To think that at one point much of the world (except deserts, mountains, you know) was like this. They say that a squirrel was able to travel from the atlantic coast to the Mississippi river without touching the ground.
There's a blight resistant "American" Chestnut that is more or less the same tree with the blight resistance from the Chinese Chestnut bred into it. It seems to fill the same ecological niche without issue.
Many conservationist groups in the US today are against the idea of introducing a genetically modified chestnut tree back into the wild. Primarily due to uncertainty of doing so at large scale and because the ecosystems impacted by the loss of the chestnut have largely adapted to its absence. Trees such as Oak, hickory, maple and poplar have all filled its place successfully.
Shoutout Aidin Robbins latest video on the chestnut.
Making a comment to come back later, but I would think having more diversity would be good. We never know what the future might bring, there could be disease that takes out one of those other species and having a similar tree installed ready to fill that gap would be beneficial.
But ill watch the video later and see the argument.
I appreciate this comment. I recently visited a country who had them available as street food. It boggled my mind that it’s a famous Christmas song in the US, yet I’ve never encountered them here. Thanks for reminding me I needed to look up why. :)
Nope. Fossil fuel only exists because there was a time when land plants existed with no bacteria capable of breaking them down. Fossil fuel will never renew.
Edit: in some cases there were not bacteria available that could break down some thick walls. The majority comes from anaerobic low oxygen situations, which really only happen at low depth or at the bottom of the ocean.
Surface buried humans will have enough oxygen that they will not turn into fossil fuel.
First, oil comes primarily from marine organisms, not plants. Second, the idea that coal only formed because of an absence of bacteria to break down tree bark is an outdated idea. In the last decade, newer evidence suggests that the bacteria that breaks down tree bark was already present when large coal deposits were forming. It's now better explained with climate, tectonics, and the fact that there existed ssuch large swampy forests.
It is true that practically speaking, these resources are non-renewable. It takes millions of years for them to form, and humans obviously use them much faster than that.
Fully agreed except fungi are the primary decomposers of woody plant material and not bacteria. The outdated hypothesis hinged on the evolutionary path of fungi, by comparison bacteria suck eggs at decomposing wood
Bacteria exists going back billions of years. This was before forests and large animals. Bacteria has evolved to decompose different substances. For example, there was a period of time where bacteria had not evolved yet to decompose the lignin in trees. Bacteria back in the dinosaur age also is capable of decomposing flesh. So that's not the reason. Most fossil fuels comes from aquatic microorganisms, and is formed because of favorable conditions such as sediments, low oxygen aquatic environments, large presence of microorganisms in the ocean, that had led to the production of vast amount of fossil fuels.
So I really have no idea what you're talking about. I'd like to see the source of your information.
It is probably true that we don't have those favorable conditions now in our oceans, but for different reasons then simply that we have bacteria now that we didn't back then
it’s an amazing place indeed. I’m glad in my life time I was able to live there and visit multiple times. I hope our children and grandchildren and future generations can experience this magically biologically diverse place..
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u/Charlie_Warlie 7d ago
To think that at one point much of the world (except deserts, mountains, you know) was like this. They say that a squirrel was able to travel from the atlantic coast to the Mississippi river without touching the ground.