Making Progress In Reforestation

There’s a huge amount of planning involved in restoring the planet’s natural state. In fact, it’s something that can’t be planned per se, but in the next generation or two we are going to need to repair the decline of the rainforest stocks if we are to be able to sustain the size of the human race and our fellow species on Earth.

You’ll often see the documentaries on the television refer to the efforts to plant new vegetation and forests, but the fact of the matter is that we need to do much more. We’re destroying areas much faster than we’re currently replacing them, so we need to think carefully before we pass the point of no return.

There are two significant considerations to keep in mind as we plan for the future. The first is the sheer time it takes for trees to grow to a point that they become functional in the sense of supporting the planet in the same way as the ones that were removed. The second is that they may not be in exactly the same location. This latter concept means that a different quantity may be required in order to achieve a like for like replacement. That potentially could mean that we can achieve an equivalent result with a physically smaller area or lower total number of trees being planted. There’s a lot of research going on right now into this opportunity as it could provide significant shortcuts in what may actually save the planet!

Referring back for a moment to the documentaries, you’ll often see the end goal is to allow the replenishment of natural resources at a faster pace that we’re consuming them, at least until the former stock is achieved. Of course, that in itself will generate pollution, so we may need to aim higher for a bigger prize than the current TV shows offer.There’s a certain irony in that the only answer is inevitably going to rely heavily on helping nature repair itself, while at the same time we continue to damage our natural reserves ever faster.

Whatever ends up being the chosen solution, we might sound like a broken record but we need to do something fast, and that really does mean acting now.

Solving A Lack Of Water In Heatwaves: Pressure Washers To The Rescue!

You may have seen large areas of Canada ablaze on the news over the last couple of months, with wild fires raging and threatening towns and cities. Large townships have been destroyed, and provide clear evidence of Mother Nature’s ability to strike fast, and with much more venom than man threatens forestation.

What happens, then, when similar situations strike in areas that aren’t so well populated, and don’t have the same technology to scramble into action as the Canadians? We clearly saw how futile their efforts to contain the flames were when the wind wasn’t on their side, and the focus could only be damage limitation. It was only when the winds turned the fire back on itself that the danger could be extinguish once and for all, and even then it was necessary to act as fast as possible even though the project was long term.

In a rain forest, it’s usually unlikely that the environment dries out enough to see these scenes, but it’s not impossible. Fortunately, modern technology has allowed us to create a mobile army of firefighters, but the focus is prevention of fires, rather than reacting to them as they break out.

So, how do you get the trees in such a large area wet? The answer is surprisingly easy – you pressure wash them! If nature doesn’t provide the rain, these are the next best thing!

highpressurewashing

You can read all about these high pressure washers at petrolpressurewashers.com, of course, you have to use the petrol variety because there’s nowhere to plug them into in the outback.

If the worst does happen and a fire gains momentum, we revert to the tried and tested aerial approach using aircraft – it’s much safer than to try and act from the ground, as you can easily find yourself surrounded with no way out. The ideal though is to prevent the start of a fire in the first place.

Where we struggle to predict risk areas is where people get involved. We’ve talked before about human damage, but not in this way. While once it was unusual to see careless tourists anywhere near a rain forest, the world has become a much smaller place, and it’s now not beyond the realms of possibility to see somebody decide it’s a great idea to light a barbecue near dry forests. It’s not difficult to see in hindsight how dangerous that is – not least because that’s how the Canadian inferno is believed to have started.

Our efforts and project goals are primarily focused on reforestation, but hopefully we’ve shed a little light today on why it’s important for us to spend some of our time protecting what we already have, as we can lose a lot of ground to fire very quickly, whereas planting areas that size takes months and years, and for them to grow to maturity takes decades or more.

Tidying Up The Human Damage

The human effect on our planet has been quite profound. Alongside the irreparable damage we have caused to our environment, we’ve also made huge advances in technology.

The damage we’re talking about is incredibly widespread and varied. There are simple problems and solutions like litter, which can be solved by simply getting it all cleared up, but what happens to it next? There’s recycling of course, but its actually a relatively expensive process for some materials, which is why much of the planet’s population still resorts to landfill.

While landfill sites may eventually break down and become less toxic, this process takes many thousands of years, so isn’t practical to support a multi-billion population. What’s more, much of the waste on a landfill site may not break down for much longer, as the materials we create or harvest are often anything but biodegradable.

To make things worse, there have been phases in recent history where materials have been used in construction which have later turned out to be harmful – and there’s no better example of this than the latter half of the last century when the fireproofing properties of asbestos were widely employed in cities like Nottingham. This takes a great deal more care to deal with safely, otherwise causes a serious health hazard to humans and animals on top of the longer term consequences of deciding where to dump it as hazardous waste material.

So, that’s a small sample of the damaging side of the human race, what can technology do to repair and rectify the situation? An obvious first thing to look at is the change in behaviour which is becoming evident across the world. In Europe, there is a push from Brussels for EU members to reduce emissions through the use of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar farms. The USA is starting to make great progress in similar areas, even if the targets are self set and self regulated unlike Europe.

In the poorer Eastern countries things are a little less co-ordinated. There are many densely populated cities in countries like China that are struggling to keep pollution under control, yet are progressing faster in their research because they do not want to lose economic ground to the West. It’s this which provides the great opportunity for innovation in technology to reverse the trends of recent decades.

The very countries that are responsible of the production of most of the world’s technology are most in need of solutions to eco problems, so the coming years will be fascinating to watch. Europe is now benefiting from cheaper solar panels than ever before, even though there is less funding available from green government initiatives today than there were a few years ago.

Could it be that the quest for progress and technology that caused much of the pollution in the past could ultimately be what saves our planet? Only time will tell.