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The Plan
Overview
Ecological succession
Succession is the driving principle behind this plan. It is the natural process through which soil restores itself. It begins with the very first plants to colonize damaged earth: pioneer species. These plants would already be there without us. But while we’re there… well. We could see some crazy stuff happening!
Controversial:
Tree-planting isn’t (always) the way.
While tree-planting has long been a staple activity of governments, NGO’s and charities alike, they actually skip the foundational pioneering step of the natural restoration process.
Of course there are situations where
you should plant trees.
It’s fast, it’s visible, it gets results.
But in many cases, biodiversity is diminished.
This is because while trees can grow in areas with pioneer plants, the reverse is not true.
Trees grow tall. And in doing so, they block sunlight for many other plants. Most are not part of the foundational stage of succession.
In nature, they only come in later.
If you’re interested, I have an old
embarassing video about it
Step 1.
Identify host area
Key premise: “nature works slowly… until she moves fast.”
The goal
Get our potassium polyacrylate SAP into sandy, or partially loamy soils, support the local pioneer plants.
Finding Lands
Ripe for Rebirth
Ideally
We treat areas like abandoned farmland,
or sites of wildfire.
These lands are in
secondary succession. They are at a critical point: they may erode further, or see many new plants moving in.
Another potential usage case is war-torn lands
Such as Ukraine. But that is still a distant hope.
Funding for this kind of project exists
But it’s challenging to get. Usually only as part of a larger consortium.
At least in the case of
EU-funding, as I understand it.
Technically, however..
Even a large enough group of Redditors might also count as (part of) a consortium. It all depends on the expertise we have and the impact we can make together.
Step 2.
Get a tractor
Having acquired a suitable area, our objective is pretty straightforward:
Grow more soil, faster.
The aim is to cover 7-10 grams per square meter.
To spread our SAP’s evenly over the land, we use a tractor to pull a precision seed injector (phrasing, I know).
Key assumption:
If more plants survive, lands recover quicker.
Expanding on this, if more pioneer plants survive…
Then not only will they make soil faster- other plants will be able to move in sooner. Hopefully, we can therefore see an exponential increase in the rate of soil formation. This could, theoretically, lead to dramatic increases in plant mass, coverage and variety.
A year-long study…
Would cost around $37k, for half a hectare at a university monitored test farm in the Netherlands (my home). That won’t all come from this crowdfunding, but as you can see- every bit helps.
Step 3.
Wait
Best case scenario
Giving pioneers SAP’s to help them proliferate…
…Speeds up ecological succession by a lot. Ideally, to the extent that we may reliably take degraded lands and render them viable again- in a time period that is interesting enough for stakeholders to justify the investment. It’s a good thing carbon credits exist!
But even if investors aren’t as patient, the SAP‘s effects last up to 10 years. Of course it will slowly degrade, but even then, that’s a long time to be affecting the local plant population.
In most cases, then, we’ll only need 1 application, to supports local pioneer plants and the next generation of plants that move in.
Worst case scenario
Sadly, these areas have no plants to even support. We would have no business here.
There are a couple of things to be wary of.
I’m actually not worried that we won’t see any improvement in plant activity.
The effects of potassium polyacrylate are well studied.
What I am worried about is:
- Bacterial strains that specifically eat potassium polyacrylate.
This is the big one. Although in most cases the material can last years- if it does encounter the wrong soil bacteria, they might eat through it in less than a year.
There are less than 6 strains known to do this, but honestly we really dont know our soil that well either. - Soil growing faster, but not fast enough for investors.
We can offset the initial investment mainly through carbon credits. But the mathematics need to make sense. If biomass only forms, say, 20% faster, will it then capture enough carbon to make the proverbial juice worth the squeeze?
– Limitations –
Success depends on how much we can speed up ecological succession already in progress. It is the colonizer plants that do the heavy lifting. We must pick our battles accordingly.
The SAP is still only a tool to help pioneer plants survive.
Its main strength in this context is only having to treat the soil with it once.
To maximise this advantage
we must work with nature, during the windows we are provided.
The alternative would take a lot more effort:
Discussion
What do you think of this plan? If you have some constructive feedback, do please let me know.
© LegacyRoot
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