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Comment by sandworm101 | Hacker News Reader

I am confused. There are a host of different methods in creating a forest depending on the end goal. If the goal is to generate more board-feet of lumber you do A. If the goal is to sequester carbon you do B. If you want to promote animal life you do C. If you want to promote particular plants/trees you do D. Of course you can balance these interests, but you cannot maximize all at once. What exactly is the end goal of the Miyawaki Method? What does the finished forest look like?

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From the article: "A high level of diversity is paramount on Sharma’s list of essential goals. In projects Afforestt has undertaken in India, his company so far managed to use about 336 types of native trees out of 2800 that are known to have existed in the country. And the company has started its own nursery in Rajasthan to begin to add more species to their plantings.

Sharma is adamant that the impact of even very small forests on local communities is significant enough to matter. Research from Wageningen University in the Netherlands, which found increased fungi, bacteria, pollinators, and amphibians on two tiny planted forest sites in urban Zaanstad that were based on Sharma’s models,, lends some scientific credence to this claim."

In this case, it would seem end goal is fauna/flora diversity.

>> on two tiny planted forest sites in urban Zaanstad

Ok. But that is where the debates start. Many forests will not lend themselves towards diversity. Look at places like the pacific coastal rain forests. If left alone they will become a homogenous zone, one canopy of trees. Clearcutting strips increases diversity of tree/bush cover, helping small animals and everything that feeds on them. Diversity over and above the "natural" untouched state. So is the goal a natural level of diversity, or an artificially elevated diversity for diversity's sake?

Diversity does not have to be a static or micro thing, along any dimension. E.g. temporal or spatial. If you look on a larger scale, there was/is species diversity across centuries/aeons (evolution, Ice Ages, ...) and across hundreds or thousands of square km. Could be a large homogeneous patch of 500 sq. km. next to another 300 in size next to a large or medium heterogeneous patch, and so on. On a larger scale, that's still diversity.

FWIW, my limited understanding is that initially, in Japan, the focus was on restoring the native forests, conserving Japanese species and ecosystems.

> So is the goal a natural level of diversity, or an artificially elevated diversity for diversity's sake?

I favor E. O. Wilson's proposal that we set aside half the Earth as a nature preserve and more-or-less let evolution do it's thing. Which half is, of course, an open question, eh?

One way or another, I doubt we can avoid continent-scale ecological management.

> Which half is, of course, an open question, eh?

This approach would of course favor species that thrive in toxic waste, radiation and trash mountains.

Which half is always this problem. It's compounded by the fact that Europeans have scourged their land of anything worthwhile - relegating nature to tiny preserves and replacing most wilderness with farms and cities. Often these same people insist that other nations avoid developing and "preserve" their land. How about we raze Europe's cities and give half her land back to Nature first.

because the cities don't have that much land. its the farm land one would need to reclaim

"Well, where's the fun in that?"

Mother Nature is perfectly capable of razing cities herself if that's what she wanted to do, eh?

People seem to be coming around, regenerative agriculture is taking off, we're starting to ween ourselves off of fossil fuel. I think there's hope.

I think you need to look a bit closer at the pacific coastal rain forests. Even if you had a tree monoculture (which you don't), the amount and number of lichen and moss on untouched, old or even second growth trees is exhorbitant. Those in turn host a huge variety of other organisms.

The number of edible natives is also respectable, and those didn't come from nowhere. They were here all the time in those 'homogenous' zones.

I lived in that area for years. And i said homegenous canopy, not monoculture. The blanket canopy works for certain trees, but not for all and certainly not for all animals. Birds like eagles cannot hunt through forrests. Deer dont get as much to eat with diminished sunlight getting to the ground. The edges of clearcuts, the transition from apex canopy to bare soil in the cut, are the most diverse and animal-friendly zones of that forest.

I think part of the problem here is just lack of age. If fully grown western red cedar falls, it will strike other trees, knocking them down or shearing them off on one side, weakening one of those and potentially setting up a game of dominoes that takes three centuries to play out.

That cedar will lie on the forest floor for decades, hardly decaying (or rather, it would if we stopped meddling). No new cedars will grow in that spot quickly, but hemlock may root on the side of the trunk, fifteen feet off the ground in the moss. Between the precarious perch and hemlock being hemlock, that tree will die in turn, creating a new opening that might contain cedar again.

Not mentioned in TFA, but apparently this method also leads to short timelines (~10 yrs) to reach self-sustaining forests[0]

That article also goes a lot more in depth on how they setup the forest

[0] https://fellowsblog.ted.com/how-to-grow-a-forest-really-real...

You almost answered your own question by mentioning "balance" -- the primary goal is self-regulating stability. This is an approach which uses intensive (and expensive) horticultural methods to quickly create a patch of forest that will require no further human management or operating expense.

The biodiversity should increase a little bit as local fauna habituate and immigrate to the forest, bringing with them propagules from other native species, so humans don't have to do all the work.

Specific benefits of the Miyawaki method are that it can dovetail well with common urban practices. A small forest can grow next to concrete buildings, roads and sidewalks, and offer all the common "green building" benefits such as fire suppression, improved thermal regulation, and runoff absorption. Of course, there will be wildlife as well. Some people consider it a nuisance for whatever reason.

M.R. Hari in Kerala has done some experiments with "eccentrifying" (my word, not his) Miyawaki forests into types such as a edible- or flower- dominated forests, which the mix of such species is slightly increased, but not enough to disrupt the ecological balance. I recommend his YouTube channel 'Crowd Foresting' for many examples of what these forests can look like (in his particular location).

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