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Earth

Forests the Size of France Regrown Since 2000, Study Suggests (bbc.com) 70

Posted by BeauHD from the regenerated-forests dept.
An area of forest the size of France has regrown naturally across the world in the last 20 years, a study suggests. The BBC reports: The restored forests have the potential to soak up the equivalent of 5.9 gigatons (Gt) of carbon dioxide - more than the annual emissions of the US, according to conservation groups. A team led by WWF used satellite data to build a map of regenerated forests. Forest regeneration involves restoring natural woodland through little or no intervention. This ranges from doing nothing at all to planting native trees, fencing off livestock or removing invasive plants.

The Atlantic Forest in Brazil gives reason for hope, the study said, with an area roughly the size of the Netherlands having regrown since 2000. In the boreal forests of northern Mongolia, 1.2 million hectares of forest have regenerated in the last 20 years, while other regeneration hotspots include central Africa and the boreal forests of Canada. The researchers warned that forests across the world face "significant threats." "Despite 'encouraging signs' with forests along Brazil's Atlantic coast, deforestation is such that the forested area needs to more than double to reach the minimal threshold for conservation," the report says.
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Forests the Size of France Regrown Since 2000, Study Suggests More

Forests the Size of France Regrown Since 2000, Study Suggests

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  • best news all day (Score:5, Informative)

    by elcor ( 4519045 ) on Tuesday May 11, 2021 @09:36PM (#61375216)
    off course the delta is still in the red but let's all do our part https://www.bbc.com/news/scien... [bbc.com]

    • I think if everyone with a balcony in a city put some potted plants on their balcony there would be a noticeable dent.

      • Sure, if you completely ignore the logistics of delivering all that soil, clay pots and fertilizer

        • Re:best news all day (Score:5, Informative)

          by Narcocide ( 102829 ) on Tuesday May 11, 2021 @10:17PM (#61375308) Homepage

          Believe it or not, most of it is already fully stocked locally to them and waiting on standby. WTF do you think hardware stores sell in the city? Also, clay pots and fancy potting soil are an unnecessary cost and weight. You can grow grass in just about any wet dirt in just about any container you would have otherwise thrown in the trash. Seriously, grass doesn't care. I challenge you to leave an up-cycled open container of free dirt on you balcony all year and stop shit from growing in it without chemical defoliants or a flamethrower.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mjwx ( 966435 )

            Believe it or not, most of it is already fully stocked locally to them and waiting on standby. WTF do you think hardware stores sell in the city? Also, clay pots and fancy potting soil are an unnecessary cost and weight. You can grow grass in just about any wet dirt in just about any container you would have otherwise thrown in the trash. Seriously, grass doesn't care. I challenge you to leave an up-cycled open container of free dirt on you balcony all year and stop shit from growing in it without chemical defoliants or a flamethrower.

            Try living somewhere remotely warm, like Perth, Western Australia.

            All you'll have to do is not water it.

            Seriously, there are a lot of places where grass would never grow if not heavily maintained by humans. Las Vegas, Dubai, et al.

          • Somehow I doubt that Home Depot is going to have enough of their supplies to deliver to every single Balcony in the city. You don’t just get to ignore it because it’s already been done. This is the same problem we’re having with carbon credits. On top of that you’re obviously abusing moderation system.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by elcor ( 4519045 )
        Italian architect makes those beautiful vertical forest condos, living in one of these must feel special.

      • I think if everyone with a balcony in a city put some potted plants on their balcony there would be a noticeable dent.

        There are single forests in Australia big enough that'd dwarf everyone in the world doing that. Don't get me wrong , every bit counts but I really don't think individual contributions really ammount to much in the scheme of CO2.

        The absolute best way to geo-engineer our way out of the impending crisis is to plant forests everywhere, I mean just go nuts on it, convert deserts into jungles, the

    • Sign basically says cut down or harm a tree and we will execute you. Yes Really. Growing desertification in China is a real problem. It is taking out railway lines, oil distribution logistics, and Beijing sandstorms are getting worse. So yeah, China is against desertification, but not many countries are taking such strong measures, or investing in sandbreaks that can take 40 years to start working.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Njovich ( 553857 )

      off course the delta is still in the red but let's all do our part

      Do you have a source for the delta being in the red? The trend in the past decades is towards more forest and more trees globally.
      https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com]

    • Hi..I was a really bad..girl. Punish me with your dick in my mouth!! >> http://gg.gg/o037y [gg.gg]
    • The article you linked doesn't say that. In fact, it studiously avoids mentioning that tree planting has exceeded tree harvesting for decades in the developed world. In 1997 US tree planting growth exceeded harvest by 42%.
  • Made me wonder who has the most trees. Here in Canada we have a shitload of them. According to treehugger.com there's 318 billion here. Slightly more than Brazil with 302 billion. Together they don't have as many as Russia with 642 billion. The U.S. comes in fourth with 228 billion. All estimates that are probably a few years out of date. Just those four countries add up to about a trillion and a half trees.
    • Europe buys most of their biofuel (aka trees) from Canada and Brazil. If politics were not involved, shipping that would from Russia would use a lot less CO2.

      • Wat?
        Who in Europe still burns wood for fuel?
        You think we're in the dark ages or something?

        • Burning wood is carbon neutral. IIRC, after Germany shut down its nuclear power plants, they had to burn something on cloudy days and at night to fill their energy deficit.

        • Who in Europe still burns wood for fuel?
          You think we're in the dark ages or something?

          Yes, and yes. Parent is talking about EU carbon accounting, which counts burning of wood in large scale uses as being a carbon neutral usage. This conversion of a coal plant is an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • Re:Who's Got The Most Trees? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by RhettLivingston ( 544140 ) on Tuesday May 11, 2021 @10:28PM (#61375336) Journal

      Those countries are only that high because of their size. A comparison of forest coverage [wikipedia.org] would be more informative as to how they are performing. For example, when sorted by percentage coverage Brazil at 61.9%, though still way down the list, comes out ahead of Russia at 49.4%. Also, the US and Canada end up neck and neck around 34%.

      Even that seems misleading though. It would be interesting if someone could put together a ranking of coverage versus something akin to potential because just a plain coverage measurement penalizes countries that are mostly desert.

    • Every year Canada plants about a billion trees.

  • Am I on slashdot or what??? (Score:5, Funny)

    by niftydude ( 1745144 ) on Tuesday May 11, 2021 @09:59PM (#61375270)
    Size of France? What is that in American football fields?

  • Calibration Question (Score:3)

    by careysub ( 976506 ) on Tuesday May 11, 2021 @10:02PM (#61375276)

    Is that with or without its overseas territories?

  • It's not sustainable (Score:5, Informative)

    by presidenteloco ( 659168 ) on Tuesday May 11, 2021 @10:16PM (#61375306)
    Only half the area that is deforested every decade is reforested (naturally or otherwise) at present. Furthermore, the amount of biomass removed per year from forest areas far outstrips the amount replenished, since large full-grown, old trees constitute most of what is taken out, but what grows back is young, small growth which takes 40 to 200 years to reach the biomass of what was removed.
    • The forest cover of Europe increased by 30% over the last 30 years. The Greens however, donâ(TM)t like it since they have to find something else to complain about. The reason is intensive agriculture which requires less land and high taxes on electricity and gas which makes firewood cheaper for heating.
    • It's not about biomass though. Young forests actually sequester more carbon than old ones because the trees are closer together.

      • That doesn't make any sense. If not in their biomass, then where the hell are those young forests sequestering carbon?

      • Depends whether you also count eco-system loss, species loss etc in your sustainability math. If you continually, in repeated harvests, remove net biomass from forested areas, eventually there is insufficient biomass remaining to re-grow a forest in that area. So a simplified, less biodiverse area, probably managed by humans, results. Thus the large areas of the world (e.g. most of Europe, some of the middle East, North America except for the interior plains) which were complex wild forest eco-systems but a
    • Only two variables really; lifestyle and population. A lot of the Brazil forests were destroyed for cattle pasture. You can help by cutting down your beef consumption. Don't want to do that? then you better be on board with a world-wide two child policy. Here's the meme https://www.genolve.com/design... [genolve.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Jack9 ( 11421 )

      A lot of the reforestation occurred in areas that burned down due to desertification (eg US West coast) and human carelessness/malice so I think it's still a net loss.

  • Older trees sequester more CO2. I'm going to ignorantly suggest that there are a lot less old trees in these new forests. (Ironic that I read this while watching the movie "Planet of the Humans")

    • Older trees sequester more CO2.

      Old forests may sequester more, but they are not net consumers of CO2.

      To pull CO2 out of the atmosphere, the best technique is to grow seedlings to about 10 cm in diameter and then repeatedly coppice [wikipedia.org] the trees.

      The harvested wood can be chipped for paper or particleboard, or used for biofuel.

  • Check out the NASA satellite images which proves the overall planet greening. Something that governments around the World ignore as they use the CO2 disinformation to TAX The air we breathe
    • Exactly. Intensive agriculture need less land and the rural population of the world is decreasing. When you stop farming, trees come up like weeds since the farm ground is fertile and 20 years later it is a forest again. However, as always, Africa is a problem.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by flink ( 18449 )

        Intensive agriculture is a problem as well though since it depletes phosphorus and reserves and aquifers, both of which are non-renewable on a human timescale.

  • Not in France.

  • To help correct in any meaningful way, the progress needs to be, unnaturally better than natural progression.
    So, what next, we hit that mark.
    Then THAT isn't good enough. So the 6,000 HP goalpost rockets away and we're now being exhorted to double or treble or quadruple the previous benchmark...

  • monoculture forests are by far the worst and most prevalent method of 'reforesting'. They do little to recreate the original ecosystems.

    Or is this just about fuck all other animals and insects and lets preserve ourselves?

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