Germany's Dying Forests Are Losing Their Ability To Absorb CO2 (theguardian.com) 39
Germany's Harz mountains, once known for their verdant spruce forests, have become a graveyard of skeletal trunks after a bark beetle outbreak ravaged the region starting in 2018 -- an infestation made possible by successive droughts and heatwaves that fatally weakened the trees. Between 2018 and 2021, Germany lost half a million hectares of forest, nearly 5% of the country's total.
Since 2010, EU land carbon absorption has declined by a third, and Germany is now almost certain to miss its carbon sequestration targets, according to Prof Matthias Dieter, head of the Thunen Institute of Forestry. "You cannot force the forest to grow -- we cannot command how much their contribution should be towards our climate targets," he said.
Foresters in the Harz are responding by abandoning monoculture plantations in favor of mixed-species approaches. Pockets of beech, firs, and sycamore are now being planted around surviving spruce. A 2018 study in Nature found tree diversity was the best protection against drought die-offs, and more recent PNAS research found that species richness protected tree growth during prolonged drought seasons. The approach marks a shift from Germany's pioneering modern forestry methods, which relied on single-species plantations now proved vulnerable to climate-driven disasters.
Since 2010, EU land carbon absorption has declined by a third, and Germany is now almost certain to miss its carbon sequestration targets, according to Prof Matthias Dieter, head of the Thunen Institute of Forestry. "You cannot force the forest to grow -- we cannot command how much their contribution should be towards our climate targets," he said.
Foresters in the Harz are responding by abandoning monoculture plantations in favor of mixed-species approaches. Pockets of beech, firs, and sycamore are now being planted around surviving spruce. A 2018 study in Nature found tree diversity was the best protection against drought die-offs, and more recent PNAS research found that species richness protected tree growth during prolonged drought seasons. The approach marks a shift from Germany's pioneering modern forestry methods, which relied on single-species plantations now proved vulnerable to climate-driven disasters.
Re:Ummm (Score:5, Insightful)
Except it doesn't work when there is not enough water, when there are pests that are ready to destroy the new crop, or when they are burned out by the summer heat, which is a lot higher than it was just 20 years ago.
All of the above and more courtesy of the "hoax" of global warming.
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I see the consequences where I live, which isn't very far from Germany and we don't have the "monoculture" problem, but still our trees are dying, so I don't need the moronic opinion of the gifted amateur from trumpistan who hasn't seen the outside of a city because of his fat ass.
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Firstly, those trees ARE native.
Secondly if you fuck up an ecosystem hard enough, then even the native species can cause massive problems, https://www.theguardian.com/co... [theguardian.com]
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Except they are still burning and grazing the land any way ... so what's really the cause?
Agricultural practices can appear sustainable for a very long time before hitting the wall.
Re:Ummm (Score:5, Informative)
Instead, you have to actively manage the conversion from a monoculture spruce forest into a Mixed conifer forest by replacing single trees of spruce either because it died or it was harvested for wood, with young trees between 10 and 15 years old, so they have enough mycellium around their roots to keep healthy in a new environment. This is a slow, ongoing process, and it will still take decades, but much shorter than just throwing some seeds and waiting,
PS: My wife is a biologist, and one of the research topics at her university was a forest in Scandinavia which burned down in the 1950ies. At this place, no one was actively regrowing the forest, but researchers instead documented the natural regrowing. After 40 years, new plants barely covered the ground, and naked rock, where the topsoil was washed off, was still visible everywhere. And new trees (mainly pine and birch) were small, like larger shrubs, not forming a closed forest.
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We've done studies like that here in California too. What we learned is that replanting doesn't help, the primary mission is just to keep the soil from washing away. As you point out, the areas where the soil washed away are an issue.
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Re: Ummm (Score:2)
You mean like how the pines are dying in California?
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If you really want an oak-beech forest in natural equilibrium forming just by seeding, we are talking more than 1000 years
While you're technically correct that doesn't need to be anyone's goal. In fact it should actively not be. The growing process of a forest sequesters far more CO2 than a mature forest in equilibrium does. And that growing process can most definitely be achieved in a couple of decades.
We have countless examples of such a thing. The most ecologically impressive of them being in China where they planted a huge forest that is very much self sustaining now to stop the advancement of desertification. It was a roa
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At least in some areas, the thing that keeps beetle infestations in check is freezing temperatures in winter. (Possibly it needs a hard freeze.)
So mixing species is the better approach. An infestation that kills one is likely to avoid the others. And that makes the spread of the disease more difficult.
Because They Know Better Than You (Score:2)
It might be surprising, but this is planned by experts. And they know their field better than you do.
Aerial seeding has an extremely low survival rate. There is an upper limit to what it can accomplish, even with recurring drops.
If you want to grow forests faster than aerial seeding allows, then you need good sites for the seeds and post-planting care. And that means boots on the grounds.
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Despite that they still managed to lower their emissions, so fuck off, trumptard, a lying asshole from the country that's the cause for the global warming and plunders countries for their oil.
Re: Duh (Score:2)
Hmm... (Score:2)
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European farming (which is what got brought over to the Americas) is steppe farming. Also do note that the original place of this type of farming (the Fertile Crescent) is now a desert.
Most of Europe wants to be a forest, yet we're forcing it to be a steppe.
We got it wrong many thousands of years ago, and exported it all over the world.
There are native peoples that do understand, but we're killing them. Those that interest me the most are the Kogi of Columbia.
hectares (Score:2)
If a hectare is 10,000 square meters, does that mean it is 10 square kilometers? Metric system is so confusing.
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10 square kilometers == 10 km^2 == 10 * (1000 m)^2 == 10 * 1000 * 1000 m^2 == 10,000,000 m^2
So no.
Re: hectares (Score:4, Informative)
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The mile actually started out as more of a metric style Roman unit
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Metric makes a ton of sense for anything where people routinely deal with vastly different scales. centimeters, meters, kilometers for example. Same for 2 dimensional measurements (acres) and 3 dimensional (gallons/liters). Weight is another one, and speed gets defined by length (meters - metric) per second (Imperial) .Using KPH seems stupid to me - why not use the metric time unit?
Because the metric time unit was abandoned because it sucked.
Metric is really worthless when people generally only deal with
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How come you are so scared of negative numbers? Did they touch you in an inappropriate way during your childhood?
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I'm sorry to say that most of your post is nonsense. Let's review.
Metric makes a ton of sense for anything where people routinely deal with vastly different scales. centimeters, meters, kilometers for example. Same for 2 dimensional measurements (acres) and 3 dimensional (gallons/liters). Weight is another one, and speed gets defined by length (meters - metric) per second (Imperial) .Using KPH seems stupid to me - why not use the metric time unit?
You can use any system you wish to express quantities over very wide scales. Numbers with exponents are a thing. Metric is somewhat handier because units are related by powers of 10. Metric area is measured in square metres, but the hectare is the analogous unit that replaces the acre for agricultural or similar contexts. And weight is not a unit in either metric or imperial systems. You must mean mass (kilograms or pounds.) As for speed, I d
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I just scrolled down to see what you thought about the 1.8F to 1C thing to infer whether the rest of this inexcusably long filler-rant was serious, and discovered that it's absolutely not. No thermostats let you set degrees Celsius in decimal points, which, as someone who has experienced both, I can absolutely confirm is way less convenient and way less comfortable. Didn't read the rest, you're a blowhard idiot.
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Quoting again from gurps_npc:
So if you set a thermometer to 24 C with 1C range both ways it is likely to range from 73 F to 77 F, which is way too large a range. If I set it to 75 F, it will range from 23 C to 24 C.
[Emphasis mine.] As I said, you cannot set a thermometer. You can set a thermostat, as you mentioned, but that's not what gurps_npc posted. And I challenge you to detect the difference in temperature of a room controlled with a celsius or fahrenheit thermostat that is settable only to integer degrees. Air currents, differential heating, and heat-loss through windows will cause natural variance in the room at least as high as the variance in the thermostat-setting.
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*yawn*
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No deep rooted hardwoods? (Score:2)
Climate? (Score:4)
Sustainable forestry is actually unsustainable ... climate gets the blame.
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Well yes, climate is a core part of sustainable forestry and climate change has a significant impact on forest development, especially when pests are involved.
What point were you trying to make, that TFA is wrong, or that you're clueless?
Forest Fire (Score:2)
Nature uses fires to clear patches of forest so that new things can grow. And regular fires ensure that the patches that burn remain small.
There are parts of the world where they intentionally start fires or order to ensure that only small forest fires can happen -- Vertasium has a really good video on the topic.
So maybe burn out the dead stuff, which will help kill the beetles and add some nutrients to the ground.
Before a lightening strike makes the decision for them.
A similar thing has been happening in Colorado (Score:2)
The beetles are the symptom, not cause. They are just there to eat the rot. Turns out aerosolized nano-aluminum particles are poisoning the soil and rendering it excessively acidic in runoff areas.