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from the heard-good-things-about-oxygen dept.
To find out what works best for reestablishing tropical dry forests, the researchers planted seedlings of 32 native tree species in degraded soil or degraded soil amended with sand, rice hulls, rice hull ash or hydrogel (an artificial water-holding material). After two years, they found that tree species known for traits that make them drought tolerant, such as enhanced ability to use water and capture sunlight, survived better than other species. Some of the soil amendments helped get seedlings off to a good start, but by the end of the experiment there was no difference in survival with respect to soil condition.
"This study is important for a number of reasons," Powers said. "First, it demonstrates that it is possible to grow trees on extremely degraded soils, which provides hope that we can indeed restore tropical dry forests. Second, it provides a general approach to screen native tree species for restoration trails based on their functional traits, which can be applied widely across the tropics.
Is 'ecosystem restoration' the job growth area of the future?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @03:56PM (1 child)
This may be true for temperate forests, but it generally isn't true in the tropics and rainforests. Surveys of biodiversity on a per-square-mile basis find only 20% or so species overlap. Cut down a few square miles and 80% of the biodiversity in each is gone, permanently.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 22 2017, @10:13PM
Yeah. The depth of the topsoil there is notoriously thin.
The richness of the ecosystem is in the living organisms.
Anything that dies and falls to the forest floor gets recycled in short order.
It's relatively easy to negatively alter the ecosystem there and turn it into a desert--or at least a much less rich ecosystem.
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