Peter Smallidge shared this article with me on the potential carbon sequestration benefits of tree planting: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/planting-trees-could-buy-more-t...
The article claims that the 900 million hectares suitable for tree planting did not include "natural grasslands". My guess is that figure includes pasture land in predominately forest-covered regions like the Northeast US, but excludes rangelands used predominately for grazing like parts of the western US, Mongolia, or the Argentine Pampas. In any case, that number could likely be much higher if we considered the "win-win" opportunities for developing open pastures and rangelands (where appropriate) in to silvopastures.
I've always thought of the "trees in to pasture" (vs. the "pasture in to trees") direction of silvopasturing as the more challenging of the two. It ain't cheap or easy to plant trees in sod environments full of herbivores. If scratching your head why, refer to the article posted elsewhere here on the forum from Graze magazine.
That said, however, I feel that one of the uncalculated benefits of planting trees in silvopastures is that the trees are often going to be well-managed (they have to be if they're going to survive the establishment phase) and selected for a specific purpose. A prime example would be nut grove or orchard silvopastures.
The article in the link above also correctly points out that the benefits of tree planting to mitigate climate change go beyond just the carbon sequestered by the trees.
Tags:
Started by Brett Chedzoy. Last reply by Brett Chedzoy Dec 15, 2020. 8 Replies 0 Likes
Posting the presentations here in the order they were givenContinue
Started by Brett Chedzoy. Last reply by Brett Chedzoy Nov 30, 2020. 1 Reply 0 Likes
One of the more interesting talks that I've heard over the years on grazing or silvopasturing was by Dr. Gene Garrett at the 2011 Northeast Silvopasture Conference titled: Silvopasture Ecosystem…Continue
Started by Ben Harris. Last reply by Ben Harris Sep 29, 2020. 14 Replies 0 Likes
As I thin some woods and open up some edge lines, I'm hoping to seed some perennial shade-tolerant forages. I'm mainly focused on wildlife at this point (I don't yet own livestock), and hope to get…Continue
Started by Joanne Vaughn Sep 16, 2020. 0 Replies 0 Likes
As we developed our plan we considered what to do about paddock edges. Hedgerows, windbreaks came to mind. Can't have an inside without a boundary condition.Is there a list of plants which are safe…Continue
© 2021 Created by Peter Smallidge.
Powered by