Poll: Plant trees?
- Thread starter Wheatmaster
- Start date
Didn't they figure out a while ago most of the earths oxygen is produced from other sources? I thought I heard something about sea plant-life doing most of it..
There's more plant life on the bottom of the ocean than there is above it. Most of the earth's surface area is under water, so it only makes sense that a higher percentage of oxygen conversion takes place below sea level than above sea level.
nik
Even if that were true... think about this. say out of 100% O2, 60% (a majority) comes from sea life... well, there's still 40% that we need to take care of. I know this isn't the most accurate of comparisons, but we can't say land based oxygen producers don't matter.
There are more trees in the US now than in 1900, and I don't remember reading about people suffocating back then.
Ask A Scientist©: More Trees Today?
Ask A Scientist©: More Trees Today?
So does that mean that we should just cut all the trees down, because they don't matter?
Yes, of course. We should plant as many trees as we can. Especially in urban environments.
Did you know that the air inside your house can be worse than the air outside? Having plants in your house helps combat the problem.. plus it makes it homey.
You can never have too many plants in the house, or in your yard.Originally posted by: Eli
So does that mean that we should just cut all the trees down, because they don't matter?
Yes, of course. We should plant as many trees as we can. Especially in urban environments.
Did you know that the air inside your house can be worse than the air outside? Having plants in your house helps combat the problem.. plus it makes it homey.
Did you read my post immediately under the one you quoted, smart guy?
nik
Uh..... I find that very, very, very hard to believe. I mean, think about it. How many acres of rainforest gets cut down a day? It's rediculous. That alone should tell you that there aren't more trees today than there were in 1900. What about all the cities? What do you think used to be there? Do you think the contcrete and asphalt was there from the beginning?
The idea that there are more trees today than there were in 1900 is absolutely obsurd.
Edit: Ah.. Well, it says in the United States. I dunno, I still find it hard to believe. All the cities.... It doesen't say for sure that there are more. It appears as if he doesen't really even know himself, says it very well could be even..
Besides.. I don't think it's fair that we can cut down an 800 year old tree, plant a new one and call it "even". It's not the individual trees that we need to worry about, it's the loss of natural ecosystems and habitat. That's the real loss. When we cut a forest that has never been touched down, you can't replace that just by replanting some 3 year old trees. Have you ever seen one of our so called replanted forests? Come to Portland and drive to the coast, they're very visable. And they aren't lush and green.. They're small, spindly, and diseased.
Nik - Sorry.. I didn't mean to come across like that.. I wasn't flaming you, I was just trying to point out that something like that isn't worth arguing over.. It wouldn't be long before people would be arguing that we don't need to plant trees because of this fact, lol.
Hehe, thats because now instead of cutting down our own trees we just have the other countries cut down thiers for us.
Like good ol' Canda, and South America so that they can make more cattle for our fast food hamurger patties.Originally posted by: Gr1mL0cK
Hehe, thats because now instead of cutting down our own trees we just have the other countries cut down thiers for us.
And once again the U.S. is the global bad guy.
Originally posted by: Gr1mL0cK
Hehe, thats because now instead of cutting down our own trees we just have the other countries cut down thiers for us.
Now we just need to build a big bubble over the US so those SOB's stop leeching off of our oxygen!!
You should plant trees because it is pretty & it also provide shelter/protection from the environment to the animals & human.
I have planted over 300,000 trees as an ex tree-planter (average about 1200 per/day every summer for 5 years during college).
What kind of tree do you want to plant?
Fruit trees can be had for $5.00-12.00 each, and spruce/pine/hemloch/cedar range from a low $2.00 each to about $10.00 each seadling. It can set you back a good chunk of money even for the seedling, but 30 to 45 footers can set you back thousands per tree.
1,200 per day? I find it hard to believe that you yourself could have done that... 8 hours a day, that's 2.5 trees per minute...
Seriously. I think it would be safe to bet that I have over 1000 trees in my backyard alone (although the back 50 yards is forest). Now, they aren't all nice 2 feet in diameter beasts, they range from a couple inches in diameter (and a good 10 - 20 feet tall) to several feet in diameter (and a good 50 - 100 feet tall). We have enough trees in the US, we just need more trees in our urban areas.
For a very quick and dirty US tree population calculation:
The BLM (Burea of Land Management) manages 264 million acres of public land, approximately 1/8th the land area of the US. Most of this is just general land with a random array of forests, rivers, lakes, grassland, desert, chaparal etc.
Let's assume the average tree on BLM land is 8" in diameter
Let's assume the average distance between trees in 'dense forest' areas is 12'.
Let's assume that 'dense forest' land consists of 65% of the total BLM land.
One acre is 4.05e3 square meteres.
One square meter is 10.76 square feet.
One acre = 4.05e3 * 10.76 = 43,578 square feet.
For a square plot of dense forest, one side is SQRT(43578) = 208.753 ft in length.
Using the equation x * (8/12) + (x-1) * (12) = 208.753 where x is a number of trees, we can find the number of trees that will fit on one side of a square acre of 'dense forest'. We find that x = 17.428, the number of average trees that will fit on one side of our average square acre of 'dense forest'.
{Side Note: This number is slightly off because by the nature of this equation we are progressively adding fractional parts of the trees as we are adding fractional parts of the additional trees. So even though we could have half a tree on the edge of our acre, we do not have half a tree with this equation because when x = 1.5 (we are adding a tree and then another half a tree), the diameter added to the total number is 12" (1') and the distance between the trees added is 6' even though at 6' away from one tree we do not have half a tree yet (we have to go another 6' before we encounter the next tree). Still, this is just for approximation purposes.}
So, square that number to find the total number of trees on the average square acre of 'dense forest' 17.428^2 = 303.735 total trees.
Since we are assuming that 65% of the total land is 'dense forest' then .65 * 264 million = 171.6 million acres of 'dense forest'. Multiply that number by 303.735 trees per acre 171.6 million * 303.735 = 52.121 billion trees.
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So, BLM manages 52.121 billion trees alone by itself. For simplistic purposes, let's assume that each tree produces 1 unit of oxygen in 1 year, so the BLM 'dense forest' land produces 52 121 000 000 units of oxygen in 1 year. If we add 1000 trees to the BLM population in 1 year, then the the BLM 'dense forest' land will produce 52 121 001 000 units of oxygen in 1 year.
That is a .0000192 % increase in oxygen unit production for the year. To increase the oxygen unit production for the year by 1 % based on the first year we started planting trees, we would need to plant 1000 trees per year for 521 210 year. Yes, half a million years later we will have effected the oxygen unit production by 1 %.
Obiously there are errors all over the place in the assumptions, etc of this calculation. However, I think if you accounted for every single piece of land in the US, or even take a look at the entire world, the statistics would look even worse, and you would need to exaggerate the number of years required to effect the oxygen unit product by 1 % immensely.
Edit: This does not mean that I am some anti-tree nazi, I personally love trees and feel sad for the thousands of people moving into these 'planned neighborhoods' around me where you might see some 1 inch diameter saplings every 50 feet along the sidewalk. I just think that we need to be planting millions of trees per year across the land in order to make the places we live that much more beautiful and friendly.
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Squisher
Lifer
- Aug 17, 2000
- 21,204
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For those of you wanting to plant trees, and willing to start with year old whips, you might want to check out arborday.com for some really cheap trees.
My personal fav. is the Thornless Honey Locust, it's very open so you can plant underneath it, golden in color, and no leaves to rake(they're so small they fall between the blades of grass).
My personal fav. is the Thornless Honey Locust, it's very open so you can plant underneath it, golden in color, and no leaves to rake(they're so small they fall between the blades of grass).
It is piecework & we work 10-14 hours per day 6 days a week.
Just to let you wankers know how motivated us tree planter are when it comes to paying school tuition & books. Only 1 out of 6 tree-planters survived the first year & come back for second and it is about 1 out of 40 make it for the fourth year.
It is not the hard work that get the planters, but the living condition & insects that break the average person.
The average person that plant in Ontario/Quebec/prairie slash burned (beach planting in tree planter term) average about 2000 trees per day & high-baller do some where around 3000-3500 trees per average day. But the beach planting trees can be price as low as $0.035 CAD per tree, but normally average around 5 to 9 cents per tree. Now calculate how many trees average planter have to plant to get the average pay of $150.00-180.00 per day.
I plant on the steep West Coast mountains where the environment & terrain is much harsher therefor the price is much higher than the prairie or Eastern Canada. Tree price range from $17-55 cents per treeand average around $22-23 cents per tree. I personally can do well in most condition, but detest 40 cents & above terrain, because you have to be a mountain goat to climb the mountain with average over 100 pounds of weight (gear & trees), and generally have to dig through trees & berries bushes & roots to plant a tree. I do best at around $28-32 cents per tree terrain, because I have a screef technique that take an average of 3-5 strokes to break through the root-mat to mineral soil. As a high-baller, I average between 600 trees per day to 2000 trees per day on the West Coast, and thank fully most planting condition isn?t so harsh that I tend to get in between 1000-1400 trees per day.
The best I have done ever is 1975 trees on 43 cents land in 6.5 hours and I would have got more than 3000 trees if the trees weren?t frozen (they froze 15 trees to a bundle & you are not allow to break it apart, because it kill the seedlings). The land happened to be beautiful semi flat land cream with slight mist in the air at around 10 Celsius to keep me cool & the sun off my back.
MacBaine ? Just to let you know any tree-planter that survive longer than 2 years is well respect by anyone that know or work in the bush, because it separate us real men from boys.
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