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Tree planting, CO2 warning (1 Viewer)

Indeed, in fact anything which results in peat drying out is likely to produce increased CO2 emissions - drainage, burning, climate change itself if you get longer dry spells...

The key message should be we need to look after the carbon stores we've got as well as creating new ones. Tree planting is fine as an offset mechanism, it's just it shouldn't take place on marginal land which might be cheaper, but also be of higher value for nature conservation.
 
Mindless tree planting is surely useless, and may be harmful.

I remember the Great Gale in the south of England, Oct 1987 (you know, Michael Fish's 'there is no hurricane ?).
After it, a lot of tree planting went on; and, about 20 years later, areas that had NOT been planted had much more healthy woods then those that had.

And I also remember Oliver Rackham's scathing remarks about people 'planting trees in woods'. Much better to allow woods to regenerate naturally, surely ?

And of course, planting trees in peat bogs is ridiculous.
 
Mindless tree planting is surely useless, and may be harmful.

I remember the Great Gale in the south of England, Oct 1987 (you know, Michael Fish's 'there is no hurricane ?).
After it, a lot of tree planting went on; and, about 20 years later, areas that had NOT been planted had much more healthy woods then those that had.

And I also remember Oliver Rackham's scathing remarks about people 'planting trees in woods'. Much better to allow woods to regenerate naturally, surely ?

And of course, planting trees in peat bogs is ridiculous.

It is of course, especially as it's now such a scarce habitat but what I wondered was, wouldn't a peat bog be too acidic for most of our native trees?
 
There was a lot of plantation pine/fir planting in peat in the flow country - actual Government grants for it - in the Seventies/Eighties (sorry, bit vague on the period). Various rich celebs were cited unfavourably by conservationists as having invested in the process, Terry Wogan was one name I remember.

So it may not have been native trees and at one time it was all the rage. Not now I hope, but you never know with capitalist robber barons.

John
 
It is of course, especially as it's now such a scarce habitat but what I wondered was, wouldn't a peat bog be too acidic for most of our native trees?

Downy birch will colonise bogs, but otherwise yes. Its a different story with trees such as Sitka spruce, which naturally occur on coastal peat bogs in Pacific NW and will readily invade bogs in UK adjoining conifer plantations, as well as being capable of growing commercially on peat.
I also seem to recall the plantations in the Flow Country in the 1980s were basically a tax dodge, the success of the plantation as a timber crop was secondary.
 
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