Huge-scale ecological engineering around the edges of one of the world's largest and driest deserts has turned it into a carbon sink that absorbs more CO2 than it emits, research suggests.
They need to plant a diversity of crops to actually restore the ecology. Wildlife tends not to survive monocultures. The belt is ironically a green desert in terms of nutrients. Its also important to make the project more resilient to fire and disease
This isn’t specifically a critique of China, this happens in the US all the time
wouldnt other plants just move in between the trees on their own though? agricultural monocultures dont stay monocultures on their own, they’re actively maintained, arent they? unless the trees are planted so densely that nothing can live beneath them, but based on some of the images in the article, it doesnt look like that.
I’ve read mixed things on whether any of the planted trees are native. If they purely selected trees for fast growth, nothing native to the ecosystem will find its niche and grow. Even if they are native and its a monoculture, that doesn’t guarantee that other native plants will find their way into it
I’m more familiar with forestry practices in the US, but in forests where a single tree is replanted the regular species do not return in significant numbers
They need to plant a diversity of crops to actually restore the ecology. Wildlife tends not to survive monocultures. The belt is ironically a green desert in terms of nutrients. Its also important to make the project more resilient to fire and disease
This isn’t specifically a critique of China, this happens in the US all the time
wouldnt other plants just move in between the trees on their own though? agricultural monocultures dont stay monocultures on their own, they’re actively maintained, arent they? unless the trees are planted so densely that nothing can live beneath them, but based on some of the images in the article, it doesnt look like that.
I’ve read mixed things on whether any of the planted trees are native. If they purely selected trees for fast growth, nothing native to the ecosystem will find its niche and grow. Even if they are native and its a monoculture, that doesn’t guarantee that other native plants will find their way into it
I’m more familiar with forestry practices in the US, but in forests where a single tree is replanted the regular species do not return in significant numbers