
India's Meghalaya 'living root bridges' get stronger as the trees grow - vinnyglennon
https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/living-bridges-india-scn/index.html
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arthurofbabylon
I accidentally traveled here when I had a spare month between obligations. I
don’t think the public can quite imagine how cool these bridges are, and how
wild the surrounding region is.

The Root Bridges: For most of them, two people could easily walk hand-in-hand
across the bridge (these are substantive, comfortable bridges). To build a
bridge requires a multi-generational perspective - oftentimes, the architect
won’t even live to see the “completed” creation, despite all of the nuanced
care. (Of course, a structure like this only evolves, it never “completes.”)
It should be noted that the locals are masters at building structures of wood.
20m tall towers made exclusively of bamboo (even the twine was bamboo), a
20-30m bridge arching over a river made entirely of bamboo and - at the
beginning and end - stronger logs.

The Adventure: I probably encountered 2-3 other white/euro/American/foreigner
people here. At one city en route to Meghalaya, I got trapped by a
transportation strike, and was told that I was the second white person to
spend the night since the British occupation (or something like that). I
stumbled into teenagers jamming 70’s rock at their school, and they made me
play the bass before driving me around the city on their motorcycles. We’d be
on pavement going 60km/hr, then suddenly be on dirt going through bamboo
structures. They insisted I have dinner at everyone’s homes and I ate around 7
distinct meals of regional dishes that night. It was wild: difficult, diverse,
different.

~~~
GuiA
Travel that doesn’t scale is the best kind of travel.

~~~
ssivark
I think that applies for many (most?) of the best things in life. Only the
mediocre bits can scale.

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allovernow
Startup idea: GMO trees for rapid, green architecture, like bridges, fencing,
simple structural supports. Some species of Bamboo can grow at a rate of up to
1.6in/hour so it may be practical to engineer a wood with the right material
properties to grow into trained structural shapes in a span of months, as
opposed to decades in the OP.

Hell, I'd love a living bridge in my backyard that I could have grown in a
summer or two.

~~~
toomanybeersies
Sounds like a fantastic way to create more invasive species of plants that
will displace native species.

They introduced gorse to New Zealand as it was good for creating hedges on
farms. It's an horrifically invasive plant that's incredibly difficult to get
rid of. It's fast growing, with hardy seeds that can lie dormant for 50 years.
You clear it out and it just keeps growing back.

It covers 5% of the country, growing practically everywhere outside alpine
conditions, and strangles out other species, especially in areas cleared of
native forestry. Animals won't eat it because it's spiky, so it needs to be
either burned, bulldozed, or cleared with herbicide.

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ubriewbaduk
I'm from Meghalaya and the thing that annoys me most is the irreverence that
tourists have for these structures and their nearby surroundings. A lot of
tourists would litter and step into places they're not supposed to, and make a
living hell for the people who maintain these tourist sites. Almost all
tourist sites in Meghalaya (especially outside of urban areas) are maintained
by the 'shnong' (village) and although they do get some revenue from tourists,
it's not necessarily their only source of income. Maybe they should make these
places prohibitively expensive to enter so that people would hopefully care
more.

*edit: I should add that the entry fee is usually dirt cheap, even free for some places

~~~
sumedh
> so that people would hopefully care more.

Why cant the Police enforce the rules and charge a fine for littering?

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ubriewbaduk
As I said, these places are maintained by the village, so it doesn't fall in
the police's jurisdiction. Even if the police were to be involved, I would
imagine they still wouldn't be effective because of corruption, apathy, etc.

~~~
sumedh
> it doesn't fall in the police's jurisdiction.

Is this some private land where the Police cant go?

If you start talking about corruption then you cannot blame the tourists for
littering, people will litter when they know there are not going to be any
consequences.

~~~
talonx
One can still "blame" tourists for littering, irrespective of whether cops can
enforce the rules or not, because it's a lack of civic sense, a lack of
understanding of the importance of preserving such things. That sounds like a
good enough reason to point fingers at these tourists.

~~~
sumedh
> That sounds like a good enough reason to point fingers at these tourists.

The problem is you will just point fingers and not do anything about it.

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talonx
We are discussing the cultural aspects of these tourists.

~~~
sumedh
and I am discussing the cultural aspects of the people living in that state.
If they keep on blaming the tourists then nothing is going to change.

~~~
talonx
>>The problem is you will just point fingers and not do anything about it.

How do you know I will not do anything? Do you know me personally? I can do
something and still point fingers at the tourists.

My original point was about whether you can blame tourists or not. I see your
point that the inhabitants also need to take care of their land, but you seem
to have strayed from that discussion into something else.

~~~
sumedh
> How do you know I will not do anything?

Just out of curiosity, have you done anything to tackle this issue?

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talonx
This particular issue? No, I stay far from Meghalaya.

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whyenot
The tree mentioned in the article, _Ficus elastica_ is actually a plant that
you may already know: it's the fig that is grown indoors as a houseplant,
commonly called a rubber tree or a rubber plant.

In general tropical figs are rapid growing but not particularly long-lived
plants. A tree may live 80 years, but not much longer than that (this is
unpublished data that Charles Handley of the Smithsonian Institution shared
with me; he studied cohorts of fig trees for many decades, well into his 80's;
possibly the only person who has ever done such a long term study on figs).

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hinkley
I saw a documentary on this but I would have sworn it was filmed in SE Asia
but I could be wrong. There they were using a related tree also known as the
Strangler Fig.

What floored me was a segment where a man was building a new bridge, and
almost as a throwaway line the narrator stated that this bridge would be
usable by the time his son was old enough to teach his son. That's patience.

But the alternative is dealing with serious flooding and erosion pressures,
which these trees have already solved.

~~~
dgemm
This part of India is basically SE Asia so maybe you are both right.

~~~
paggle
I’m sure the living root bridge concept doesn’t stay within political
boundaries, but also yes OP could have seen the faces of the people and not
realized that people that look like that live in parts of India.

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duxup
"Ludwig says the techniques used to build the living root bridges could be
deployed in cities to green and shade urban areas -- a much-needed strategy to
cope with rising temperatures."

Or they could just, plant trees.

I'm not really sure the root bridge concept here helps much more than just
planting trees would if we're talking about creating shade.

~~~
gus_massa
I'm not sure about this specific tree, but the problem with similar trees is
that the roots grow too much under the sidewalk and raise and destroy it. They
are even forbidden to be planted in the sidewalk in some places. Also, the
trunks and the aerial roots form a big messy block that is 6 foots wide and
make the sidewalk unusable.

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Jyaif
"could help our cities adapt to rising temperatures associated with the
climate crisis"

What? No. In cities a living root bridge would be destroyed within a year.

~~~
theli0nheart
I had the same thought. What a strange conclusion to draw from this.

~~~
taberiand
I think it can be rephrased as "we're desperate for any possibly glimmer of
hope in the face of this existential climate crisis, and fantastical solutions
let us imagine the possibility of surviving - no matter how impractical (in
fact, the more impossible, the better)"

~~~
theli0nheart
We don’t need impractical solutions that make no sense. We need solutions that
will actually help us solve problems. Growing trees in skyscrapers to make
bridges that take decades to create to maybe make the sidewalk cooler is 1)
impractical and 2) not solving a real problem.

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anon_cow1111
A general jumping-off point for this idea:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_shaping](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_shaping)

It's a very cool concept, similar to sculpting bonsai trees with copper wire,
just on a bigger scale. However unless it can reliably conform to civil
engineering specs, it's useless outside of an artisan project.

~~~
mandelbrotwurst
Unless you, you know, decide not to care about that set of specs.

~~~
Ygg2
Those specs are for a reason. Not conforming to them causes loss of life and
limbs.

A plant bridge is nice and dandy until it falls on your head

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redisman
Just wait until the Instagram influencers discover and destroy it.

~~~
dm3730
already happening

~~~
guramarx11
damn human your scary

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wodenokoto
What happens when the tree dies? While some trees have lived for a very long
time, my impression is that 100 years is a very long time for a tree, and if a
bridge takes "decades" to build, then 100 years might not be relatively that
long.

A typical modern bridge might take 5 years to build 7-8km and will last as
long as people care to use and maintain it.

A 20 metres living bridge will takes at least 2-30 years (less wouldn't count
as decades, plural) and would live for how long?

Above pessimism aside, I would love to cross the river thames on a living
bridge!

~~~
chrisweekly
100 years is the blink of an eye for a tree. Trees will astound you if you
learn more about them. Many species can live for tens of thousands of years;
beneath the surface, some apparent "groves" are in fact interconnected
appendages of a single living organism which can survive for hundreds of
thousands of years.

~~~
newnewpdro
> 100 years is the blink of an eye for a tree

That's a _very_ slow blink.

Being generous and for easy math, let's say the tree lives 100,000 years.

100 years is 1/1000th of the lifetime, .001.

Generally the blink of an eye is in reference to human time scales. Again,
let's be generous and say a blink takes an entire second, and a human lives 72
years. 1 / (72 * 365 * 24 * 60 * 60) = .0000000004

Many orders of magnitude off from the blink of an eye.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
[https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/in+the+blink+of+an+eye](https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/in+the+blink+of+an+eye)

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HaloZero
I've been here before. They're pretty sturdy to walk on and there were quite a
few in the area going into town.

One thing that I found interesting was the only bridge that had trouble was
it's parent tree on one side of the bridge was hit by the monsoons in the
area. The area has one of the highest amount of rainfall in the world.

The area is pretty remote still. I was there 3 years ago and as I was walking
on my path I realized the road I was walking on had been built the week
before.

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villgax
It's 4000 steps down & up 2 hills to get there. You are going to have cramped
out legs & also drenched with the sun out. But it was an amazing experience.

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yenwel
I had a similar idea about green roofs and how they could have a net positive
effect on happiness, liveability and energy efficiency in cities.

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maxerickson
Another article: [http://humanplanet.com/timothyallen/2011/03/living-root-
brid...](http://humanplanet.com/timothyallen/2011/03/living-root-bridges-bbc-
human-planet/)

