Abandoned farmland has been increasing, with a billion acres — an area half the size of Australia — lost globally. Ecologists are increasingly pointing to the potential of these lands and of degraded forests as neglected resources for rewilding and for capturing carbon.
Definitely better to guide it. Guding restoration is called land reclamation (not you, Netherlands!; shameless plug for ! [email protected])
Don’t get me wrong, in some cases, like a pipeline through the forest, seed rain plays a big role in revgetation. Undisturbed islands of forest on a mine site can also do this, but large the disturbed areas are the harder they are to come back of their own accord.
Reclamation has a lot of facets to it. It can be as simple as something as invasive (weed) plant management, or as something as intense as recreating soil out nothing. That last bit sounds like magic, but what I’m getting at here is using organic amendments and overburden/waste rock/regolith/tailings to create soil where it has been stripped away (fuck you residential developers and legacy mines).
Is it better to let the land rewild itself (remain abandoned) or give some guidance/help to it?
Definitely better to guide it. Guding restoration is called land reclamation (not you, Netherlands!; shameless plug for ! [email protected])
Don’t get me wrong, in some cases, like a pipeline through the forest, seed rain plays a big role in revgetation. Undisturbed islands of forest on a mine site can also do this, but large the disturbed areas are the harder they are to come back of their own accord.
Reclamation has a lot of facets to it. It can be as simple as something as invasive (weed) plant management, or as something as intense as recreating soil out nothing. That last bit sounds like magic, but what I’m getting at here is using organic amendments and overburden/waste rock/regolith/tailings to create soil where it has been stripped away (fuck you residential developers and legacy mines).