[MichaelCollins]

The problem is with the incentives. We reward organizations for planting trees when we should be rewarding them for growing trees.

Anecdotally, paper mills don't seem to have a problem successfully growing monocrop forests on their own properties because they actually have a reason to care about the success of replanting their own land.

[ethagknight]

This is great insight that I haven't considered. IN parts of the US you can plainly see miles of monoculture forests in all directions thriving (in an industrial sense) because they are actively managed. Look around Panama City, FL, (link below) for a good example.

https://www.google.com/maps/@30.2640043,-85.4463662,3277m/da...

[chaostheory]

Isn’t most of the Western portion of the US comprised of monoculture forests due to the historical lack of rain compared to the Eastern half?

[dghlsakjg]

No.

The western half of the US has many monoculture forests where forestry companies manage them with thinning, herbicides and selective planting.

Natural forests in the west are diverse and contain many species of trees. They are different trees than you see in the east, and many of the coniferous species appear similar.

[felipeerias]

Industrial corporations in the EU can offset their carbon emissions (and the associated taxes) by sponsoring the plantation of trees. The calculation of this carbon offset is based on the expected carbon capture of a tree over several decades, even if at the moment it is just a sapling.

This summer a Dutch tree-planting company accidentally started a fire in Spain that burnt a much wider surface of forest than what they had planted. As a local major put it: "they were going to plant 200 hectares and ended up burning 1,000 hectares covered with 50-year old pine trees".

https://www.heraldo.es/noticias/aragon/huesca/2022/07/20/los... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/22/reforestation-... https://landlifecompany.com/news/land-life-statement-july-21...

I wouldn't be surprised if, from the point of view of carbon taxes, the saplings that were burnt in the fire were accounted as having offset carbon emissions just as much if they had lived a full life. Presumably, the new saplings that will be planted on their ashes will be accounted by the same amount.

[JumpCrisscross]

> corporations in the EU can offset their carbon emissions (and the associated taxes) by sponsoring the plantation of trees

The carbon offset market is deep with scams [1]. Most have no fix. The problem you mention does: issue offsets for trees buried, i.e. carbon sequestered, not planted.

[1] https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/05/10/1024751/carbon-c...

[Lendal]

I have plenty of incentive to keep the trees in my own yard from dying, yet I lack the expertise. So they die. I need an arborist. Unfortunately the arborists in my town are incentivized to get me to pay their company to cut my trees down and replace them with new ones every 10-15 years or so.

We really just need more foresters, with a broader mission that extends beyond simply government-owned park land, who can help individual landowners to plant the right kinds of trees in the right ways.

[dylan604]

>I have plenty of incentive to keep the trees in my own yard from dying, yet I lack the expertise. So they die. I need an arborist.

I don't mean to be rude, but how brown is your green thumb? I get killing house plants, but killing a tree growing outdoors seems like something you'd actively have to do. The most common "mistake" I've seen are lack of care with lawn equipment like weed whackers. Are they just not being planted correctly so they don't have a chance?

[Lendal]

I suspect the developer selected trees not for their suitability to the environment, but rather for their appearance in order to sell more houses. Perhaps if I knew more I could make them live but that didn't happen. So as they die and I replace them, I ask for trees that are native to the area so they can survive on their own. These new trees are still alive, but this situation has happened to most of the trees in the neighborhood, not just mine. Many people don't bother replacing trees at all so they just never get replaced. So my idea is that the government should encourage builders to plant trees that are native, and make sure the expertise is available to recommend better trees that builders could plant in an area that would survive and are better for the environment.

In Florida, builders understandably plant a lot of palm trees. But the palm trees they plant aren't native to Florida. Palm trees grow wild in Florida, but they don't plant these because maybe they're not pretty enough or they produce fruit which attracts wildlife, so instead we get palm trees from Australia or other places. It's really insane.

[kansface]

Developers mostly just plant fast growing trees.

[gopher_space]

Underwatering a recent transplant is pretty common. I'll just hold a hose on the area until I get bored.

[luhn]

Some great advice that I got: Buy a five gallon bucket, drill an 1/8" hole in the side. That way the water can soak into the ground without having to stand there with a hose for five minutes. Plus you can measure how much water you're giving the tree—I was told one bucket twice a week for the first year, but I'm sure YMMV depending on the tree and your climate.

[dylan604]

>until I get bored.

=) I really wish I could make a lot of my decisions based on this alone.

If you have a short attention span, that's not good.

Yet, at the same time, if you zone out for an hour and doing this daily, that's not good but in an opposite manner.

[crazygringo]

I'm no expert gardener but I can't help but wonder if it could be animals/pests eating the leaves before the tree is tall enough? Or gnawing all the bark, etc.

Also trees might not be a good match for the soil, there's clay the roots can't penetrate, etc.

[dylan604]

I get planting the wrong tree in the wrong area. That's part of what I meant by not being planted correctly. Not treating the root ball properly is another.

However, I have pecan/oak trees in my area. Every spring, I get free saplings from the nuts that actually germinated and sprouted in a lot of my pots that I use for my container garden. If I were to actually try to get one of these nuts to grow, it would never take. Yet every spring, Mother Nature gives me freebies that I feel guilty about plucking when it comes time to prep for the next round of veggies instead. I have an almost perfect spot to let another tree grow to full size. If it weren't for the remaining stump from where the shitty developer planted Bradford Pears, I'd transplant some of the Live Oaks saplings in their place.

[s1artibartfast]

Can you expand on your arborist conflict of interest. Are they all dishonest or can you simply ask what the expected lifetime of the tree would be?

[lupire]

It's just a a poster being dramatic. Arborists don't intentionally push to chop down tree that aren't overgrown relative to the space available to them.

The problem is that people like big trees and big houses, and they aren't compatible long term.

[pvaldes]

Yes, they kill trees. Slowly. Overpruning for money is, sadly, too common among professionals.

[rini17]

There's no substitute for self learning here, sadly. As soon as you want "nonstandard" garden you're on your own, with plenty of trial and error. With that in mind, maybe there's local gardening group?

[1123581321]

If you’re in the US, contact your local extension office for help. Though I’m also unsure why your trees would keep dying; I haven’t seen a lot of people with that issue.

[pvaldes]

Contract a remote freelancer arborist that does not have this incentives.

Or contract a remote landscaper and do the right things since the start

[googlryas]

Your local/nearby college/university almost certainly provides these services for free.

[CommieBobDole]

To extend that, there was an article here a while back about how many of the people growing these monoculture pine forests for paper production have stopped cutting them because gathering the pinestraw and selling it for landscaping purposes is much more lucrative.

[kilotaras]

"Modern principles of economics" start with great anecdote how British Government changing payment from £/prisoner boarded to £/prisoner delivered reduced death rate on Australia convict ships from ~30% to less than 1%.