Interesting forest management for carbon reason

This is an interesting article (even though they get a little sentimental about starving trees as a technique for thinning a species out). These researchers are trying to restore an aspen dominated forest back to the species mix that would have been more natural. What is interesting is that they are doing it because they theorize a mixed forest will "process more carbon" than the single species aspens. That may be true but it shows how this "climate change" scare is motivating research into what should have been done all along for healthy ecosystem and endangered species support reasons. The more diversity of plant habitat, assuming the diversity is of the type that naturally evolved in that area, the wider range of life can be supported. Additionally it is healthier because a wider range of natural processes are being supported. So I have wished for decades (I know, I say that a lot but it's true) that the forests and other ecosystems would be managed and maintained to go back to their more natural and diverse compositions. Anyway, even if it is for the panic pop culture "carbon" reason this study is important for overall ecosystems management.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24775005/

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Here's a quick background lesson for those new to ecological studies. Have you ever noticed that some areas seem to have a lot of birds and animals, with a wide variety of wild flowers and other plants, while others may be beautiful (say, a large stand of pine trees that goes on for miles) but is silent? This is because in general a wide variety of life tends to flourish where there is a wide range of habitat and supporting vegetation. That's why you tend to see a lot more wildlife in say a suburban back yard that edges a field or a forest, or has a stream, or better yet, all of those. This is because the more types of trees and plants that you have the more types of animals can feed on the natural food and find shelter in order to reproduce. So diversity is very good in the wild. It needs to be the diversity that has naturally evolved in that area. This is because plants learn over millions of years how to extract nutrients from that type of soil, cope with the weather patterns, flourish in the rainfall and water table moisture available, etc. So you would not import species that are not "traditional" growers in that ecosystem just to get diversity. You have to study what used to be native to the area and then encourage those species to return to larger numbers. They explain in the above linked article how when early American settlers cleared the land for farming, and then the land went back to forest, it does not naturally go back to what it was. Species that can get a "quick jump" over the others tend to grow quickly and crowd out the traditional diverse trees, for example. So humans actually need to study and then lend a hand to actually restore areas to their traditional natural diversity.

One thing I've worried about is tree planting initiatives that do not take the natural species in mind. Just cramming pines and other trees anywhere you can does more damage to the environment than good. I worried about this when cities planted trees that "cope well with the urban environment." Well, that's a great but simplistic idea. How about planting trees that are native to what used to be there before the city and just actually spend a little more time tending to their health? I mean, I'm not fanatic about this; obviously there are big beautiful "city trees." But my point is that decades of zealous but uneducated "tree lovers" have planted trees just as a numbers and moral superiority game, without making an effort to raise and plant trees that are actually the traditional ones that provide the most diversity of life and are the most natural to the area. Planting one or two "hardy" trees regardless of what used to be there is essentially planting great sterile swaths, kind of an unnatural defacto purge of what used to be natural there and just ticking off numbers of trees planted without understanding the missed opportunity to restore the ecosystem one bunch of trees of diverse natural species at a time.