Can we allow a tree gap?

[BeBMan]

Ethiopia plants 350 million trees in one day

People in Ethiopia have planted more than 350 million trees in 12 hours!

The event is part of a huge campaign to plant more than four billion trees this summer, by encouraging each person to plant 40 seedlings.

Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed organised the big plant in an effort to help combat climate change and deforestation.

According to the United Nations, Ethiopia's forest coverage has shrunk from 35% in the 19th Century to just 4% in the early 2000s.

(snipsnap)

full: https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/49161715

Look s like them Ethiopians want to make their forests great again. Better slap tarrifs onto them now before their trees grow really, really huge.

[giblets]

nice try ethiopia but you can't stop America from creating environmental chaos

[Bereta_Eder]

Ethiopians are pretty

[Bereta_Eder]

Here's a nifty little trick. a greek saw it in asia in a trip (maybe japan?) and started a not so well known campaign


you eat peaches? and fruits that have that round bulky seed? Don't throw the seed in the garbage.

store it for a few days untill it dries.

Then when you're driving, driving in your car, open the window and throw them away into fields.


Trees will grow

[Aeson]

[BeBMan]

I think with so many trees they'll also need them Ents again.

[Dinner]

https://news.yahoo.com/indians-plant-220-million-trees-125759390.html

Indian planted 220 million in one day. Between Ethiopia and India that is over half a billion. It helps but despite what certain moderators have claimed, no, this will not reverse climate change on its own.

[Aeson]

Of course it won't, because we need roughly 100,000 times that number of trees to accomplish that.

[Dinner]

100,000 times 200 years wait time for trees to fully grow. That is where you go wrong. We don’t have the decades to centuries to wait for the trees to slowly do their job. Sure, they help but you are over estimating their immediate (or even medium term) effect. By at least two orders of magnitude if not more.

[Aeson]

The math is simple. The net increase in the amount of carbon in the atmosphere since pre-Industrial revolution is roughly 1 tillion metric tonnes (inc CO2 and Methane).

5 billion hectares is 50 trillion square meters
1 hectare * 20 kg/sq m = 20 metric tonnes
20 metric tonnes * 5 billion hectares = 1 trillion metric tonnes

So we need to sequester 20kg/sq m over 5 billion hectares to roughly match the net damage we've done. (We've emitted far more, but natural processes have already sequestered much of it.)

Wood is on average about 50% Carbon by weight. To get 20kg/sq m with a planting density of 1 tree per sq m we thus need our trees to average 40kg of dense wood per tree. So how long does it take to grow that type of tree? Generally about 2 to 3 years for fast growing hardwoods, though for some species in good conditions it can be as little at a year.

We could take a trillion tonnes of carbon out of the atmosphere in just a few years by reforesting 5 billion hectares, and grow enough food to feed 7 billion people many times over at the same time. It's a proven concept.

In doing so we would reduce emiisions greatly as well. Agriculture would become a net carbon sink rather than the largest emitter. Doing this would solve most of the issues with dietary health, erosion, drought/floods, aquifers, waterway pollution, dead zones in the ocean, unemployment, and more.

[Aeson]

https://www.researchgate.net/publica...t_growing_tree

Here's a study of fast growing woodlot trees planted at a density of 1600 per hectare (2.5m x 2.5m). At 3 years the total carbon sequestered in the trees was 35 tons/ha (6.3275 tons/rai) for the fastest growing Eucalyptus. Across 5 billion hectares that would be 175 billion tons of carbon sequestered in 3 years. Temperate regions would sequester less at a given density, but at higher density may be able to exceed that uptake.

My own experience with planting at higher density is that we can do much better than that in the early years, as wider spacings waste most of the sunlight for at least a year or two. Sunlight is ultimately the limiting factor in how much CO2 is utilized in photosynthesis.

[giblets]

Where would we put all these new trees?

[Bereta_Eder]

In dinner's arse.

Or alternatively in fertile soil.

I have done my part and planted three thick leaved plants (in pots).
I don't know what they are but they seem resilient compared to my previous endevours that have ended ungloriously

[Aeson]

Where would we put all these new trees?

3.5 billion hectares of land currently used for grazing, 1.5 billion hectares under cultivation. There’s a billion hectares of land that was identified in the recent study as suitable outside that.

Theres another 2 billion hectares of land that has seriously degraded or desertified that we could reclaim.

If using agricultural land... We would need to average 0.14 kg/sq m/year of edible output to feed 7 billion people an American amount of food. A food forest can produce 10+ kg/sq m/year.