
How to Grow a Forest Really Really Fast - rokhayakebe
https://medium.com/ted-fellows/how-to-grow-a-forest-really-really-fast-d27df202ba09
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bsder
In Western Pennsylvania we've been doing something like this for a while on
old strip mining sites. It used to be one of the projects for the local high
school service clubs.

After the mining companies strip mine a place, they take the good topsoil,
sell it, and just dump back the fractured rock leaving a very acidic (sulfuric
acid) soil once the rocks begin breaking down a little. About the only thing
that would grow in this stuff would be pine trees, so we would plant pine
saplings to kickstart the forest growth. It would neutralize the acidity over
time, and drop needles to create a topsoil that wasn't so toxic.

Pine trees are generally the starting point when a forest gets damaged, and
then it switches over to deciduous over time.

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conjecTech
For those of you who found this interesting and wish to know more, I would
very heavily recommend you research permaculture and particularly check out
some of the videos made by Geoff Lawton, which are extremely informative and
entertaining. There is also a fantastic documentary case study of similar
techniques being used by a farmer named Sepp Holzer on his farm the
Krameterhof in Austria, though I don't remember the name. It was compelling
enough to persuade a 16 year-old me to dig up about an acre of the hard red
clay in my back yard and try to create a self sustaining food forest.

Slightly more on topic, I'm very glad to see people trying to make a business
out of these techniques and I wish the people at Aforestt all the best.

~~~
contingencies
Agreed. Fukuoka's classic _The One Straw Revolution_ is also excellent
reading. He was a trained biologist who then moved toward a more holistic and
philosophically based approach to land management, reaping huge benefits. You
can view his work as agricultural process hacking. His five principles:

(1) human cultivation of soil, plowing or tilling are unnecessary, as is the
use of powered machines

(2) prepared fertilizers are unnecessary, as is the process of preparing
compost

(3) weeding, either by cultivation or by herbicides, is unnecessary. Instead
only minimal weed suppression with minimal disturbance

(4) applications of pesticides or herbicides are unnecessary

(5) pruning of fruit trees is unnecessary

~~~
marcosdumay
Of course none of that is strictly necessary. Plants grew for millions of
years without anybody planting them, they can still grow.

That said, plowing and fertilizing are used to improve a terrain. Without
those, you'll get a much lower yield. Their effects will last for several
years, so one can get good results for some time without using them, but they
are far from unnecessary. Human population was too big to sustain on Earth
without those techniques milenia ago. Weeding is useless for some crops,
actually damaging for others, but essential for some. Pesticides and
herbicides too often do more harm than good, but are almost unavoidable on
some cases. And pruning makes trees have the shape you want, what has a deep
economical impact.

It's true that the agriculture overuses some techniques, but alternative agro
proponents are often radicals that really don't deserve to be listened.

~~~
contingencies
_{{citation-needed}}_ on 90% of that.

However, I believe you are limiting your scope of thought by considering crop
yield per unit of land as a measure of success.

Fukuoka by contrast considered the bigger picture, mainly the cost and
reliability (ie. overall risk introduced by) all inputs to the agricultural
process, but also the quality of the resulting crop. In his particular case,
in a situation in which labour-intensive traditional Japanese agricultural
processes were being replaced by western machinery, fertilizer and pesticide
companies, he achieved excellent fruit yields with greater self-sufficiency,
less risk and less effort than competing approaches. He also found that
consumers appreciated his crops more, finding them tastier (qualitative
improvement) and offering to pay higher prices.

You are of course correct that pruning is necessary for some types of crops,
however Fukuoka worked primarily with fruit trees on his family farm and in
his principles stated only that pruning was unnecessary for fruit tree
agriculture, ie. this is a straw man argument.

Your final incitement to a mindset of dismission is unenlightened.

~~~
donw
Do keep in mind that food prices are murderously high in Japan, which is a
very real problem for low-income families.

One single apple at my local supermarket is $2 and up. A head of flavorless
lettuce costs the same. The Japanese equivalent to "beans and rice" is instant
noodles, because both rice and legumes of any kind are pricy.

It gets better outside of major cities, but food prices here are _insane_.

~~~
contingencies
Fukuoka lived in postwar rural Japan, not post-bubble modern Japan. It's very
true the economy is different. However, this fact really reinforces his point
that depending on money to acquire inputs to your agricultural process is a
big risk and unneeded complexity for the small scale farmer... hence, his
success and book.

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ghshephard
I have friends in the Okanagan who managed to get some of the advanced species
of Rapid Growing Hybrid Poplar from the research plantation they have in
Vernon, BC.

They have a small lot, about 5 acres, with a good agricultural water supply,
which they planted mostly with this hybrid. In the first year these seedlings
grew from around 6" to almost 5' in height. In the second year, the trees were
10' high. By the end of year three they had a mini forest of 15' high trees.
It was actually terrifying how quickly these hybrids were capable of growing -
reminded me of something out of "Day of the Triffids" \- one only wonders what
would happen if these fast-growing hybrid-poplars somehow managed to start
spreading...

~~~
NickNameNick
My family owns a small pine plantation as an investment, and we were very
lucky to buy our saplings right before the fery vast growth varieties came on
the market.

The fast growth versions have extremely soft timber, its functionally useless,
even the paper pulp mills only buy it at a discount.

They are probably vulnerable to storm damage too, but we haven't had to deal
with that.

Might still be useful to build a wind break and out-compete introduced
varieties in phases

~~~
davidp
This is why hardwoods are, uh, hard. They're typically slower-growing, so
their rings are more tightly packed, giving the wood additional strength. I'm
skeptical that the fast-grown trees from the article are as long-term healthy
as naturally grown ones.

~~~
jeffdavis
I thought the trees in the article were native species, not special fast-
growing varieties. Did I miss something?

~~~
davidp
Any tree that grows quickly will have thicker (less densely packed) rings. The
author describes a planting strategy that "tricks" the trees into growing more
quickly than usual, so my intuition is that those trees will be weaker than
they otherwise would be. The choice of species just moves the "natural"
density point.

~~~
sangnoir
growing forest quickly =/= growing trees quickly. I might have missed
something, but I don't think he mentions anything about making the _trees_
grow faster.

The "tricks" are to mature the _forest_ (i.e. make it self-sustaining) within
10 years, tree growth-rate notwithstanding.

~~~
lione
The article mentions planting them close together and having them compete for
sunlight, thus stimulating fast growth.

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hoopism
I read a book about Fordlandia a while back. Absolutely fascinating look at
applying manufacturing principals to agriculture/horticulture without domain
knowledge.

Was hard not to think of Fordlandia when reading this... odd they don't
mention it.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fordl%C3%A2ndia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fordl%C3%A2ndia)

Here's the book. [http://www.amazon.com/Fordlandia-Henry-Fords-Forgotten-
Jungl...](http://www.amazon.com/Fordlandia-Henry-Fords-Forgotten-
Jungle/dp/0312429622)

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nashashmi
There is another organization that advocates the use of cattle for grazing and
converting deserts to green lands. The green lands have been found to restore
streams. This movement uses the same principles for sustenance.

I think it is called the savant institute. the founder also has a ted talk.

~~~
thrownaway2424
Grazing for conservation is an interesting topic. Clearly, cattle and sheep do
trample stream banks. In over-grazed lands (any place in the western USA)
practically all riparian habitat has been destroyed by grazing.

But, limited grazing does have benefits. At the Vina Plains ecological
preserve (near Chico, California) they found that without grazing invasive
weeds took over the entire site. When they allowed limited grazing the cattle
trampled the non-native weeds, giving the native grasses and flowers a chance
to grow. Just letting a herd through briefly in the spring season was enough
to have this effect and not enough to ruin the streams.

This is an interesting article about grazing at Vina Plains.
[https://www.cnps.org/cnps/publications/fremontia/january_200...](https://www.cnps.org/cnps/publications/fremontia/january_2000/7griggs.pdf)

~~~
jessaustin
_...over-grazed lands (any place in the western USA)..._

Anyone who has spent any time in public lands in the West naturally will be
skeptical of this "cattle preserve grass" theory. We need more detail about
why this hasn't been the case in USA public lands, and how policies could be
changed to make it so. (The most obvious change would be "keep cattle off
public land so the taxpayer isn't subsidizing certain beef producers".)

That said, I'm confident that cattle aren't as bad for plants as horses are.
Cattle lack upper incisors, as do deer and antelope. This means they tear off
the upper portion of the plant, rather than extracting the plant along with
most of the root as horses tend to do.

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hyperbovine
This is so neat. I have often dreamed of undertaking afforestation on a truly
massive scale. In northern CA, every time I hike through redwoods (2% of their
historical range) I wonder what prevents us from growing them faster. Not
enough water? Not enough nutrients in the soil? Transporting either all the
way up the tree? Can we engineer our way around these problems, or is it truly
the case that the planet is incapable of recovering from the havoc we have
wrought until long after we are all gone.

~~~
Retric
Redwoods are massive and they need a lot of energy just to stay alive. But, in
classic 2d v 3d scaling they don't gain enough sunlight for rapid growth.

EX: A 250 foot tall tree with a 25ft diamiter base ~= 1,000 25 foot trees with
1 foot diamiter bases, but 1,000 25 foot trees would collect a lot more
sunlight.

PS: Redwoods do grow fairly quickly when there 'small'.

~~~
abakker
They do often occur in mixed stands though. So while they do reach a maximum
that doesn't allow the collection of more sunlight, they are still quite a bit
taller than their neighbor trees that cannot reach the same height.

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heydenberk
I don't much about other cities, but here in Philadelphia lots of Tulip
Poplars were planted during the very first wave of proto-environmentalism in
the late 19th century. They weren't an incredible environment boon unto
themselves, but they are leading to secondary succession[1], which is to say,
a more stable ecosystem closer to what we think of as "wild". If these new,
rapidly-growing hybrids can lead to secondary succession more rapidly, they
may provide a lot of indirect ecological value.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_succession](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_succession)

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rwhitman
Dammit. I found this so inspirational, so I sat down and watched his TED talk.
Interesting stuff, but it seemed to be mostly a plug for his business. Then he
mentions an "open source" platform for sharing his methods in detail. Cool! I
google around. No such platform exists.

This video is from a year ago. In the year since, the promise of shared
knowledge hasn't been followed up on. So whatever tech is being used here,
looks like is proprietary to this guy's business at the moment

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sitkack
The Man Who Planted Trees
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTvYh8ar3tc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTvYh8ar3tc)
is a beautiful animated allegorical tale of reforestation.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Planted_Trees](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Planted_Trees)

~~~
SuperChihuahua
I also liked this documentary "Forest Man"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkZDSqyE1do](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkZDSqyE1do)

"Since the 1970's Majuli islander Jadav Payeng has been planting trees in
order to save his island. To date he has single handedly planted a forest
larger than Central Park NYC. His forest has transformed what was once a
barren wasteland, into a lush oasis. "

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Animats
He's doing what's called "precision farming" in commercial agriculture. You
measure soil properties, then plant and apply accordingly. That's in line with
his background in Toyota production. Toyota's quality control is about
measuring process variation, understanding its causes, and reducing it. Note
his emphasis on measuring how many plants fail to grow.

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JoeAltmaier
A mature forest has 100 trees per acre. They're doing 40 per square meter!
This is certainly kickstarting tree growth, but you end up with a thicket
instead of a mature forest.

~~~
aetherson
I believe that the implicit claim of this method is that planting a thicket is
part of a process, the end point of which is a mature forest, and that the
trees which die in the process of thinning from the original density to the
final density die with a purpose and their growth and eventual death helps
restore the area to a forest much faster than would just leaving it alone.

I do not have the expertise to validate this claim. But I don't think that
they're suggesting that in 10 years there will still be 4 trees per square
meter, or even one per square meter.

~~~
WillNotDownvote
This page seems to suggest that poplar seedling density in clearcut areas is
on the order of thousands per acre, which then thin out considerably as the
trees mature. See the "seedling development" section.

[http://www.na.fs.fed.us/pubs/silvics_manual/volume_2/liriode...](http://www.na.fs.fed.us/pubs/silvics_manual/volume_2/liriodendron/tulipifera.htm)

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mathattack
_We then identify locally abundant biomass available in that region to give
the soil whatever nourishment it needs._

This seems like it would ultimately be the critical path item. You need a lot
of fertilizer for them to grow.

I applaud what these folks are doing!

~~~
zobzu
Yeah i wish he elaborated a bit on this since it seems the critical and
difficult part (well once people let you grow the forest in peace that is..)

~~~
wodenokoto
To me it just sounded like they wanted waste from nearby farms / food
production.

~~~
mathattack
Yes. To scale you would need an awful lot of this though. (I believe that
biomass is relatively fixed, but would like someone else to delve into this
more, as I don't know if the full dinosaurs -> oil -> gas and fertilizer cycle
is a closed loop or not)

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jeffdavis
How does a Forrest preserve the aquifer/groundwater? If water falls on the
ground, is that "wasted" or does it go into the aquifer? If it's wasted, where
does it go?

~~~
jonnathanson
My best guess is that the development of forest root structures, combined with
microbial, animal, and insect action, makes the soil more porous and
absorbent. This allows rainfall to be captured and "reclaimed" by the soil,
with excess trickling down into the aquifer. Simultaneously, the dense canopy
provides shade to slow the effects of evaporation.

By contrast, a barren soil would become hard and compacted, and much of the
rainfall would simply wash away or be lost to evaporation.

Again, this is one man's educated guess. I'm no expert, and it's quite
possible I'm way off the mark.

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d0m
Love it when technology helps the nature, instead of trying to squeeze out
every little bit of fruits/money out of it and then let it die. I also really
liked how every site was custom-thought to fit with the area (I.e. finding
nutriments within 50km to help the local ecosystem). That's great.

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hcarvalhoalves
This is what Christopher Alexander calls "to build nature". He, and a
generation of architects and urbanists, realized some decades ago that
preservation wouldn't be enough - we need to learn how to engineer nature to
live in a symbiotic rather than predatory relationship.

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zkhalique
I rarely upvote, but this is amazing!

