Just cause I have a quick half hour or so this morning, I thought I'd share a few videos that I think illustrate some things I've learned over the past year or so, reading articles, listening to lectures, etc. I wouldn't take anything I say, in this thread or others, as gospel. I'm just parroting what I've heard from others. I mean, I'm no expert, and while the people I listen to might be better informed with what's up, they can be wrong too. Anyway, here we go.

This is just a nice little film. I don't know much about One Tree Planted as an organization, but they at least put out some good videos. The big take away from this one, around the three minute mark, is where they talk about removing invasive species first (not that they say in the video, but it's because they can often out compete and crowd out native plants) and then they immediately follow up by explaining how they carry multiple species with them and plant with various ground conditions in mind.

This video is about recovering land after a forest fire. Once again, it's by One Tree Planted. At the three minute mark, they talk about how most of the land will restore itself naturally, but there's spots of land where for one reason or another, that's not possible, so that's where they're focusing their efforts on tree planting and recovery.

This one here is more about forestry (think farming, but for wood product) and I just really like this one for the cinematography. At about the minute-thirty mark though, they're discussing (briefly) the need to use non-native trees. This is something that is becoming increasingly more common, because as kleinbl00 illustrated really well in this comment, climate change is hitting trees pretty hard. Species that used to grow well in certain areas are no longer able to, because of changes in weather conditions. I listened to a really good lecture once about how trees struggle to adapt to changes in climate because they have really slow adaptation rates for one big reason. Trees are slow to grow and slow to die. Basically, a young tree doesn't take the place of an older tree until the older tree dies off, creating space in the canopy for a young tree in waiting to shoot up and take its spot. When the average life of a tree is anywhere from 150 to 500 years, that's a really slow turnover rate. As a result, the adult trees you see today were adapted to climate from hundreds of years ago. The genetic information in their seeds, also reflects that older environment. They haven't really caught on to global warming yet and are at a disadvantage compared to other organisms with a much quicker turn over rate, like mice, which replace about every two years. Side factoid. Thorny trees were likely adapted to deter larger past organisms, like mammoths, from eating them. Giraffes actually evolved very viscous saliva to protect there mouths and throats from said thorns. Similarly, the avocado, with its giant seed, was meant to be eaten and its seeds dispersed by giant herbivores.

This one is about a half hour long. You don't have to watch it if you don't want to (you don't have to watch any of these videos actually), but it's a really good look at what commercial forestry is like. Spoiler alert. It's big and it's hard work.

I could share a ton more, but I think four vids are good for now. Ever since Dala started playing forestry podcasts for me (which are dry, dull, yet fascinating, and sadly sometimes poorly produced) about a year or so ago, I've been getting more and more into this kind of stuff. So I just thought I'd share some, for the curious. Like I said, I'm no expert, I just parrot what I hear. Honestly, I get tons of conflicting information a lot, so I guess even experts are often in disagreements. But you know, I have opinions and things that make sense to me, and I like to share, so here's some sharing.