river turn into a literal forest with it's own bio with birds, crabs,
and also junk
Good that you mentioned trash. This is a really big problem when we creating complex perennial plantings. I think that before planting plants, large fines for garbage should be introduced. After all, tall grass cannot be swept, such as a short lawn)
That's just stored carbon.
But trash is an important habitat for mosquitos. Will no one think of the mosquitos??
@@LimeyLassen Mosquitoes are bad. They spread diseases. I hope they go extinct.
@@LimeyLassen While mosquitos do need care, I simply despise them because of the itch juice.
Ever since I was a child, I loved learning with the Friz. Another great video. It seems like common sense when approached like this, but I guess to enough people, a tree is a tree and that's not the case
?
Ur still kid bro
The Friz!
15h ago???
This vid was 30 mins ago
TH-camr Fraser Cain recently bought a chunk of land in Canada that used to be a tree farm and is currently thinning out the farm trees and planting a variety of native ones.
My big thing is that we're so focused on saving the rainforest and not much is said about old growth trees in the US. Acres of trees are cut down to clear space to build subdivision full of single family homes when it would be a much better use of space and resources to build multiunit strategies.
And it's beneficial on so many fronts! Denser cities means more options for getting around like walking or cycling, which is great for your health, and being around people can be helpful for mental health and it can help build communities, to name a few upsides :)
@@WhyAreAllUsernamesTaken8494 Living dens is the worst way/ no way to live.
@@emilmuhrman in most places, "denser" just means allowing townhomes, low rise apartments, and local shops that can be walked or cycled to (instead of restricting to single family homes with minimum lot sizes) - not highrises and multi-lane roads with minimal greenspace like some people fearmonger. With good planning, having denser neighbourhoods allows *more* people to have access to parks and areas that preserve natural habitats (instead of requiring a vehicle to drive outside the city).
@@geoff5623 But living with cramped in with neighbours on all sides and only rely on public parks when outside sonds like a dystopia. Small towns or even better rural allows for a way better less stressful life.
But you rely on a car, which is a small price to pay for a good life.
@Emil Muhrman no-one is trying to get rid of small towns, and it's fine if someone wants to live in a small town or have acres to themselves (I have family that lives on a horse farm).
I'm hardly cramped in, living in a 4 unit building with a small yard and garden, and I actually like my neighbours. The local parks vary from open grass with a tennis court and playground, to extensive mostly untouched Pacific Northwest forest. For some (many!) people, living in a highrise apartment is the least stressful way to live, because they have little to take care of and plenty of amenities.
Car-centric low-density suburban development is just the worst compromise between having space and living in a city. Most people do live in cities and they can be made better for people and nature.
Actually tree farms do store carbon, especially if they are being cut down for lumber, as long as it isn't used for firewood that carbon will be stored in the wood of for example houses, furniture, etc which can last a long time, also provided they replant the trees. I know it's not that simple but i'm just saying tree farms aren't necessarily bad at least as far as carbon capture is concerned.
I don't think the video implied it was bad, just that it's not as good as it could be. 2:08 "[Tree Farms] do pull carbon from the air ... [but] they store less carbon and are more prone to disease and drought, which also severely limits their carbon storing abilities"
@@uuuuuuuuh3 The part where she says if they're cut down they don't store carbon anymore is the part he disagrees with.
A large share of the carbon in tree farms isn’t turned into solid lumber and used for long-lasting construction though, a lot of it becomes processed products like sawdust, paper, IKEA furniture, etc. that isn’t designed to last. And all of *that* carbon typically returns to the atmosphere within 3 years.
@@CheepGuava but papers & furnitures do get recycled tho, so are u saying the carbon returns to the atmosphere in 3 yrs (such a nominal amount of time) because most paper, furniture actually get incinerated or something?( Not arguing ,Just curious)
@@rbn1111 I can try to dig up the original source I heard this from if TH-cam will allow me to link it, but basically “can be recycled” doesn’t always lead to “is recycled.” I’m pretty recycling conscious but scraps of paper still make it into the trash. Big companies are probably much less vigilant with properly recycling their waste. And again, cheap disposable furniture and other processed wood materials often just end up in the trash to decompose or get incinerated. Solid lumber is only ~60% of the tree’s usable product.
That is really well put! Our crew filmed a project that aims to reduce emissions from deforestation at the same time as increasing sustainable development in communities. We also wanted to show that we need more than planting trees per se to solve our problem. Many reforestation projects focus only on monoculture forests, which leads to other problems. We're happy to see projects that promote community empowerment, and we hope to see more about them in the near future.
Harvesting for timber that's used as building materials means it'll be out of the air for a very long time. Log farms are actually a good pipeline to sequester carbon into housing and other building projects.
That would be true if modern wooden constructions lasted more than a century but a drive through deprecated suburbs will show you that in actuality they painfully make it past 50 and rarely past a hundred. Trees can last longer than that and store carbon deep into the root network by staying in place longer in a stable ecosystem. Not to mention the carbon intensive industrial chain of forestry, transport, woodworking, transport, warehousing, transport, carpentry, teardown, transport, landfilling or incineration that it will experience across its entire useful lifespan. Did I mention transport ? :)
@@Soken50 Construction will continue no matter what, so I would rather it be a sink for carbon. Wooden structures are pretty capable of enduring for thousands of years as is evident by ancient temples in Asia. They need to be cared for of course, like anything else.
The supply chain of anything is carbon intensive. Cement is, and so are any other pieces of construction. Those will not be resolved without green energy, so it's really nothing that's unique to logging.
Most forests are torn down not for timber but for farmland. You want to save forests? Pay the nations who have the most forests to maintain and grow them as an international common utility, and redistribute food fairly so we don't have to keep massively increasing farmland while wasting so much of the product.
@@ShiroKage009 I'd rather they built durable constructions capable of withstanding disasters instead of the cheapest wood chips and glue bathed in flame retardant they can find. While wooden construction "can" last millenia it's made of sturdy beams of slow growth wood, not oversized popsicle sticks made from fast growing pine.
Limestone and clay bricks are much better for the environment than construction lumber.
@@Soken50 wooden structures built of regular timber cam withstand magnitude 9 quakes. There are regions that do that for code. Again, look at Japan.
@@ShiroKage009 Earthquakes are rarely what tears down matchstick houses in the US, a strong wind or a fire though and all you're left with is a concrete slab...
Even cutting trees can be good.
When you cut trees most of the carbon is still in wood, so if you make for example wooden furniture and plant next tree it is better for fight against global warming.
Of course if you are not destroying old forest.
In New Zealand, we have this massive swamp which noone ever really talks about, or even knows about, we usually talk about forest or desert parks instead of the swamps, but actually swamps can store heaps of carbon, just as much or even more carbon than our forest parks do!
Swamps are also important for removing organic nitrogen from the system (turning back into N2), which can matter if there's a lot of agricultural pollution.
A swamp would be a good carbon sink with little to no decomposition
Swamps/bogs with the anaerobic decomposition of organic matter into peat is in fact the most carbon dense storage ecosystem. It literally burries carbon under the water and sediments.
And the good news is that we dried a lot of them to make agricultural areas so just by rewilding watercourses we could greatly increase carbon storage and biodiversity without doing much of anything ourselves, water will just take its course and bring all the critters along with it to restore biodiversity as well.
I thought wetlands released carbon, or natural gas? Maybe forests do too, but being a carbon sink is much more of an impact.
@@juliandacosta6841 Wetlands store carbon, until you dry them out, same with permafrost, it's a great carbon storage until you defrost it.
Kingsley Dixon is a really cool dude who's research I admire, I'm glad to see he supports a content creator I also admire.
It is amazing how conscice you are able to reduce such complex topics and it's so extremely important to make these important knowledges accessible for the general public.
*I love when trees said "It's savin' time!" and saved all over the Earth. Truly one of the saviors of all time.*
I don't even care what this is responding to because purely out of context, this is the best comment I've read all week.
@@SilverAura its -morbin- savin time
Which charities actually utilize these practices?
Also isn't forest management another huge part of this puzzle?
Very informative and well presented. Well done Kingsley Dixon and team!
Another problem that hasn't been mentioned here is the Albedo effect. Planting trees in areas that are often snow-covered might lead to a net-warming of the planet because snow reflects more of the incoming radiation than forests because it's brighter.
Well, the solution there is to throw all of our styrofoam into the ocean until it is all white.
@@jeremybyington don't worry, we're already working on that
Doesn't a higher albedo lead to a cooling effect?
@@feynstein1004 Yep! Atmospheric CO2 is one of many many many factors that changes the temperature of our planet.
Very few trees have much of an ability to grow in places where that would be an issue to begin with, though. Excepting in grasslands, savanna & steppes.
I've planted a lot of acorns and conkers/horse chestnuts in the last three years. All of them where there's forest(or forest has been cut down). Hopefully some of them will make it to be a part of a diverse forest.
One of the more unspoken aspects of reforesting and foresting is the fact that due to increase temperatures trees might grow quicker, which sounds great on the surface level. However a tree absorbs more carbon its its growth phase, meaning that as tree as growing quicker and spending less time in the growth phase and that results in less carbon being absorbed.
Neem trees are being chosen as widely popular tree for tree planation despite the fact these trees only have between 3-5 years of growth, which means these tree are to be frank woeful compared to other trees like Red Maples, Oaks and other trees.
I would think that the tree absorbs and holds an amount of carbon proportional to the weight of the tree. It absorbs the most during the growth phase because it's increasing its weight. By growing faster, it absorbs faster. It can't really grow faster while still using the same amount of carbon per unit time.
Thanks so much for talking about this, I personally never really thought about it, but it makes alot of sense.
Yes. Yes! YES!!!!!!! I can’t agree with this strongly enough. Thank you so much for making this video, I will be sharing it everywhere. So much harm is done by well-meaning tree planting
Yesss. thank you. As a student majoring in forestry, I actually have to explain this to people because it's not as easy planting trees everywhere. You have to not only consider the carbon sequestration, but the survival of organisms within a forest because they all interconnect with one another.
The limit to this seems to be that you can't grow more than 1 forest in a particular area of land. Isn't some kind of regular chopping down and storing the trees carbon in the form of wood (that doesn't get burned) necessary in order to continue sequestering more and more carbon in a particular area instead of it being a one-and-done-can't-store-anymore deal?
Trees plant themselves, right?
Stop mowing or paving or whatever, if that biome doesn't want to be a tundra or a desert for some good reason,
One thing will lead to another and sure enough, there'll be a tree there.
Soil conservation projects, special trees we want to plant, ok but this stuff is making me crazy.
Of course, if you want people to take global warming as an existential threat and not yet another conservation project, you've got to remember to treat it as such.
I agree with the general point, but also thought that planting trees to then use for lumber, was to also "capture" carbon in a material that can then be used for construction. Especially since I thought trees do most of the carbon capturing when they're growing, as they sequester carbon from the enviroinment to use for their wooden trunks. Does a forest with fully-grown trees that stay mostly stable still sequester a good quantity of carbon from the air each year?
And that's why suburbia isn't "natural" nor "ecological" despite what people believe. Low-density housing destroys forests that get paved with roads with a few trees between houses, when a forest with its own ecosystem is required.
OMG yes, finally some edutainers said it. I've argued about this for years with people who said we just have to plant trees to solve climate change, despite me pointing out the biodiversity, fracturation of habitats, monocultures, commercial plots,... And they'd still insist it's the right approach by pointing at some questinable carbon offset program like established titles or non profits like team trees, it's so depressing.
At least now I'll be able to refer them to this video.
One thing you haven't mentioned but also plays a role is the change in albedo resulting in ecosystems absorbing more heat, forests are a lot darker than grasslands and thus trap more heat near the surface rather than reflecting the majority of it.
Good to know. Where i live in Texas there's a lot of deforestation going on. It seems to me that stopping it would be far safer, and easier, than planting new new forest.
i heard someone say anglo america is in love with wanting to plant trees to make forests because of big timber. lots of north america was grasslands/prairies before european colonization. if we want to combat global warming AND maintain biodiversity, we have to use plants native to the local ecology
I think I've also read that microorganisms in the ocean like algae, plankton, and also seaweed (which of course isn't a microorganism) actually capture way more CO2 than trees do
when we planting trees we are doing that mostly not because of CO2 reasons... we just need wood for humanity's everyday life... thats why we are focused on genetically modified fast growing species with good tolerance against most common deseases and pests
Very informative! And as always, amazingly peaceful MinuteEarth soundtrack! :D
I mean, if you cut down a tree and use the lumber to build a house or make furniture, its carbon wont get reintroduced to the environment for up to a century or more, and it frees the land for new trees that can suck up even more carbon.
Why does chopping down a tree release the carbon it stores? As long as it isn't burned for firewood, wherever the wood ends up still stores the carbon right? If you replant another tree in the space of the old one, isn't that better than planting just one tree?
The carbon doesnt all get released from the poles - a lot of it does stay stored in whatever it gets turned into. But it does get released from the rotting branches and stumps!
@@MinuteEarth That applies to natural old groth forests as well, as there is a lot of carbon emitted from dead things. Might not be the same but if you replant when you harvest then it will sequester more carbon in the long run if you use the wood for building since you are using several forests worth of logs over the single forest that is left alone.
I think better solution would be returning carbon to earth. Because the problem is that we are mining carbon and other resources and then releasing carbon into the air and even if we plant forests there still will be more carbon then it was.
If we planted trees and than harvested them and put them underground we would free the space for new trees to be planted and put carbon back into the ground.
Trees can burn, die or be harvested but if wood gets put into the ground chance of carbon escaping is much smaller.
Right tree, right place, right reason. This is the way.
I planted a baby tree in my late 20s, and I'm now 50. The tree is a tower today! It's a pine tree in my back yard, and it blocks the view of what used to be a creepy neighbor. It took years for the tree to get big enough to block that view, and the creepy guy moved away long ago soon after we put up a fence. Regardless, my tall tree somehow makes me feel safe. I know that's silly, but it's stood like a guard outside the house for so many years. The birds like it too. We found a robin's nest in it with blue eggs once. We gave it a little fence of its own to protect the eggs from our dogs that season. Anyway, there used to be a huge puddle that would gather in the yard any time it rained, and the tree soaks up that water now, so we have a lawn instead of a puddle thanks to our tree!
I know this isn't exactly on topic, but it's my only good tree story really. And my comment is mainly just for the algorithm. I want lots of people to hear this video's message.
One thing I want to add, which I got from Andrew Millison (www.youtube.com/@amillison), is that you can use trees to protect crops from wind and boost yields. So in addition to planting native trees where they used to be, we can plant them to not only store carbon but boost crop yields
Having natural habitat near fields also provides refuge for pest-eating predators.
Do you mean windbreaks, tall trees, often cypress, found at the edge of fields?
@@Croz89 Pretty much, just more biodiverse, with native plants, and more like a forest as minute earth put it
@@sapientisessevolo4364 Ah, yeah with windbreaks there's a trade-off between their crop protection abilities and the land they take up. Hence the use of cypress, tall and thin.
Know what boosts yields? CO 2, you tool.
I'm so glad that somebody has made this video and brought up this reality. We are so desperate to find something good to pat ourselves on the back for, we'll call nearly anything a good deed, especially if it allows us to continue other destructive behaviors.
Are there recommendations for making forests with more human-compatible food production? My nearby parks are like 95% pine, oak, hickory (not the palatable species), birch, willow, etc, with only the occasional pecan, persimmon, paw paw, mulberry, blackberry, gooseberry, currant.
I would trade the 50ft tall oak trees in my yard for 50ft tall pecan trees any day.
Acorns and birch syrup sound pretty good to me
@@azzy-551 Yes, I know acorns can be processed into flour but that isn’t as “accepted” as being human food as other nut trees. As far as syrup goes, most places won’t let you tap without permission or a license.
I'm happy to learn that it's much more than just planting trees, but what can we as the viewer do to help? Promoting awareness is important, but I want to know what I can do at an individual level to help solve the problem.
To decrease the temp rises, we need to increase reflectivity, e.g. by turning roofs white, restoring the ice in the poles, white roads
no cloud chemicals tho, that's just asking for disaster
right?
I would definitely file that under the efficiency improvements to our constructed environment. White roofs are amazing for hotter climates as they reflect a ton of heat which also lowers fhe cooling burden which has 2 benefits, less AC's concentrating heat and generating heat, and less electricity generation which means less fossil fuels burned to generate electricity means less emissions. (Unfortunately we still burn a ton of fossil fuels for electricity)
Another thing we could do is eliminate pointless electrical loads such as light pollution (dark sky light fixtures prevent light from going directing into space without even touching the ground and being useful) and electronic billboards like times square. (I am genuinely curious how much carbon times square releases a year just to be a distopian advertisement space)
@@jasonreed7522 +1
THANKS, this was so needed from media that is not anti climate change
brilliant as always, although I feel that the most important point hasn't been pointed out, is that the solution is obviously EMITTING LESS CARBON. sure its helpful to counteract ones carbon footprint by taking responsibility (tree planting, carbon footprint subscription services etc) but those individual focused solutions offered by private industries would never work in counteracting the emissions of the big polluters nor force them to emmet less carbon. we don't need to enhance the planet's defences, we need to eliminate what's making it sick.
you can go live in a grass hut and eat bugs to save the planet if you like, i'll keep my vehicle and warm house.
And how are we to do that?
I live in the city. When I look out my window. I see squirrels, chipmunks, birds, hawks and the occasional hummingbird, deer, raccoon and opossum.
So basically, restore the previous forest ecosystem with the same exact plants before it got deforested
It’s far more complicated than that. It’s a whole field actually called “restoration ecology”. Many times it is not possible or ideal to plant what was there before. Sometimes we don’t know. As close to the “original” as possible sometimes require using a different plant (although native).
Hell a lot of time, you can’t even just plant it right away. In many cases you need to plant something else before planting what you want
Great video and the kids enjoyed it too !!
I have a small piece of land in north Carolina that used to be a grassland over a hundred years ago. Within the last 50 years, it has transformed itself into a native woodland full of pine and oak. There's only a handful of open parts to it now, Its best to usually let nature take its natural course while giving a helping hand here and there
Depends, if it is naturally a grass land then it might need fires to maintain itself. I like forest as much as the next guy but we should try to maintain what used to be here
@@alejandromartinez3475 And big grazing herd animals which gept grasslands open and fertile by trampling, eating and popping all the small shrubbery and young trees but humans decimated them all.
@@alejandromartinez3475 the forest came up by itself...
@@rameneater1437 forest do that where ever they can, doesn't mean it was always a forest
@@alejandromartinez3475 what?
The best comments on TH-cam are under this video. I’m seeing academic conversation.
I never thought about this before at all! But it makes so much sense now that I've been told.
Thank you minute Earth crew
This is a refreshing, well thought out, and reasonable solution, that I support
Imagine if they'd released this at the height of the #teamtrees stuff
Beast started teamtrees to distract from the fact he's personally burnt an amazon worth of carbon just by himself.
Its really genius mindset, i think! We must think more about whole ecosystem, no about trees only.
Thank you for this video. It has given me a new perspective on tree planting. But dont throw the baby out with the bathwater. Planting trees is still maybe the quckest and most reliable method of storing carbon. Its about time we started planting trees that are CRISPR engeneered to store as much carbon as possible and to grow as quckly as possible under the new condition the genus has been planted in. And then to select locations where the ecosystem isn’t as rich and carbon heavy to manipulate it and plant the trees there. There are still ways. Planting trees simply has to get more sophisticated to work.
Agreed that planting trees - responsibly! - is one of the best things we can do!
Just a side note on protecting out planet from environmental damage: regarding carbon it's not only about storing it, it's also very much about not releasing it in the first place. Great video nonetheless.
One bit that you didn't respect was that tree farms that are harvested for building materials, etc are carbon sinks in another way.
Much of the wood harvested from these trees is typically used in construction that will stay as a carbon sink for 50 or more years. In the meantime, a new crop of trees can be grown to be harvested again and again every 20 years or so, each time storing more carbon.
In this way tree farms can actually be some of the BEST carbon sinks.
Obviously native forests are good for other reasons, nd much of tree farming is used for short lived paper products, etc that don't act as good carbon sinks, but it is a bit disingenuous to say that tree farms in general are bad carbon storage systems, when they are actually among the best, if not the best, when managed well.
I knew about the lack of genetic diversity, however I was surprised I completely overlooked upending existing carbon storage ecosystems.
Kind of amazing how much carbon is stored in those bare-looking ecosystems!
@@MinuteEarth Right. I guess what it really comes down to is, would you lick that thing over there? No. Probably an ecosystem, do not touch.
one more fact: most oxygen is produced by the ocean
The land and ocean do have quite the planktonic relationship, yeah.
@@SilverAura what planktonic relationship means?
Harvested trees store carbon in the form of wood. Trees that die naturally or burn in a forest fire release carbon
its almost like the natives knew what they were doing.
If the timber is used to build stuff it's still stored carbon. It also leaves space so new trees can be planted.
Plant trees, cut them down and "store" them, plant new trees, cut them down....
cool
cool
cool
Had this discussion with a forestry guy recently I loved how you explained it!
2:52 that’s one small elephant 😂
Just had to encourage this only the other day. Keep it up
Finally some logic on this issue. Next step is realising that we don't have that big an effect overall.
Isn't most plantation timber used in building and construction? So we are effectively storing CO2 in the frameworks of our houses. We could also burn produce from plantations in anoxic conditions to produce biochar which can be used as aggregate in plantation soils and infrastructure.
The thumbnail is the only reason why I watch this video.
If you make everything from wood you're also storing carbon. Wood house, wood furniture, wooden plates and spoons, wooden bowls...etc. Leaving a forested region alone is like trying to bail water from a sinking ship but once your bucket is full setting it down and leaving it. Instead of dumping it out then scooping up more water.
Grasslands are actually much more efficient at carbon storage than trees. Trees store the majority of their carbon above ground, which means that most is just released back into the atmosphere once they die. Grasslands store the majority of their carbon underground, meaning most stays underground when the grasses die.
That is why Arbor day is nice when you get trees for donating. They give you a pretty good variety of trees that are native to the area, grow fairly quickly, and help support the local ecosystem.
such a simple and profound idea
as all great ones, its obvious once pointed out
The implication that Ms. Frizzle would be as careless about how she plants trees as she is about misplacing the field trip permission forms is slander that I just won't tolerate.
Since I was 5, my career has been forestry and tree care. I have helped regenerate native ground cover, on depleted soil and in years of drought. By thinning out the predominant tree species and mulching much of the material back onto the baren soil. The soil was slowly fertilized and ground covering plants native to the ecosystem took hold.
My thinning and removal methodologies are based on the fire cycle of this forest, my end goal is to do 75% of what a ground fire would do. And mulching is one of the most beneficial ways to help the forest floors. It can turn dry dusty soil black in 3 years of drought.
Trim the dead limbs off a tree, it will capture more carbon. Cut out sapplings too close to better established trees, the remaining trees do better. It also allows sunlight to hit the forest floor.
I've been wondering what has been happening with the Team Trees thing and have been suspicious that it was all a greenwash for the lumber industries.
Perfect short summary, thanks!
Short and simple. It change my mind about tree role in stop greenhouse effect proces. Thanks
There are over 36 trees and bushes in my yard, not including what we try to grow to eat and the ivy that tries to choke out everything. It's all about slow additions. Since I am in charge of the food gardening, I try companion planting so we might actually get produce before the pests do.
The top two "Everyone's best friend" are marigolds and nasturtiums. Both can repel/attract certain pests to protect the other plants in the bed without harming them. They are also eatable, though in my experience marigolds taste like nothing and don't do anything to my tea so I lean more towards the peppery taste of nasturtiums. This year, I hope to get another raspberry plant to help my double gold, since it only produced a handful this year. Since this type rides the line of the two different ways to take care of a raspberry, I have the option of choosing either a red/gold or a black/purple without much worry.
And I think we finally found the area in the yard that the average tomatoes will grow (we've only had success with the cherry breeds.) I'm excited for this year's garden...as soon as we cut back on that ivy again.
I can just hear Bob Ross in my head. "And over here will put a happy little tree with happy little arms... that kind of look like horns... will just call those happy little demon trees a happy little accident"
2:18 The carbon continues to be stored within the wood until it rots or is burned. If the wood is being used for construction, or carpentry or any sort of craft, then it still continues to act as a carbon store. Wood plantations are just as effective, if not more so, than natural forests at storing carbon.
I'm wondering how wood houses could play into the carbon storage of farmed forests. Like that could in a way give you far more effective carbon storage per acre. But I could also imagine that it's not enough to offset a diverse and thriving ecosystem
So Ecosia and Treecard are doing it right! They work with local tree planting organizations to plant diverse ranges of native trees in endangered areas torn down by deforestation!
2:18 Chopping the trees afterwards doesn't sound necessarily bad. A lot of the carbon in them remains in the lumber that becomes furniture and construction materials. That way, we could be maximizing the amount of trapped carbon per square meter. Also, it is a lucrative activity, so you don't need people's charity to make it happen.
Nobody's talking about how cursed the lorax looks without yellow eyebrows.
Well said. Grasslands particularly are so under studied and thus under valued for their part. It also had always bothered me that here in the US conservation will pay to plant trees in what usually amounts to swampy farmland. I rarely see any amount of trees actually doing well but gov will still claim it works and the farmer got paid for unfarmable ground so it won't change.
I am glad she didn't just talk about climate change. In fact, she didn't mention it all. Well done! I get SICK of that story.
AtlasPro did an excellent video on this a few years ago, titled "How To Build A Forest." If you want to hear more about this I highly recommend it!
It looks like Miss Frizzle needs to go on a field trip to learn how to plant trees properly. I like trying to grow miniature trees in pots. The obsession started when I spat a lemon seed from my lemon water into a potted spiderplant. And you can miniaturize trees with what's called a 'heading cut'. Then as the tree grows you sculpt the branches outwards and downwards to maximize the available space for food and foliage to grow. You can also make what's called an espalier, where the tree you plant is trimmed on one side so it fits snug with a wall or other hard surface and then carefully train the branches outwards against the wall in distinct rows. These two techniques allow someone to plant trees in locations they normally wouldn't fit in outside, and fit a small potted tropical fruit tree into your home. There's also a youtuber who grew coffee in his livingroom; MI Gardener, and his videos about doing this are worth a watch. He rigged up lights, a system for moving the trees outside with little effort, and then used pot size and pruning techniques to keep the trees from getting too tall. Coffee needs iron and volcanic soil though. I managed to get a small bag of the latter from Chewy but it cost like 30 bucks for a 4 liter bag. The former hasn't been a problem because I have iron pipes in my building that are rusting.
Anyway, I'm glad you touched on agroforestry. Food forests are fascinating projects to hear about. And by the way all you gardeners out there, no till or low till farming methods also help soil retain water. Only till or dig when you have no other choice.
Are there any society who does it in the right way
Was that last stick figure a reference to Mrs. Frizzle from The Magic school bus? If so, awesome!
When all that Mr.Beast thing was going around, this is what I told people. Also something bugged me was that why was there a Dollar donation thing?
I know a few people who've been planting trees for about 50 years. They never asked for money. What did Mr.Beast achieve?
Minute Earth puttin' us on game, once again. 💪🏾💪🏾💪🏾
Could we get a video about how building suburbs destroys ecosystems?
loved it, thanks for this great explainer!
Nice that someone cares about carbon. There are many forest farmers in my region. Forest farmers are people who plant trees to collect carbon and then in 40 to 80 years use that carbon for energy production. Because faster success was sought, trees were planted that can be harvested in 40 years. Unfortunately, climate change has killed the trees. Only the areas where the slow-growing trees (80 years and more) remain. Planting trees to protect the local climate is tedious and costs time and money. But the previous generations have taught us to protect the forest so that it protects our climate.
Forest is always a matter for generations. In these time intervals you have to think about it.