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THE Deforestation Thread pt. 2

Re: THE Deforestation Thread pt. 2

Unread postby dohboi » Sun 19 Feb 2017, 01:26:27

Thanks, newf and sub.
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Re: THE Deforestation Thread pt. 2

Unread postby Newfie » Sun 19 Feb 2017, 09:28:38

Pstar,

I don't know if you realize how sensitive you've become. Or if you are intentionally trying to jack folks up. But it was you who drug this into GW.

Ws all get wrapped up now and then and misunderstand or say something silly. Let it go, stuff happens. Try to leave room for disagreement. Try to slow down and make more concrete posts that are less subject to interpretation. Sweeping statements are a wide net for missunderstanding.
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Re: THE Deforestation Thread pt. 2

Unread postby Ibon » Sun 19 Feb 2017, 11:39:39

Pstarr,

The way you allow yourself to get hooked means that your organic social network needs some improvement. If you are emotionally getting hooked on a cyber social media site than you need some real friends. Good wholesome real organic friends are excellent buffers against all the bullshit out there. When you show this board how easily you are getting hooked all the time then you are revealing an unfulfilled social life.

THIS APPLIES TO ALOT OF POSTERS ON THIS BOARD!
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Re: THE Deforestation Thread pt. 2

Unread postby Newfie » Tue 21 Feb 2017, 13:13:07

pstarr wrote:Your guys are right, and I apologize. I am letting the little things bother me.


Rare to see that. Thank you for setting an example. :-D

I may need it some times. :-D :-D
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Re: THE Deforestation Thread pt. 2

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Tue 21 Feb 2017, 23:39:44

I posted this on another thread but it is germane here so will copy and paste it.
Well even the land with a gold mine under it or an oilfield has value that changes with the times and the economy around it. Now if your farmland was deprived of oil derived fertilizer and pesticides along with all the other farmland so that yields dropped would it be worth more or less. The demand for food would be the same at least at first and supply would be very reduced.
I cut an ash tree the other day that had succumbed to the Emerald ash borer infestation. I counted the rings in the butt log and determined it to be 70 years old so it was a bean pole sapling when I was a boy helping my father selectively cut our firewood from this stand. It ended up being 70 feet tall and 30 inches through at the butt and yielded a half cord of firewood. The soil on this slope and brook bottom has never been plowed and is a rich black loam and tree growth is good to excellent. Some of the maples which are the majority species on the slope are a hundred years old or more and yield a nice bit of maple syrup each spring. So not all the land in America is a sterile dust that needs chemicals to yield a crop.
edit to add picture of the woods in summer.
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The War On Trees

Unread postby dohboi » Thu 10 May 2018, 09:51:59

US cities losing 36 million trees a year, researchers find

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018 ... ees-a-year

"...Cities in the United States are increasingly seeing concrete in place of greenery as urban areas lose an estimated 36m trees annually, according to a study from the Forest Service.

Tree cover in urban areas has declined at a rate of around 175,000 acres per year, while impervious cover – such as roads and buildings – has increased significantly across the country. An estimated 40% of new impervious surfaces were in areas where trees used to grow..."

We're not only toasting the planet by heating it faster than ever before, we're working furiously to pave as much of it as we can, too!
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Re: The War On Trees

Unread postby Revi » Thu 10 May 2018, 11:39:16

Urban trees don't have a long lifespan. The most popular types, ginkgos are pretty tough, but even so they succumb pretty quickly to the urban environment. Meanwhile Ailanthus thrives!

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Last edited by Revi on Thu 10 May 2018, 13:38:39, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The War On Trees

Unread postby Revi » Thu 10 May 2018, 13:29:11

I guess the half life for urban street trees is around 13-20 years! Not great odds. Here's an interesting article about the real stats.
http://www.deeproot.com/blog/blog-entri ... ful-number

My personal favorite tree to plant lately is the Acer Freeman crosses, which is a mixture of red and silver maple. Tough, doesn't spread and can take the same conditions as an Acer Platanoides (Norway Maple). Plus it turns a brilliant red in the fall. That's why they call it Autumn Blaze. There are other cultivars that work well too, like the flame shaped ones.

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Re: The War On Trees

Unread postby dohboi » Thu 10 May 2018, 15:05:34

Gorgeous! Where do you get to plant them?
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Re: The War On Trees

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Sat 12 May 2018, 11:13:13

Trees have it pretty tough in an urban environment. To do well they need soil eighteen inches deep all the way out to their drip line with some real topsoil as the top six inches not just a six by six foot patch every dog in the neighborhood tinkles on daily. People try to put them in thin strips between curb and sidewalk where summer heat off the pavement dries them out and winter snow removal packs them in salt slush. And then half of them are planted too close to utility lines so the line crews have to massacre half of the top every few years.
Fortunately the trees out in the forests are doing better. As farming become concentrated on the flat western plains the farms on the hills are reverting back to forest. On my own land which was majority open back in the days of sheep farming I have been cutting trees yearly sense I was tall enough to swing an axe or hold a chain saw but I'm steadily losing ground to the trees. Fields I grew corn on thirty years ago now have thick stands of emergent species.(poplar birch etc.) that are forty feet tall and a foot through at the stump.
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Re: The War On Trees

Unread postby dohboi » Sat 12 May 2018, 11:31:16

Good points about urban trees, vt. As I understand it, just the air pollution can take quite a toll on them as well.

And good to hear that you are seeing some re-forestation in your area.

Unfortunately this does not seem to be the case globally:

Global tree cover loss nears all-time high

http://www.wri.org/news/2015/09/release ... d-hotspots

This is a couple years old, though, so if anyone has time to track down more recent stats, it would be much appreciated. Right now, my gardens are calling me! :-D
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Re: The War On Trees

Unread postby ROCKMAN » Sat 12 May 2018, 11:57:58

"In the United States, which contains 8 percent of the world's forests, there are more trees than there were 100 years ago. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), "Forest growth nationally has exceeded harvest since the 1940s. By 1997, forest growth exceeded harvest by 42 percent and the volume of forest growth was 380 percent greater than it had been in 1920." The greatest gains have been seen on the East Coast (with average volumes of wood per acre almost doubling since the '50s) which was the area most heavily logged by European settlers beginning in the 1600s, soon after their arrival.

This is great news for those who care about the environment because trees store CO2, produce oxygen — which is necessary for all life on Earth — remove toxins from the air, and create habitat for animals, insects and more basic forms of life. Well-managed forest plantations like those overseen by the Forest Stewardship Council also furnish us with wood, a renewable material that can be used for building, furniture, paper products and more, and all of which are biodegradable at the end of their lifecycle."

From https://www.google.com/search?source=hp ... VesrVUrfpk
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Re: The War On Trees

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Sat 12 May 2018, 12:03:08

dohboi wrote:Good points about urban trees, vt. As I understand it, just the air pollution can take quite a toll on them as well.

And good to hear that you are seeing some re-forestation in your area.

Unfortunately this does not seem to be the case globally:

Global tree cover loss nears all-time high

http://www.wri.org/news/2015/09/release ... d-hotspots

This is a couple years old, though, so if anyone has time to track down more recent stats, it would be much appreciated. Right now, my gardens are calling me! :-D

From the link above.:
UMD and Google’s new data measures tree cover loss, using satellites to see all types of clearing and death of trees for all types of tree cover, from tropical rainforests to boreal forests and plantations at high resolution. These data do not account for tree cover gain, which is another important dynamic affecting forest landscapes worldwide. The new data was made possible through free public access to satellite imagery provided by the U.S. Geological Survey Landsat program, in partnership with NASA.

If they are only counting losses and not the gains how accurate a picture of the situation are they giving you?
Of course it would not be in their interest to report that things are getting better even if that is the case.
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Re: The War On Trees

Unread postby ROCKMAN » Sat 12 May 2018, 12:18:47

vt - I believe the correct term for using that approach is "cherry picking." LOL
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Re: The War On Trees

Unread postby dohboi » Sat 12 May 2018, 13:49:46

Another more recent source:

About half of the world's tropical forests have been cleared, according to the FAO.
Forests currently cover about 30 percent of the world’s landmass, according to National Geographic.
The Earth loses 18.7 million acres of forests per year, which is equal to 27 soccer fields every minute, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).
It is estimated that 15 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions come from deforestation, according to the WWF.
In 2016, global tree cover loss reached a record of 73.4 million acres (29.7 million hectares), according to the University of Maryland.


https://www.livescience.com/27692-deforestation.html

p's link says nothing about forest in particular, which is the focus of this thread, so is irrelevant as it stands (and seems to be part of p's obsession with carbon fertilization).

If someone can show me legitimate, recent sources that show that global forest cover has increased over the last few decades, I would be interested. Thanks.

Edit to add--a more scholarly but slightly older source:

global forest loss (2.3 million square kilometers) and gain (0.8 million square kilometers) from 2000 to 2012


http://science.sciencemag.org/content/342/6160/850

More recent:

forests occupy just under 4 billion ha, with the world's forest area declining by 129 million ha in the period 1990 to 2015


http://oro.open.ac.uk/48873/
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Re: The War On Trees

Unread postby Newfie » Sat 12 May 2018, 14:55:23

So.... my 168 acres of forest I’m sitting on, protecting from cutting, does that buy me an indulgence? Am I net carbon positive or negative?
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