/siberia/ - Off-topic

Btw the picture is actually from the USA it's what used on Wikipedia for tree plantation.

>>286083
In a real forest, the ground is covered in a bush called poison oak. If it touches your skin, you will have an itchy rash for 2 months.

There are barely even any forest anymore let alone old growth. To my knowledge there are a few in western America

there's more life on the floor and it's more bumpy, making it hard to walk outside of the path
overall it's cool though. just don't trip over a root

>>286086
Damn Europe is shaved.

There are no forests on Flat Earth Wake UP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0oQqX0Yugs
There are no forests on Flat Earth Wake UP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0oQqX0Yugs
There are no forests on Flat Earth Wake UP

>>286086
stalin saved the /siberian/ forests
apologize.

>>286088
Is 75 years enough to recover?

>>286101
Oh he actually admitted that it is not.

>>286101
No amount of time is enough to recover, because many species and local subspecies go extinct when old growth forest is lost. Even with enough time to get a new old growth forest, it's a new forest. Fully replaced vegetation is one thing, but the niches filled by all the species including animals could take millions of years if you don't actively introduce foreign species in an attempt to fill the niches.

>>286085

Not sure if you're joking, but poison oak isn't really that common. It's there, but it's pretty easy to avoid the same way poison ivy usually is… actually, easier than poison ivy to avoid in my experience.

>>286121
Like that rewilding stuff? Does that work?

bump

>>286083
Burgerlander here. Our forests look kind of like this, at least in this particular nook of the east coast.

>>286892
looks comf

>>286083
There's a lot to say on this subject.

It depends upon a huge number of factors. Largely speaking though, in Europe, walking through a forest (or wood- not all woods are forests, and not all forests have trees) that has been left for a long time will be very difficult because of all the undergrowth. You'll be able to see up to about 20 metres ahead of you (maybe more, maybe less) but then it just turns to green, unlike the picture you have there.

This is because most forests in (lowland) Europe are made up of broadleaved deciduous species that let a lot of light in at the beginning and end of the year, which allow smaller trees and shrubs to grow. Some tree species cast more shade with their leaves than others, and gaps in the canopy can form because of tree deaths. This allows groves to open up than will allow field-dwelling species to grow, providing grazing spots for animals.

Trees will also fall over from wind or heavy snow, and if their root plates get lifted up they leave impressions in the earth. These can get filled with rainwater, which provide habitat for things like insect larvae and maybe even frogspawn, if it's there for long enough.

The species composition of the forest would be changing constantly too, although this would take an incredibly long time to happen (consider that some species of tree can live for several thousand years in the wild) so you wouldn't notice it day to day. These species changes are limited though by the amount of light available, the soil type, and the climate, and the method of seed dispersal/proximity of new species to the existing woodland.

>>286361
To a degree. Some near-extinct species have been (slowly) reintroduced (prominent example being wolves in the US). IDK about replacing lost species with foreign ones being field tested, but invasive species are generally walking extinction events, so it's a precarious thing.

>>286938
Coppicing is probably a lot better than typical tree plantations, but it may have issues too considering underbrush and fallen wood is being cleared away.
>and the old growth there is in America has all been tampered with by either the Indians or the Europeans after they arrived.
There's a theory that the great plains were created by indigenous people burning forests down. We do know there used to be forests there but they burned away. The only question is if it was natural causes.

>>286939
>Coppicing is probably a lot better than typical tree plantations, but it may have issues too considering underbrush and fallen wood is being cleared away.

Yes, in a traditional working coppice that would be the case. In an ideal scenario, at least some of the woody debris would be left. Coppicing also happens in cycles, so an entire woodland would never be denuded of undergrowth at any one time, only individual sections every so many years (perhaps up to 20). When I was volunteering at my local wood, the wood we cut was stacked up and left, and the twigs were made into dead hedges. That was almost 10 years ago, and they've only just started coppicing the corner of the wood closest to the road that passes it, which means that the undergrowth we cut away (of which there wasn't much because the trees were so tightly packed together) will have had plenty of time to grow back now.

>There's a theory that the great plains were created by indigenous people burning forests down. We do know there used to be forests there but they burned away. The only question is if it was natural causes.

Really? That's interesting. I've heard that the species composition of the Amazon was altered by the people that lived there too, as they used to plant fruit trees and fertilise the soil with their own artificial fertiliser.

I wrote >>286938 btw, but I deleted it because I though it was poorly written

>>286934
> not all forests have trees
Interesting, what kind of other forests are there? What makes something a forest?

>>286992
It's mostly just me being awkward, but there is a difference between a wood and a Forest.
I can only speak for the UK, but Forest is more of a technical term. Colloquially, forest (small f) is used to mean "big woodland", but in medieval England a Forest (capital F) was a piece of land that had been set aside for hunting by nobility.

One such Forest is the New Forest in Hampshire. There are patches of woodland there, but there is also wood pasture, heathland, and moorland.

Also Kelp forests exist, but that's being really pedantic lol

>>286940
>Really? That's interesting
We know that there was a lot of indigenous land management happening, including regular burnings that would clear underbrush or even tree cover, at least in parts of the US before contact (partly because some of these practices have been culturally preserved by survivors). The deforestation of the plains happened over 10,000 years ago so it's not exactly easy to gather data about those events. Despite some prevailing ideas, the grassy plains are actually not sustainable and require burning to be maintained even today, as people living there are (re)discovering.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/great-plains-prairie-needs-fire-to-survive-these-ranchers-are-bringing-it-back
It was long thought that the grassland was simply a natural occurrence that formed after the area stopped being an inland sea, but the consensus is slowly coming around to the fact that this is unlikely since forests tend to spread and take over non-forested areas when possible.

>>286940
>I wrote >>286938 btw, but I deleted it because I though it was poorly written
Nah it's good. Here, I'll post it again because it's worthwhile contribution.
<It's worth baring in mind that woodland in Europe began getting felled on-mass in the mesolithic era, about 4000 years BC. Over thousands of years, the wildlife of Europe adapted to the different ways the people living there had of managing woodlands for wood. We know that coppicing, which is how woodland was managed in Britain until recently, was being practiced in Roman Britain, and that the Anglo Saxons did it too. This management system was dominant even up to the industrial revolution, where alongside charcoal was needed for smelting ore, and only stopped fully in the UK in the mid-20th century, due to wood being replaced by plastic and cheap metal in most applications and the people who knew what they were doing all dying during the 1st and 2nd world wars.
<I've heard it said that coppicing as a system replicates the natural succession of woodlands on a much shorter time span, which is why it is used in the conservation management of semi-natural woodlands in the UK today.
<There is no old-growth left in Europe, and the old growth there is in America has all been tampered with by either the Indians or the Europeans after they arrived. Not managing woodlands at this point is not necessarily a bad thing, but what we'd end up with would certainly not look like it did in the 16th century, for example, and as you pointed out, wouldn't look anything like it did before humans started clearing it because of the permanent loss of some species.

>>286992
A tree is technically a pretty specific kind of plant. You can have non-trees that compose a forest, like things that are technically woody shrubs or stuff like banana "trees" and palm "trees" which are not actual trees.

>>287024
> I'll post it again because it's worthwhile contribution.
Oh, thanks! I'm glad you liked it.

I guess it would be very difficult to figure out what it looked like on the Great Plains that long ago. We only know what Europe looked like because we occasionally find pollen preserved in peat bogs which can be carbon dated, alongside the ocasional bog oak (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bog-wood). Even then, it is a matter of debate how close the trees actually stood to the peat bog, exactly which species were there (some pollen preserves better than others), and how big the woodlands were which produced the trees.

The Great Plains don't really have any bogs where ancient trees and tree pollen could be preserved either, do they?

And yes, grassland is just a stage leading to what some ecologists call (or used to call, I'm running on decades-old info) a climax state. The Climax vegetation for most habitats in the termperate world consists of trees, which means that if you leave any piece of land for long enough it will turn into woodland. These days the term isn't used as much, as picking any one stage to call the "Climax" when the natural world is constantly changing is arbitrary, but it still holds true for most places that if you leave grassland for long enough, it will fill with coloniser species (aspen, birch, pine, and these days oak, amongst others). I've heard about the burnings practiced by indigenous people, which would make sense if you're trying to encourage new grass growth and kill off tree saplings.

I'm just guessing at this point, but could it be that the Great Plains were just too dry to support full forests like one finds on the coasts? Maybe it was covered in trees once, but excessive felling caused some kind of runaway effect where the environment became more and more hostile for trees to reproduce by themselves, and they slowly disappeared.

The more grassland that appeared, the more buffalo that would have appeared, which would have suppressed tree growth even further through grazing.

>>287052
Have you heard of the biotic pump? Some people claim that forest not only create their own little climate, but they "suck" in humidity from the oceans and move it inlands through a cycle of precipitation and transpiration: https://www.science.org/content/article/controversial-russian-theory-claims-forests-don-t-just-make-rain-they-make-wind
> Yet, if correct, the idea could help explain why, despite their distance from the oceans, the remote interiors of forested continents receive as much rain as the coasts—and why the interiors of unforested continents tend to be arid. It also implies that forests from the Russian taiga to the Amazon rainforest don't just grow where the weather is right. They also make the weather.

>>287079
>plants randomly mutate to have characteristics that have an effect on the surrounding atmosphere
>evolution selects for traits that help plants obtain more moisture
This isn't even a stretch. It seems like it would be somewhat inevitable, only question being the magnitude of the effect. More densely vegetated areas would presumably have a stronger effect, creating a positive feedback loop.

>>287052
>I'm just guessing at this point, but could it be that the Great Plains were just too dry to support full forests like one finds on the coasts?
Well, we know that a lot of the large species in the Americas were heavily hunted once humans arrived. Predator species tended to get killed off quicker because they were both a threat and competition for humans. If you have fewer things eating ruminant animals like bison, their population will grow and they will curb the growth of slower-to-mature plants like trees. We have seen this effect in recent years with wolves in yellowstone affecting deer and causing more tree growth.

>>286083
They are the kind of place that a kid can never tire of playing in. Everything is climbable. Everything has some bizarre plant or animal either in it or under it. They make for great places to hide weed and porno magazines from your parents. You can play Robin Hood or ninjas there when you're little and snatch other kids bikes and hide them there when you're bigger. There are usually large patches of blackberry bushes at the edges of them where you can get enough to eat without having to come home for lunch.
>>286085
LOL Cali.
>>286089
Moving about in them is not easy.

The closest I've been to real forest is when my 5th grade class went on a week long trip to the old redwood forests in La Honda, California. Shit's kinda scary lmao. We got shown a tree that was at least 2000 years old.

For a city slicker it's scary.

>>287143
Man, you live up in NorCal, and you have never been in a forest? They have cool ones up in the hills. Just steer well clear of the weed plantations.

>>287143
What's scary about it? Did you see bears?

>>287079
>Have you heard of the biotic pump?

Ah, I'd heard something about this effect, but had no idea what it was called. Thanks, anon!

I heard about it in relation to the Amazon generating its own climate, and how the destruction of the Amazon rainforest could fundamentally change the climate of South America. Fun times ahead!

>>287147
It just gets dark as fuck. I was like 10 and from a dysfunctional family so being away from home was weird but the stillness and sheer age of thr shit around you inspired a feeling of existential dread

Hurts to know that I will probably die without ever visiting a real forest.

They found a 5,500 year old tree in Chile recently, now thats a real forest

>>286083
magical
I will kill you if you come here and boost the population to 2 people every 10000^2 kilomteres

>>289079
I'm not going to boost the population you don't have to worry about that