Iceland's attempts to replant its forests

farseer | 697 points

For reasons I won't go into the farming lobby is really strong in Iceland.

Sheep run free-range around the entire island, if you'd like to grow something that sheep like to eat you need to fence it in. It's not like pretty much anywhere else in the western world where people who own grazing animals need to fence them in.

Thus the sheep range far and wide and destroy Iceland's native low-lying forests. Iceland's native crooked birch hasn't developed resistance to grazing animals as mainland trees had to do, the sheep love to nibble at them and eat the seedlings.

The native trees and other native vegetation are generally much hardier than the foreign plants. But since the forestry service has lost the battle with the farming lobby they're desperately trying to introduce some trees that the sheep won't eat.

Reforesting the country is largely being done through subsidies to farmers, who aren't concerned with topsoil preservation beyond maintaining the desolate landscape they inherited, but they are interested in the eventual promise of a commercial forest on their land.

Which is something to keep in mind when reading articles like these and wondering "why don't they...", usually the answer is that they're planting in a field that's going to be full of grazing animals, and there's no way the forestry service is going to win that battle anytime soon, or that they're not really aiming to restore the topsoil per-se, but to do that as a side-effect of commercial logging.

This page has some more details: http://www.skogur.is/english/forestry-in-a-treeless-land/

avar | 6 years ago

When I was in Iceland, my tourguide told me the joke:

- What do you do if you are lost in an Icelandic forest? - Stand up.

jameshart | 6 years ago

I spent years working in the forestry industry in Canada planting trees. The first picture says a lot in respect to why the process might be going slowly for them. It is an athletic endeavour that takes efficient tools and the mindset to endure a lot of suffering. It says they are planting 3 million trees a year; that is a tiny amount. I've worked with many planters who have planted over a million trees themselves. Here's a link to a picture of what an effective treeplanter looks like: https://i0.wp.com/hardcoretreeplanters.com/wp/wp-content/upl...

b1gnasty | 6 years ago

What drives me crazy is how they make 3 million trees sound like a lot. I am a Forester and we typically plant over 600 trees per acre so 3 million is only about 5,000 acres. Which is not a particularly large forest. Hell I have 5 times that in a moderately size metropolitan area.

A decent crew of 5 people can plant that in a few months.

I'm sure their prices are extremely high but we pay less than 10 cents a seedling and that is for high end seedlings.

Planting doesn't cost much more than that either.

Once again I am sure it is different in a place that doesn't have a forestry industry, but if it is a national priority they could make it happen.

SiempreZeus | 6 years ago

> As a result, Iceland is a case study in desertification, with little or no vegetation, though the problem is not heat or drought. About 40 percent of the country is desert, Dr. Halldorsson said. “But there’s plenty of rainfall — we call it ‘wet desert.’”

At first I thought it was an error to call an area that gets plenty of rain a desert. I thought desert was strictly defined by the amount of rainfall. But maybe that's not correct. The wikipedia article on desert states...

"Deserts can be classified by the amount of precipitation that falls, by the temperature that prevails, by the causes of desertification or by their geographical location." [1]

I wonder if there's a stricter definition used in a specific scientific context.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert

amorphid | 6 years ago

OT:

Now that is an example of an article's photos done right! Not at all intrusive, like those horrible scrolling photos that are so popular on various sites and some great effects of zooming and pull-back, plus a convenient slide-show (With Captions) by clicking on a photo - Well Done NYT!

...and here is an example of how not to do it:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/sold_for_a_song

SeanDav | 6 years ago

Possibly worth remembering: Iceland (and Greenland, where the vikings hung on until the fourteen hundreds) had significantly warmer climate a milennium ago.

interfixus | 6 years ago

Just wanted to say, props to NYT for the beautifully designed article.

terda12 | 6 years ago

Maybe take an page from the Easter Islander playbook: Build vast networks of rock wall closed cells. Wind blowing over these will tend to deposit some of its soil. Bonus points if the walls are high enough to keep out sheep. ;-)

akeck | 6 years ago

In Romania we're losing 150 acres/day (or 60 ha) to illegal cutting done by some german and austrian corporations.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/21/holzindu...

chimen | 6 years ago

Jesus, I read that and realized no one there understands how forest succession works. You can't go from nothing to giant trees, there's a whole host of stages in between.

OldSchoolJohnny | 6 years ago

https://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Societies-Choose-Succeed-Rev... by Jared Diamond goes into substantially more detail about why Iceland was so environmentally sensitive and what the damage was. It is well worth reading.

btilly | 6 years ago

I took a holiday trip to Norway recently and parts looked like Scotland ... but with trees. I was told this was due to Norwegians no longer keeping goats since the 1950s. The before and after landscape photographs are striking. http://www.rewildingbritain.org.uk/blog/reforestation-in-nor...

xhedley | 6 years ago

I've seen a write up of a test where tons of orange peels have been dumped and spread over big area [1]. After 16 years, ecologists returned only to find abundant flora at the areas covered with peels. Maybe to try this approach?

[1] http://www.upworthy.com/a-juice-company-dumped-orange-peels-...

vitro | 6 years ago

The most interesting part of this article is its amazing photography.

mythz | 6 years ago

Once the trees are removed, erosion happens, followed by lost of topsoil. Topsoil is an ecosystem in its own, with microorganisms and small animals. Just replanting a tree will not regenerate that. Agriculture faces a similar problem.

Then, forests are much more than just trees. There are all sort of plants, insects, fungi, etc.

partycoder | 6 years ago

If more countries took reforestation seriously, then maybe our carbon footprint would diminish. And also, we should put this much effort into combating desertification. Make vertical farms instead of chopping trees down and wringing every last bit out of the soil.

EGreg | 6 years ago

I was in Iceland recently and was told that if you see a tree over 3m tall, it was planted. And we heard this Icelandic joke: "If you are lost in a forest in Iceland, don't forget to stand up."

rootbear | 6 years ago

So is this a case of terraforming Iceland?

zeristor | 6 years ago

Maybe there should be some sort of global chaga tax to fund birch reforestation. If a few bucks was added to every Amazon order or whatever then that would at least help out a bit.

Alex3917 | 6 years ago

It's strange to me that tourists and the film industry find the landscape beautiful because of its lack of trees.

Myrmornis | 6 years ago

This will be an interesting experement and I wonder what wildlife it will bring back and any damage it will reverse

setsquared | 6 years ago

Good for them, I think this is a great way to help the fight against climate change and regenerate their ecosystem. Who doesn’t like trees?

Companion | 6 years ago

Is this a case where robots could do almost all work?

Define an area, load the saplings and send the robot to bore holes, put the sapling, fill, repeat.

ccozan | 6 years ago
[deleted]
| 6 years ago

I guess planting poisonous bushes to protect tree seedlings is out of the question?

Pica_soO | 6 years ago

I wonder if massive temporary greenhouses over sections of the land would help get trees established. It'd protect areas from wind (erosion), sheep, and cold temperatures until the soil was remediated and the trees were high enough to avoid hungry sheep. They already grow saplings in greenhouses.

Robotbeat | 6 years ago

Loss of symbiotic soil bacterial cultures?

kingkawn | 6 years ago

As an aside, all the images are blurry with NoScript. Any idea how to get around this without enabling JavaScript (and bringing in all of its issues)?

zeveb | 6 years ago
[deleted]
| 6 years ago

<tldr>

> When Iceland was first settled at the end of the ninth century, much of the land on or near the coast was covered in birch woodlands.

> The settlers slashed and burned the forests to grow hay and barley, and to create grazing land. They used the timber for building and for charcoal for their forges. By most accounts, the island was largely deforested within three centuries.

> The lack of trees, coupled with the ash and larger pieces of volcanic rock spewed by eruptions, has led to severe soil erosion.

> The [recovery] process usually begins with lyme grass, which grows quickly and can stabilize the soil. Lupine, with its spiky purple flowers, is often next. The trees come later.

> Mr. Jonsson and his volunteers then plant the appropriate species for the plot — birch, Sitka spruce, lodgepole pine, Russian larch or other species. “We’d love to plant aspen,” he said. “But sheep really love aspen.”

> With vegetation unable to gain much of a foothold, farming and grazing have been next to impossible in many parts of the country. And the loose soil, combined with Iceland’s strong winds, has led to sandstorms that can further damage the land — and even blast the paint off cars.

> No one expects that one-quarter of Iceland will ever be covered in forests again. But given slow growth rates and the enormity of the task, even more modest gains will take a long time, Mr. Thorvaldsson said.

> “The aim now is that in the next 50 years we might go up to 5 percent,” he said. “But at the speed we’re at now, it would take 150 years to do that.”

mitchtbaum | 6 years ago

Those darn vikings. They should have had more concern for their carbon footprint. Maybe the CEO of Solyndra could have led the vikings sustainable energy innitiative.

calimac | 6 years ago

Have they tried something like this (adapting to the weather of course) https://www.ted.com/talks/shubhendu_sharma_how_to_grow_a_for...

EddieSpeaks | 6 years ago

It's funny how so many Liberal minded types are overrunning Iceland gushing about how beautiful and stark the landscape is, when in reality they don't realize they are admiring just another devastated landscape of Europe. It's a general bias Europeans heavily have as they laud the beauty and natural state of Europe, while there is really not a single natural old growth forest anywhere on the whole continent and most "natural" forests are planted as is usually, easily indicated by the trees that are evenly spaced and generally lined up even in "old" forests.

In reality Europe is a landscaped stripped of snakes, barren of bears and wolves and deer and other fauna, while the forests and meadows are all artificial and man made.

The reason I point this out is that when you can start suspending prior conditioning, you can start realizing this bias that has led to the self-righteousness of Europeans, environmentalists, and the social justice warriors that are ravaging the civilized world.

Humans are a cluster of biases, ignorance, and blind spots; yes especially in the tech community that has a supremacist and self-righteous mentality about just about everything as it decimates the very society and culture that allowed it to emerge.

23443463453 | 6 years ago

For someone that lived in tropical places it is very awkward to see those videos on Iceland Air flights promoting tourism to Iceland and advertising its "rugged beauty", with lots of glaciers, geysers, volcanoes and ugly cold beaches with black sand.

Sorry Icelanders, you seem to be lovely people but your country looks very ugly, barren, dead, sad and desolate. I can't see natural beauty without life.

diego_moita | 6 years ago