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Comment by swader999 | Hacker News Reader

BC can have three our four species in play on the coast, interior and east typically has pine and spruce. You could argue for balsam but that is crap wood and it grows back on its own typically. I don't know about tropical reforestation, but in Canada the notion that we are replanting with only mono species isn't true. They leave seed trees standing and source cones directly from the logged blocks. It's very well done and highly regulated. Blocks that don't grow back are replanted again until they do.

Canada replants 600 million trees annually, USA about 1 billion.

Trees grow so much faster than they did a decade ago. CO2 is to 'blame'. I help maintain ski runs at my favorite ski hill and it's ridiculous how much more work it is now. Alpine areas that never in history had trees are beginning to get overrun.

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The sub-alpine line is rising in elevation due to increased warming.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7696691/

Is it T or CO2?

Warm soil causes seed germination. CO2 causes warm soil. So, both.

Roughly where are you in BC? I am in Cranbrook and haven’t seen the seed trees left standing in logged blocks but maybe I’ve missed them somehow.

Isn’t part of the issue that historically there would’ve been more deciduous trees that acted as natural fire breaks and now loggers only are allowed to replant coniferous?

I've planted all over BC. Seed trees started being a thing early nineties and they don't do it everywhere. Quite often its because there aren't species needed as seed trees that won't already grow back are already slated for nursery production and replanting.

Smaller block sizes act this way too, the boundaries are seeded from the older growth on the perimeter.

Deciduous trees like poplar, Adler, and birch are like weeds and will grow very quickly and compete for a time with replanted trees. Eventually the evergreens tend to choke them out by taking over the canopy and changing the soil with their needles.

You may also hear this practice called selective cutting/lumbering. Essentially they leave trees in ones or twos scattered through to reseed the area around it.

Yeah maybe, selective cutting looks different though, like 1-2 hectare pieces and roads everywhere. This seed trees thing has blocks up to about 90 hectares that are rectangles with ten or twenty trees still standing in it.

They grow faster but weaker, with lower density (cf. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foreco.2018.07.045)

I would suspect they would gradually evolve to grow stronger?

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