5 Successful Reforestation Projects
Notes:
- Written in 2011, but still contains some great information.
Excerpts:
- “Started in 1990, the Kwimba Reforestation Project in Tanzania was a multinational and multi-organization effort to reforest land around 40 villages… During the project’s nine-year run, over 6.4 million trees were planted. One of the most unique aspects of ensuring responsibility for those trees: “tree ownership certificates” which gave the owner title to the tree (regardless of who owned the land on which it was planted).”
- “South Korea could likely serve as the model for reforestation: Lester Brown noted in Eco-Economy: Building an Economy for the Earth that “Perhaps the most successful national reforestation effort is the one undertaken in South Korea beginning more than a generation ago.”
- “Beginning in the early 1980s, residents of Gaviotas (Columbia) began planting Caribbean pine trees, and ensuring their survival in the acidic soil with the application of mycorrhizal fungus to their roots. Villagers have successfully reforested about 20,000 acres… and created economic opportunities with resin from the trees, and even new biodiesel initiatives. The increased forest cover has had an effect of weather patterns in the area: rainfall has increased by 10%, leading to a water-bottling effort.”
Researchers dumped tons of coffee waste into a forest. This is what it looks like now.
Notes:
- Published in March 2021
Excerpts:
- “…approximately 10 million tons of coffee pulp is discarded into the environment every year.”
- In 2018, researchers from ETH-Zurich and the University of Hawaii spread 30 dump trucks worth of coffee pulp over a roughly 100′ x 130′ area of degraded land in Costa Rica. The experiment took place on a former coffee farm that underwent rapid deforestation in the 1950s. Another plot of land near the coffee pulp dump was left alone to act as a control for the experiment.
“The results were dramatic.” Dr. Rebecca Cole, lead author of the study, said. “The area treated with a thick layer of coffee pulp turned into a small forest in only two years while the control plot remained dominated by non-native pasture grasses.”
- “In just two years, the area treated with coffee pulp had an 80% canopy cover, compared to just 20% of the control area. So, the coffee-pulp-treated area grew four times more rapidly. Like a jolt of caffeine, it reinvigorated biological activity in the area.”
- “The coffee-treated area also eliminated an invasive species of grass that took over the land and prevented forest succession. Its elimination allowed for other native species to take over and recolonize the area.”
Notes:
- Published in 1994.
Centree Database 