Someone logged a 500 hectare plot in Borneo. They split this into 125 sections and planted 0, 1, 4, or 16 "tree species that are frequently targeted for logging". After 20 years, satellite imagery shows that the more tree species you planted, the more recovered the land appears to be.
I'm left wondering:
1. Why did they plant only tree species that are frequently targeted for logging? This makes the whole experiment very suspect. The linked article talks a lot about restoring forests, but why restrict the tree species to those that are profitable to log?
2. Is the satellite imagery actually representative of on-the-ground truth? A lot of logging land in western America gets replanted with logging-friendly trees in very regular grid patterns. These areas may look like forests from satellites (or to uninformed ground-level visitors), but the regrown tree farms do not behave like forests. The dense growth crowds out the ground-level plants, which in turn makes the entire tree farm a poor habitat for local fauna. If your goal is to grow more trees for lumber, tree farms are great. But I'm not sure the claims about "forest restoration" are honest/true here.
I'm left wondering:
1. Why did they plant only tree species that are frequently targeted for logging? This makes the whole experiment very suspect. The linked article talks a lot about restoring forests, but why restrict the tree species to those that are profitable to log?
2. Is the satellite imagery actually representative of on-the-ground truth? A lot of logging land in western America gets replanted with logging-friendly trees in very regular grid patterns. These areas may look like forests from satellites (or to uninformed ground-level visitors), but the regrown tree farms do not behave like forests. The dense growth crowds out the ground-level plants, which in turn makes the entire tree farm a poor habitat for local fauna. If your goal is to grow more trees for lumber, tree farms are great. But I'm not sure the claims about "forest restoration" are honest/true here.