How Will Future Forests Survive Climate Change?
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You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey, Shortwavers, Emily Kwong here. And today I am joined by producer Hannah Chin. Hello. For a story about forests. Okay, Hannah, you reported this story from somewhere that sounds pretty wet. Are you in a forest right now?
I am not in a forest, but I did report this story from somewhere that is wet, which is my home state of Oregon.
Nice.
We drove out on a rainy day to the U.S. Forest Service's Dorena Genetic Resource Center. It's located in Cottage Grove, which is this small town that's a couple hours' drive from Portland. And the day I visited, the crew was pretty busy...
We're putting 10 per bag here. So let's see, I got six, seven, eight, nine, 10. That's how many fit in this bag.
Packing up hundreds of baby Douglas fir trees into plastic bags and then big cardboard boxes.
And then I'm putting it in the pile here. Right now we're counting 67 per box.
So this is Michelle Osgood. She's the assistant horticulturist here at Dorena Genetic Resource Center. And she and her crew are taking all of these seedlings out of the greenhouse.
So we're taking each tree out of its cell that it's been growing in for about, I don't know, eight months or so. And... Putting them in these bags, into these boxes that are going to be frozen for a couple of months before they get out planted.
They're going to freeze these little baby trees? Yeah, it's so that they can keep the trees in storage until the ground is like ready to plant.
Right now they're dormant, so they're not really growing. They're kind of sleeping right now. And then we'll put them into a deep sleep in the freezer for a couple months. And then they'll wake up and they'll be out in nature and start growing again. They're like deep sleep princess trees. Tree popsicles. Deep sleep princess seedling popsicles.
But yeah, basically. What are these seedling popsicles for? Okay, so you already know that forests are really important for the ecosystem, right?
Oh, we depend on them. I mean, trees generate oxygen, they trap CO2, they absorb water to help prevent flooding, they regulate temperature, they're like critical habitat for animals.
Yeah, right. But they're in danger due to things like over-harvesting and increasing wildfires. So that's why we need reforestation. replanting new forests to replace the old ones. So Emily, these seedling popsicles are part of a reforestation master plan that the Forest Service is carrying out across the West Coast. It's a plan that looks into the future to help our forests survive increased heat, changing weather patterns, and other potential threats that they might face.
So today on the show, reforestation reimagined. How scientists are working to change the trees we plant and where we plant them in the race against climate change. You are listening to Shortwave from NPR. Okay, Hannah, so humans have been reforesting or planting new trees to compensate for losing old ones for a long time. I mean, this was happening in ancient China as early as 1122 BCE. Which is really cool. But large-scale reforestation, like what you're talking about, really began with the establishment of the U.S. Forest Service in the late 19th and early 20th century, more than 100 years ago. So this is kind of a new project in some way.
Yeah, I guess compared to China, it is relatively new. But if you do the math, we've been replanting trees for easily more than a century.
Yeah.
But that doesn't necessarily mean it's a simple process.
It's funny, reforestation a lot of times, I think the general public, myself included, before I got into this, you know, you think you put a tree in the ground, it's just it's going to grow, right? Turns out that's not the case. A lot of times we put things in the ground and they die. And it's the same thing for tree seedlings as well.
This is Rob Slaysack. He's a researcher with the U.S. Forest Service. And he says because growing tree seedlings is so complicated, foresters try to really maximize the seedlings' chance of survival.
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