In sweden theres a commercial where they say they plant 350 million new trees each year, but how does it work? Thats 1 million per day if my maths correct
How many workers are required for this?
What kind of machines are used?
How many % of all these trees dont die during the growth and make it to adulthood?
So many questions
In: Biology
I know Georgia Pacific used to brag in commercials of planting an insane number of seedlings.
I planted over 100k trees during my summer of tree planting. You can plant a tree every 2 seconds if you are good. Some people can do it while pretty much running.
I wish someone would ever take into account that you can’t just stick a tree sapling in the ground and walk away, and expect it to live. “Ethopia planted 350 million trees in one day!” isn’t as impressive when 90% of them die within the year due to to not being managed.
It gives people a false and dangerous sense of accomplishment.
Hey, Canadian tree planter here. Canada actually has similar rules with planting 2 trees for every 1 cut down. Reforestation companies hire large amount of people to work in remote areas to plant trees. An average camp size is about 45 planters not including staff and cooks. An average planter can plant about 2000 trees a day but really good ones can do more. In just one summer/ spring season Canada plants millions of trees. It takes a lot of work to get these camps up and running but once everyone knows how to plant and is serious about making money then trees really start to get planted quickly. Not sure how Sweden does their reforestation but I would imagine similar to Canada.
Now that I think about it I want to plant some trees in Sweden.
In terms of oxygen generation? It helps but not extremely important. A large part of the oxygen that we breath comes from algea. [Source](http://www.ecology.com/2011/09/12/important-organism/)
I’m not a scientist, I just heard this somewhere in the past and found a seemingly reliable source for now. If there are any legit scientists there, feel free to correct me.
Under legislation passed in 1903, the Swedish Forestry Act states that there is an obligation to replant at least two trees if one is to be cut down (aimed at the forestry industry, not regular people). In Sweden, more trees are planted than are cut down since if one is cut down, at least two are grown. The time to simply plant two trees is far shorter than the time required to cut down one tree. People can manually plant one to two trees in a minute or less so it really isn’t that difficult. In France, 80% of trees are planted manually because it just isn’t hard.
But obviously, this can get expensive and time-consuming so people have figured out how to fully automate or semi-automate this task. There is such thing as automating tree planting and there are many different machines used in the industry. Machines used usually have the same concept: they prepare the ground by clearing it and drops the seeds somewhat deep into the soil (you can’t grow trees on the surface of the soil) and if possible – water it.
Think about it similar to how farmers plant crops using planters pulled by a tractor which tills the soil and then drops seeds in.
Sources:
1. [https://www.skogsstyrelsen.se/globalassets/in-english/forests-and-forestry-in-sweden_2015.pdf#targetText=Forestry%20is%20vitally%20important%20for,traded%20on%20the%20global%20market.](https://www.skogsstyrelsen.se/globalassets/in-english/forests-and-forestry-in-sweden_2015.pdf#targetText=Forestry%20is%20vitally%20important%20for,traded%20on%20the%20global%20market.)
2. [https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4907/9/7/370/pdf](https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4907/9/7/370/pdf)
3. [https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01433983/document](https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01433983/document)
To also follow up on this, why are pine trees (or other softwood) chosen to replant vs leafy trees (hardwood) and is there an advantage to one over the other?
Latest Answers