South Dakota had 7.1% more forest trees in 2018 than it did in 2013. Much to the relief of Mayor Travis Schaunaman and all those conservative Aberdonians who hate new things of color, almost all of those new trees are far, far away from Aberdeen, out in the somewhat greener Black Hills:
“That’s primarily due to the ability of ponderosa pine to regenerate in the Black Hills,” said Gregory Josten, state forester for the South Dakota Department of Agriculture
The ponderosa pine tree has always been the dominant species in South Dakota forests and one of the most prolific.
…”Although this increase in the number of trees reflects younger trees, eventually they will grow and reoccupy the forest area and make sure we have a forest in the future,” Josten said [Travis Cummings, “2018 Tree Count Shows Major Increase in South Dakota,” KOTA-TV, 2019.08.23].
KOTA’s figures come from the U.S. Forest Service’s Forest Inventory and Analysis. The Forest Service provides this nice graphic showing that we gained about 20,000 acres of forest in five years, and that just over one million of our 1.95 million acres of forest belong to all Americans, on federal land:
The South Dakota Department of Agriculture’s Division of Conservation and Forestry estimates South Dakota has 4.7 million “urban” trees. That’s less than 1% of the number of trees counted in the FIA, yet those meager “community forests” are where 71% of South Dakotans live and benefit from that small but powerful contingent of town trees:
This “green infrastructure” provides many valuable benefits important to human and ecological health including:
- Reducing cooling costs by up to 50% for well-shaded homes and heating costs by up to 40% with effective windbreaks;
- Sequestering 27,200 tons of carbon/year (at a value of $13.6 million); and
- Removing 1,310 tons of total pollutants/year (at a value of $9.7 million):
- Pollutants include carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, sulfur dioxide, and particulate matter.
South Dakota’s community forests also improve water quality; reduce noise pollution; improve human comfort, health, and psychological well-being; increase property values; and improve a community’s “sense of place” [Division of Resource Conservation and Forestry, “Community Forest Initiative,” South Dakota Department of Agriculture, downloaded 2019.08.25].
State Forester Josten notes that one can have too many ponderosa pines in one place, but with the benefits trees provide and 96% of the state not covered with trees, it seems we’ve got room to plant a lot more of our tall green friends, in town and out.
The number of trees “on forest land” has increased by 7.1%, but the volume of trees has decreased by 3.2% between 2013 and 2018. Probably more younger trees in the Black Hills accounts for that.
I hope to plant another tree here soon, so you will be able to add one to the big board.
As noted in the article on the running pastor, trees are good for mental health. Since SD’s suicide rate is so high, more trees and parks are a much needed, but inexpensive mental health investment.
Trees and parks are amenities towns and cities invest in to lure newcomers too.
Love those Ponderosas. Be thankful. Colorado has lost 70% of the Lodgepole pines to the mountain pine beetle. That’s 835 million dead trees ready to be blown down in a strong wind. Many campgrounds have had to close because they’re too dangerous. The good news is the state tree (blue spruce) will fill in the dead spots. It will be extraordinarily beautiful. But, we’ll all be dead before it’s completely grown in.
A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit.
D. Elton Trueblood
If you care about the benefits of trees in the urban landscape, you may want to be aware that Sioux Falls will be losing a huge number of trees each winter for the next three years. They are cutting down 1/3 of the Ash trees on public land each year, in anticipation of the newly arrived Emerald Ash Borer. The Ash trees on private land that remain standing will most likely die from this insect at some point in the next several years, making for expensive removals.
This is particularly bad in Sioux Falls because of the low tree diversity here. The Green Ash was a popular substitute for American Elm when those trees were annihilated by Dutch Elm disease. Green Ash comprises about 1/3 of all the urban trees in Sioux Falls. So the moral of the story is this:
1. Aim for diversity, to strengthen biological (and cultural) communities.
2. Invasive species are the immigrants we should be focusing on stopping, not refugee families from war zones and hellscapes.
TAG, that’s how it happened in urban Minnesota too. They went from a preponderance of elm to ash. They’ve finally figured out that a variety of tree species is best. 🙄 That’s what they’re replacing with.
If producing oxygen and removing C02 is your thing, crops are hard to beat.
https://www.nasa.gov/press/goddard/2014/march/satellite-shows-high-productivity-from-us-corn-belt/
“Data from satellite sensors show that during the Northern Hemisphere’s growing season, the Midwest region of the United States boasts more photosynthetic activity than any other spot on Earth, according to NASA and university scientists”
“Corn plants are very productive in terms of assimilating carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This needs to be accounted for going forward in trying to predict how much of the atmospheric carbon dioxide will be taken up by crops in a changing climate.”
Greg said: If producing oxygen and removing C02 is your thing, crops are hard to beat.”
That’s interesting. Good stuff. Although if we are comparing carbon sequestering, deep, black native soil planted with deep-rooted native plants trumps everything, except perhaps undisturbed wetlands.
https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/soil-carbon-storage-84223790/
“reforestation or grassland restoration on a former crop field can reduce the carbon deficit caused from years of agricultural production and sequester carbon through higher root productivity compared to crops. Likewise, the creation of wetlands and ponds can sequester large amounts of carbon because decomposition is greatly reduced in waterlogged soils from lack of oxygen; this can actually result in carbon gains that exceed the deficits resulting from past land use.”
I’m not saying that crops are bad, just that crops don’t need to be on every square inch of land. Especially marginally productive land.
Wetlands and native grasslands sequester far more carbon, and actually build soil (in addition to a myriad of other benefits).
From the article above, these agricultural practices will also increase the carbon sequestering power of your field: no till/reduced till, erosion control practices, addition of compost, manure or crop residues, using cover crops.
Just to be clear, I’m not anti-crop. I’m anti-monoculture. In the midwest, I think we need to have productive farms, pastures, grasslands, forests, wetlands, ecosystems and communities. Balance. There’s no reason for one function to destroy the others, or for unsustainable practices to destroy it’s own function (like massive erosion will eventually hurt agriculture).
I’m not a huge fan of agricultural monoculture, either. Dependence on just one or two crops leaves us vulnerable to random events, like droughts, or like a Trump trade war. Just like the stupidity of planting only one kind of tree leaves the urban forest vulnerable. The vast soil resources we have in this state could be feeding the world with human consumption crops, rather than just feeding livestock.
Trees are no substitute for the benefits provided by well established and vigorous native grasslands. Carbon sequestration, soil and water conservation and quality, and enhancement of the CO2/O cycle is far more efficient and productive than trees and especially crops that have nowhere close to the same leaf surface area per/acre of native grassland plant communities. Neither do trees. One of the biggest reasons we have elevated CO2 levels in the atmosphere is the enormous plow out and/or degradation of native grasslands across the globe with component parts that conduct photosynthesis more than 10 months out of the year, even in cold weather. In some environments, it’s 12 months out of the year. And the pine tree is a blasted weed. The growth proliferation prevents plant diversity, understory growth, groundwater recharge, and chokes out hardwood tree growth like Aspen, Oak, and birch that create their own micro-climates necessary for many species of wildlife. Native grasses are higher in nutrition, more suited to our soils than domestics and have the ability to choke out invasive species if properly treated and managed. There was and still is ecologically valid reasons why the great plains were described as a vast “grassland sea”. Our tall grass prairie is nearly gone, our midgrass prairie is in deep jeopardy as is the shortgrass prairie and we foolishly think that growing corn or soybeans and trees is a ecologically sound substitute. We’re wrong.
Well said, JW. I only disagree with you on one point: Just because native prairie is the ideal habitat for this region, and it needs to come back from the dead, there is no reason to vilify trees.
Especially urban trees. Urban forests do a fantastic job of mitigating many of the negative effects of concrete and steel. They reduce the urban heat island effect, slow some runoff before it hits impermeable surfaces, create a micro-climate that humans like, reduce heating and cooling costs, reduce noise pollution, etc.
I think that urban prairies can and should be more utilized as well. Especially in places we are maintaining as lawn, but are never utilized as a play space. We mow, spray, irrigate and fertilize vast acres of Kentucky Bluegrass that are completely unnecessary. Minnesota has reclaimed many many acres of prairie habitat simply by maintaining highway Right-Of-Ways more sustainably, for example. I wonder what the increase in carbon sequestration, and habitat was from that one policy decision?
JW, I’ll be happy to compromise: I’ll settle for one acre of new forest for every ten acres of prairie grass. Curious: could a ratio like that coexist in one section? Can we mix healthy stands of aspen, birch, and oak with meadows of prairie grass?
But do monoculture crops sequester enough carbon to make up for all the fossil-fuel inputs required to get them to grow year after year compared with native grasses and more diverse plantings?
Actually, the biggest issue with cultivation of any kind and carbon is that the organic soil itself is the carbon sink. Cultivation unlocks that carbon and releases it into the atmosphere through decomposition. Erosion has the same effect. conventional-till crops produce a net loss of carbon.
The reverse would be to add organic matter to the soil. In Ag, there are many sustainable methods that mitigate the carbon loss, but are not widely used. No-till is probably the most widespread. Cover crops have lots of potential, as well.
The reason grasslands are the best at sequestering carbon is because the plant roots penetrate deeply into the soil profile, as much as 10 or 15 feet. The living plants absorb CO2, and When those roots die, they stay in the soil and store carbon.
Wetlands are even better. They slow the decomposition of dead organic material in the soil because of a lack of oxygen. This stores huge amounts of carbon… until the wetland is drained, tiled and tilled.
Boreal Forest Fires Could Release Deep Soil Carbon
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/boreal-forest-fires-could-release-deep-soil-carbon
“They found that for old forests (more than 70 years old) and forests in wet locations, a thick layer of organic matter in the soil protected the oldest carbon, called “legacy carbon,” that was not burned in previous cycles of burn and regrowth. However, in younger, drier forests, the shallower soil organic matter layer allowed fires to reach the legacy carbon, releasing it into the atmosphere.”
There’s an interesting thing about tilling soil that I saw on YouTube. The channel is “Tractor Spotter” and it shows lots of videos from The Netherlands.
This one was “Deep Ploughing.” The tractor was a big Fermin, I think, 4 wheel drive, pulling a 2 bottom plow. It was a field that had been tilled previously, but they were plowing it 2+ feet deep. Said it was good to get to the deeper soil, sort of renewing. Then they went over the field with scrapers to get it smooth and flat. Of course The Netherlands is very flat anyway, but I’m thinking, WTH?
Netherlands is known for being quite green environmentally, but they’re deep plowing with a 2 bottom plow? They’re exposing more carbon, and since a tractor can only pull 2 bottoms going that deep, it must make several more rounds. Then the scrapers. Why? Unless you’re growing sod, it doesn’t need to be that flat. The scrapers made multiple rounds over the field until it was smooth enough for giants to play billiards on it.
In the comments I asked these questions, but I may not get answers. It looked like poor farming practice to me. Puzzling.
Here’s an interesting angle: In a carbon tax system, land owners and farmers could theoretically be paid by polluters to sequester carbon for them, using practices like no-till, cover crops, or establishing grasslands/wetlands. I’m guessing it would work similarly to today’s “wetland banks” that developers can buy credits from in order to fill wetlands.
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11951725
“…carbon farming has begun. Under a program run by the Iowa Farm Bureau, almost 2,000 farmers are getting paid a few dollars for every acre of no-till land or pasture. The money comes from businesses that are trying to balance their greenhouse gas emissions. Right now, those businesses aren’t paying a lot, but that could change, if Congress passes strict limits on greenhouse gas emissions. Then, farmers might actually earn some real money by capturing carbon and storing it in their land.”
Or we could just not emit carbon in the first place.
For the carbon tax to work, one needs the ability to sequester as much (if not more!) carbon than is being emitted. And that carbon needs to stay sequestered.
The polluters in this scenario can keep emitting as long as they pay up. If sequestration does not keep up, then carbon levels can still increase over time.
Would farmers have to pay money back if those fields were to lose carbon?
EPA wants to free up more methane to compete with carbon dioxide in the race to poison atmosphere.
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/459235-trump-administration-planning-methane-regulation-rollback-report
Apparently carbon dioxide is getting too big for its britches.
Good news, since we do not have enough battery capacity, we will continue to burn natural gas to match supply with demand. And this will only increase as we switch over to electric cars.
But you would think that the natural gas suppliers would want to capture the methane that is leaking…if it leaks they cannot sell it.
So that tells me that it is cheaper to let the methane leak and not recapture it, than to do something with the extra gas that they could capture. The price of natural gas is probably too low to consider investing in capture or storage systems, or to generate electricity and simply push that onto the grid like we do with renewables today. If there were profit in finding alternative measures, they would go after that profit.
The leaking methane also means that we are losing out on a potential source of hydrogen production (CH4 has 4 hydrogens), which would be useful in many industries but also for fuel cell technologies.
I suspect that helium is also being vented at the same time from underground sources, but the amount may vary with the site. We face a shortage of helium, and often helium is found with natural gas drilling. According the link below, helium is used in the production of solar cells.
https://interestingengineering.com/there-is-a-world-wide-shortage-of-helium
Cory: Not a matter of compromise………… Its a matter of best fit soil capability class.
$3.3 billion wind investment will add 2,500 MW of clean energy in South Dakota
https://energynews.us/2019/09/05/midwest/3-3-billion-wind-investment-will-add-2500-mw-of-clean-energy-in-south-dakota/
The article does not say how much of the energy that is produced will actually stay in South Dakota. So somebody is getting clean energy, and landowners and local governments would be collecting revenues.
Once again, no mention of waste management or recycling as part of the project.
For every 400 temporary jobs in the construction of the upcoming wind farms, one can expect about 15 permanent jobs.
Still looks like a better deal than pipelines.