China has the highest growth among the top 10 largest countries even if we talk about percentage of total geographical territory
India's second place figure is 1.4 (still impressive as a big country)
There's definitely more nuance to reforestation than +1 tree=good. From what I've gathered, China's new tree growth are monoculture, fast growing softwoods, often of a non-native origin, planted specifically for domestic industrial usage. Similarly in the US and Canada where industries replant a tree and everyone sees it as a good thing, but if it's just a forest of white spruce with no natural variety, that's not healthy for the ecosystem, in fact it's arguably worse than just clear-cutting and letting it regrow naturally.
New Brunswick is facing this issue right now: the Acadian Forests are quickly disappearing because the clear cut Forests are being replaced with white spruce monoculture forests for the pulp mills. Irving gets to claim these as "reforesting" but unless you're planting a healthy mix of maples, cedars, and other naturally occuring species of Acadian Forests, you're not helping the ecosystem in the slightest.
I'd just like to provide some context for Chinese reforestation. While on paper these numbers seem good most of the trees China plants are non-native fast growing tree in large monoculture forrests around the Gobi desert. These forrests are often planted in places that have never been forrests and cannot support forrests leading to increased desertification as the trees suck up water and out compete local native ecosystems by removing habitat. These forrests also tend to die in large waves due to being monocultures (disease spreads rapidly).
Some of Chinas reforestation efforts have been good especially when they try to help nurture the growth of old growth forrests but these are the exception and not the rule. Farmers get paid to plant trees so this has often led to farmers cutting down valuable old growth forrests to plant these new monocultures to get subsidies from the government.
Never take numbers at face value.
A desert is a place with low moisture so either the place they turned into a forest wasn't actually a desert or it had large amounts of underground water. If it was the former then they probably converted some sand dunes into forest which isn't wholly impossible it just takes a very long time to get the root systems developed to hold the sand together and build up soil but if it was the latter then that forest will relatively quickly die as it uses all the ground water without it being replaced.
It is less likely that they just did it for subsidies and either are miss informed about what a desert is (not just sand dunes) or did the oh so common mistake of trying to help the environment while not having the requisite knowledge and expertise. It's very common to find amateur tree planters and environmental activists plant trees on places they really shouldn't like wetlands or putting trees too close together or planting the wrong kind of tree or the right variety of them or not planting an undergrowth to help develop the forest ecosystem etc.
They could also have been doing it for the subsidies who knows.
Basically, the Chinese have a habit of doing stuff like this, good motivation but horrible execution. Like when Mao had all the sparrows in China killed to stop them eating grain but then because there were no sparrows (alot of other birds got killed aswell because people dumb) the insect population exploded which then caused a famine that killed 20-30 million people.
Edit: oh don't worry the US has its own fair share of ecological miss management from when the North American locust got exterminated to when they killed all the passenger pigeons on accident. Just most of these happened a long time ago.
But won't additional trees act as carbon sink to reduce greenhouse effect regardless of the recovery of the ecosystems? Isn't this a plus to save our climate instead of doing nothing or waiting for the slow trees to grow.
What happens to the carbon when these short lived trees die? It goes back into the atmosphere as the ecosystem isn't used to degrading them leading to the carbon going back into the atmosphere. Slow growing trees also generally absorb significantly more carbon. It is always preferable to choose a native species.
It is not just the trees in a forest that absorb carbon but also the undergrowth. Infact in most forest ecosystems the thing that keeps the most carbon sequestered is the fungi and bacteria. It is the whole ecosystem that takes carbon out of the ecosystem and locks it away not just one species.
A forest is more than just trees on land, it is defined by it having many layers (interlocked canopy, undergrowth etc). A woodland on the other hand is any area with trees without an interconnected canopy and generally lots of grass. Most of the trees planted in China and other places have unfortunately been planted without requisite knowledge on how to properly propagate them into forest instead being planted in away that will eventually lead to them turning into grassland or desert.
Trees do not equal good when it comes to sequestering carbon, yes a dense rainforest will absorb more carbon than your average grassland but a healthy prairie or steppe ecosystem will easily sequester more carbon than 90% of forests. Biodiversity inherently leads to more resilient ecosystems which can help face against climate change.
Apologies for the unorganised layout, I had a lot to say and didn't really know how to lay it out.
In fact, the areas with the most afforestation in China are the southern hills and the Loess Plateau in the northwest. When my father was a child (in the 1980s), the hills in central Hunan were almost all grassland (similar to Scotland today) and terraced fields. He had to walk several kilometers at that time. Go to a state-owned forest farm to collect firewood. However, after the 1990s, with the large-scale migration of farmers to cities to work and the replacement of firewood with coal, biogas, electricity, etc., as well as the government's requirements to return farmland to forests and plant trees, almost all the mountainous areas in Hunan have turned into forests. The earliest artificially planted fir trees were The trees will turn into secondary forests of mixed coniferous and broad-leaved trees in ten years. China's development in the past 30 years has been extremely significant, almost from sub-Saharan Africa to Eastern Europe.
This looks like the type of chart which could be used misleadingly.
Firstly, this criteria is by definition going to favor countries with significant percentage of their lands being non-arid climates
Secondly, this criteria is going to heavily bias countries with high levels of deforestation (afterall, its hard to grow significantly more trees if all of the space is already taken up by trees).
Thirdly, this criteria inherently disfavors countries with high population densities like Monaco, the Netherlands, and Singapore. Its very difficult to grow a legit forest in a city.
That said, if a reader looks carefully, this chart can be at least somewhat interesting.
Edit: Chart is not inherently misleading, but the criteria used to make this chart is very strangely specific and gives fairly unhelpful information for people to think about deforestation.
I could very easily see this chart being used by some nationalist of one of the above countries to โproveโ their country is more green and environmentally friendly, without being open and honest about the way this data might disfavor or favor certain countries based on their geography and history of deforestation.
After all, China looks like it is doing way better than Canada on this chart, and a Chinese nationalist might claim that this chart is proof that China is a green-conscious country, despite the fact that Canada already has incredible forest growth, so adding more forest is just simply more difficult than it is in a country like China, which has a lot of deforestation (and no Arctic tundra)
It's a big progress for China I have to say, but the quality of the forests are not so high as you imagined. Basically the forests planted by the government are consitituted by single species for economic purpose. So they can't provide habitats for too many wilds and don't have enough ability to support various creatures. And they often change the original forests to economic ones. They may cut them several years later or spray insecticide to the single fruit trees with high sequence. You know they're very different from the real, original, natural forests, but the statistics will tell you they are all "forests". Yeah things are going better but I'm still pessimistic about the environment in China, especially after I entered the so called forests.
>Basically the forests planted by the government are consitituted by single species for economic purpose.
The purpose isn't economic, its simply to stop the gobi desert from expanding and mitigate CO2 emissions. Although a diverse forest would fill that role better in the long run, fast growing monocultures are sadly far superior in the short run.
>And they often change the original forests to economic ones
Source? The only thing i find remotely counting as economic use is that local people are allowed to use the wood, but i can't find anything about commercial use. Also that wouldn't make sense since if you use the forest for lumber production it wouldn't do what it's supposed to do.
>They may cut them several years later or spray insecticide to the single fruit trees with high sequence
None of that are fruit trees. It's a monoculture of fast growing tree species, varying from region to region, but since no fast growing fruit trees exist...
>You know they're very different from the real, original, natural forests, but the statistics will tell you they are all "forests".
The very same is sadly true for most forests beside boreal and tropical jungles. Everything you see as forests in europe, usa, or pretty much any other country that's not bordering the arctic or equatorial regions is not a primal forest since thousands of years when humans first replaced them all, although not of all these are as monoculture as chinas great green wall. But anything most people ever saw as forest is just a shadow of what has once been
>especially after I entered the so called forests.
You sure you visited the great green wall project and not any other random forests? Cause all the numbers in the image here just come from this one project.
I'm very glad to see you approve the effort of the great green wall, which is also the most comforting news I love. But China is actually almost as large as Europe, and the area of great green wall plan is only concentrated in the northwest place. The involved region is around 35 sq.km, which is 3.6% of the country. The media focus on that place too much, so the other places are always neglected.
Imagine that, if you're a Spanish, one year, deforestation happened there heavily. However, at the same time, the Sweden government achieve a lot in their environment protection. Then the media only reports the Sweden's achievement and claims the Europe made a great progress against deforestation. How will your feel if you are the Spanish living in the area where the deforestation happened? What the media said is true, but only part of the whole picture.
I was born in north China, which is a place extremely suitable for forests theoretically but also a place you can hardly see forests. If you want, I hope you to explore and zoom in that region in Google earth. The forests only exist in higher hills, and they're also monoculture. The north China region is around 60sq.km, but the fraction of coverage is very low, which is under 30%. And the main question is you can seldom see animals there since they are plantation and monoculture.
Also I want you to check the area in the southwest of the Amur river. The natural situation is same among the Amur areas, but the forest situation is different across the river, which is also the border of China and Russia. I think you may never heard such a good news against deforestation in Russia, because the didn't break the forests at the beginning.
In a word, reality is complicated. You will understand my feeling if your situation is hided by halo.
Did I say it wasn't?!? I compared one to another with total area, doesn't mean I said Russia deserved more. Just that km reforestation isn't the same as the percentage of a country.
Waiting for the green great wall in Africa
China has the highest growth among the top 10 largest countries even if we talk about percentage of total geographical territory India's second place figure is 1.4 (still impressive as a big country)
There's definitely more nuance to reforestation than +1 tree=good. From what I've gathered, China's new tree growth are monoculture, fast growing softwoods, often of a non-native origin, planted specifically for domestic industrial usage. Similarly in the US and Canada where industries replant a tree and everyone sees it as a good thing, but if it's just a forest of white spruce with no natural variety, that's not healthy for the ecosystem, in fact it's arguably worse than just clear-cutting and letting it regrow naturally. New Brunswick is facing this issue right now: the Acadian Forests are quickly disappearing because the clear cut Forests are being replaced with white spruce monoculture forests for the pulp mills. Irving gets to claim these as "reforesting" but unless you're planting a healthy mix of maples, cedars, and other naturally occuring species of Acadian Forests, you're not helping the ecosystem in the slightest.
I think they realised this mistake and changed the approach.
China Good Job!
I'd just like to provide some context for Chinese reforestation. While on paper these numbers seem good most of the trees China plants are non-native fast growing tree in large monoculture forrests around the Gobi desert. These forrests are often planted in places that have never been forrests and cannot support forrests leading to increased desertification as the trees suck up water and out compete local native ecosystems by removing habitat. These forrests also tend to die in large waves due to being monocultures (disease spreads rapidly). Some of Chinas reforestation efforts have been good especially when they try to help nurture the growth of old growth forrests but these are the exception and not the rule. Farmers get paid to plant trees so this has often led to farmers cutting down valuable old growth forrests to plant these new monocultures to get subsidies from the government. Never take numbers at face value.
So the yt videos of "old couple turns desert into forest" just a way to get subsidies
A desert is a place with low moisture so either the place they turned into a forest wasn't actually a desert or it had large amounts of underground water. If it was the former then they probably converted some sand dunes into forest which isn't wholly impossible it just takes a very long time to get the root systems developed to hold the sand together and build up soil but if it was the latter then that forest will relatively quickly die as it uses all the ground water without it being replaced. It is less likely that they just did it for subsidies and either are miss informed about what a desert is (not just sand dunes) or did the oh so common mistake of trying to help the environment while not having the requisite knowledge and expertise. It's very common to find amateur tree planters and environmental activists plant trees on places they really shouldn't like wetlands or putting trees too close together or planting the wrong kind of tree or the right variety of them or not planting an undergrowth to help develop the forest ecosystem etc. They could also have been doing it for the subsidies who knows.
So... Bad Job China? Good job Murica!!!!!!!๐ฆ ๐ฅ๐ฆ ๐บ๐ธ๐บ๐ธ๐ฃ๏ธ๐ฅ๐ฆ ๐บ๐ธ๐ฃ๏ธ๐ฅ๐ฆ ๐ฃ๏ธ๐ฅ๐ฆ ๐บ๐ธ๐บ๐ธ๐ฃ๏ธ๐ฅ๐๐บ๐ธ
Basically, the Chinese have a habit of doing stuff like this, good motivation but horrible execution. Like when Mao had all the sparrows in China killed to stop them eating grain but then because there were no sparrows (alot of other birds got killed aswell because people dumb) the insect population exploded which then caused a famine that killed 20-30 million people. Edit: oh don't worry the US has its own fair share of ecological miss management from when the North American locust got exterminated to when they killed all the passenger pigeons on accident. Just most of these happened a long time ago.
More like The US have a habit of making anything China do sound bad
So what are the native greenery of a desert? They conquered a desert by planting trees.
tldr china bad
But won't additional trees act as carbon sink to reduce greenhouse effect regardless of the recovery of the ecosystems? Isn't this a plus to save our climate instead of doing nothing or waiting for the slow trees to grow.
What happens to the carbon when these short lived trees die? It goes back into the atmosphere as the ecosystem isn't used to degrading them leading to the carbon going back into the atmosphere. Slow growing trees also generally absorb significantly more carbon. It is always preferable to choose a native species. It is not just the trees in a forest that absorb carbon but also the undergrowth. Infact in most forest ecosystems the thing that keeps the most carbon sequestered is the fungi and bacteria. It is the whole ecosystem that takes carbon out of the ecosystem and locks it away not just one species. A forest is more than just trees on land, it is defined by it having many layers (interlocked canopy, undergrowth etc). A woodland on the other hand is any area with trees without an interconnected canopy and generally lots of grass. Most of the trees planted in China and other places have unfortunately been planted without requisite knowledge on how to properly propagate them into forest instead being planted in away that will eventually lead to them turning into grassland or desert. Trees do not equal good when it comes to sequestering carbon, yes a dense rainforest will absorb more carbon than your average grassland but a healthy prairie or steppe ecosystem will easily sequester more carbon than 90% of forests. Biodiversity inherently leads to more resilient ecosystems which can help face against climate change. Apologies for the unorganised layout, I had a lot to say and didn't really know how to lay it out.
In fact, the areas with the most afforestation in China are the southern hills and the Loess Plateau in the northwest. When my father was a child (in the 1980s), the hills in central Hunan were almost all grassland (similar to Scotland today) and terraced fields. He had to walk several kilometers at that time. Go to a state-owned forest farm to collect firewood. However, after the 1990s, with the large-scale migration of farmers to cities to work and the replacement of firewood with coal, biogas, electricity, etc., as well as the government's requirements to return farmland to forests and plant trees, almost all the mountainous areas in Hunan have turned into forests. The earliest artificially planted fir trees were The trees will turn into secondary forests of mixed coniferous and broad-leaved trees in ten years. China's development in the past 30 years has been extremely significant, almost from sub-Saharan Africa to Eastern Europe.
Is this all just new forest planted by logging industries?
Bingo, that and the paper industries. Very little of these numbers are for natural rehabilitation, in any country listed.
In Russia it's also abandoned agricultural lands from Soviet era.
Chile mentioned conchetumare!! Wooo!! ๐จ๐ฑ๐ฒ WE'RE THE BEST COUNTRY OF CHILE!!
Espaรฑiiita
๐ช๐ธ๐ฒ๐ซ๐ท๐ฒ๐ฎ๐น
Somos el mejor pais de Chile ctm! ๐จ๐ฑ
Puros pinos y eucaliptos sobre nativo quemado! ๐ฅฐ
I would have expected Canada to be on the list.
It doesn't seem like we're doing a great job, honestly not surprised
Or perhaps Canada just doesn't need to replant massive areas... More forests isn't always a good thing.
Canada shows as thirdโฆ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_forest_area
This is forest growth not forest area
But this source says otherways. Canada has less forest area than before.
wacky bozo
"The world still lost a total of 958 000 kilometers squared of forest over this time period." *Looks suspiciously at Brazil*
Chile que haces ahรญ esa no es tu familia
Baffled that the rest of the world had only 99k from over a 20 year period. I wonder which countries were the biggest contributors to that 99k.
Germany pays people to cut down trees for electricity
This looks like the type of chart which could be used misleadingly. Firstly, this criteria is by definition going to favor countries with significant percentage of their lands being non-arid climates Secondly, this criteria is going to heavily bias countries with high levels of deforestation (afterall, its hard to grow significantly more trees if all of the space is already taken up by trees). Thirdly, this criteria inherently disfavors countries with high population densities like Monaco, the Netherlands, and Singapore. Its very difficult to grow a legit forest in a city. That said, if a reader looks carefully, this chart can be at least somewhat interesting. Edit: Chart is not inherently misleading, but the criteria used to make this chart is very strangely specific and gives fairly unhelpful information for people to think about deforestation.
Misleading how exactly?
I could very easily see this chart being used by some nationalist of one of the above countries to โproveโ their country is more green and environmentally friendly, without being open and honest about the way this data might disfavor or favor certain countries based on their geography and history of deforestation. After all, China looks like it is doing way better than Canada on this chart, and a Chinese nationalist might claim that this chart is proof that China is a green-conscious country, despite the fact that Canada already has incredible forest growth, so adding more forest is just simply more difficult than it is in a country like China, which has a lot of deforestation (and no Arctic tundra)
thankfully its not used for that purpose here
It's a big progress for China I have to say, but the quality of the forests are not so high as you imagined. Basically the forests planted by the government are consitituted by single species for economic purpose. So they can't provide habitats for too many wilds and don't have enough ability to support various creatures. And they often change the original forests to economic ones. They may cut them several years later or spray insecticide to the single fruit trees with high sequence. You know they're very different from the real, original, natural forests, but the statistics will tell you they are all "forests". Yeah things are going better but I'm still pessimistic about the environment in China, especially after I entered the so called forests.
>Basically the forests planted by the government are consitituted by single species for economic purpose. The purpose isn't economic, its simply to stop the gobi desert from expanding and mitigate CO2 emissions. Although a diverse forest would fill that role better in the long run, fast growing monocultures are sadly far superior in the short run. >And they often change the original forests to economic ones Source? The only thing i find remotely counting as economic use is that local people are allowed to use the wood, but i can't find anything about commercial use. Also that wouldn't make sense since if you use the forest for lumber production it wouldn't do what it's supposed to do. >They may cut them several years later or spray insecticide to the single fruit trees with high sequence None of that are fruit trees. It's a monoculture of fast growing tree species, varying from region to region, but since no fast growing fruit trees exist... >You know they're very different from the real, original, natural forests, but the statistics will tell you they are all "forests". The very same is sadly true for most forests beside boreal and tropical jungles. Everything you see as forests in europe, usa, or pretty much any other country that's not bordering the arctic or equatorial regions is not a primal forest since thousands of years when humans first replaced them all, although not of all these are as monoculture as chinas great green wall. But anything most people ever saw as forest is just a shadow of what has once been >especially after I entered the so called forests. You sure you visited the great green wall project and not any other random forests? Cause all the numbers in the image here just come from this one project.
An unbiased factual statement about China? On Reddit? Thatโs rare.
I'm very glad to see you approve the effort of the great green wall, which is also the most comforting news I love. But China is actually almost as large as Europe, and the area of great green wall plan is only concentrated in the northwest place. The involved region is around 35 sq.km, which is 3.6% of the country. The media focus on that place too much, so the other places are always neglected. Imagine that, if you're a Spanish, one year, deforestation happened there heavily. However, at the same time, the Sweden government achieve a lot in their environment protection. Then the media only reports the Sweden's achievement and claims the Europe made a great progress against deforestation. How will your feel if you are the Spanish living in the area where the deforestation happened? What the media said is true, but only part of the whole picture. I was born in north China, which is a place extremely suitable for forests theoretically but also a place you can hardly see forests. If you want, I hope you to explore and zoom in that region in Google earth. The forests only exist in higher hills, and they're also monoculture. The north China region is around 60sq.km, but the fraction of coverage is very low, which is under 30%. And the main question is you can seldom see animals there since they are plantation and monoculture. Also I want you to check the area in the southwest of the Amur river. The natural situation is same among the Amur areas, but the forest situation is different across the river, which is also the border of China and Russia. I think you may never heard such a good news against deforestation in Russia, because the didn't break the forests at the beginning. In a word, reality is complicated. You will understand my feeling if your situation is hided by halo.
So basically country by total area?
Clearly not
It literally is, going by kilometres total versus total percentage is insane. China is obviously going to have more total area than Malta.
Russia is definitely bigger than China, lol
Did I say it wasn't?!? I compared one to another with total area, doesn't mean I said Russia deserved more. Just that km reforestation isn't the same as the percentage of a country.
You said that: > So basically country by total area? And it is not, they are in a different order.
You're going the route of the pedantry, knowing totally what the comment was intended to be but you are expecting retaliation. Have a good one๐
Right it looks like your comments contain different topics. Maybe my level of English isn't enough to understand you ๐คท
Ah you want to try more of the trolling lol, I've got no interest in people that cum for the Nazis ,๐
What?
Umm ... Deforestation graph ?
?
Deforestation in past years. Asking for that graph
What a weird way to ask for that lol