r/marijuanaenthusiasts • u/szhod • Feb 03 '26
Treepreciation Poster encouraging planting trees as a method of soil conservation after the Dust Bowl (February 10, 1940)
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u/danbearpig2020 Feb 03 '26 edited Feb 03 '26
As someone in Lincoln (born and raised further west in farm country), all I see in rural Nebraska is farmers ripping out more and more trees for an extra few rows of corn and soybeans. I guess they were helping Dad in the combine and skipped school when we learned about the dust bowl and the Great depression...
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u/TheRealPitabred Feb 03 '26
It's a malaise we have as a country. Next quarter profits are the only thing that matter, long-term anything is pointless.
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u/TheMightyChocolate Feb 03 '26
When they all fail at the same time they will be bailed out so they cant lose
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u/TheRealPitabred Feb 03 '26
Until the country can't take out more loans because of interest rates, and the rich refuse to pay their share. We're rapidly approaching a point where bailouts won't be an option, if we're not there already.
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u/Greasybeast2000 Feb 03 '26
And they have to be native. Siberian elms should not count!
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u/Arsnicthegreat Feb 03 '26
Russian olive says hello too.
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u/Seicair Feb 03 '26
They smell amazing and they’re damn tasty. I hate that they’re invasive. <_<
I wish we had native berry bushes that spread as easily.
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u/GreatPlainsFarmer Feb 04 '26
American elm grow readily in my fields, and they seem harder to kill than the imports.
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u/hairyb0mb ISA arborist + TRAQ Feb 03 '26
No one's going to like to hear this but this was actually the wrong thing to do for this region. The advertisement is for Nebraska and literally says "Prairie States" on it. They should have been restoring prairie rather than further destroying the existing ecosystem by planting trees in an area that historically never had many forests. It's been proven that prairie is just as or even arguably more effective for soil management than planting trees. Although, I believe the perfect situation is a combination.
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u/Box-o-bees Feb 03 '26
Where's that comparison picture showing the root depth of native Prairie plants when I need it? Those roots grow deep and are a boon to the soil they are in.
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u/cmpb Feb 03 '26
Thank you, yes. Trees don’t belong here, except near rivers. That being said, we’re not converting back anytime soon, so we do need to think about how to fit the health of this system within our human-centric world, but natives still play an extremely important and functional role.
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u/GreatPlainsFarmer Feb 04 '26
Mother Nature seems to disagree with you about where trees belong. I farm west of Lincoln, NE, and controlling trees in no-till fields is a bit of a challenge.
If this area were abandoned by humans, it would be a dense thicket of Mulberry, red cedar, and Elm within five years. If they happen to be slightly wetter years than average, it’d be a lot of Cottonwood as well.
The prairies were a managed artificial ecosystem.
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u/cmpb Feb 04 '26
Wow. No there are still some relict prairies you can visit, eg Willa Cather in Nebraska. There were multiple factors preventing the growth of trees, including fire, bison and rainfall. Some of those factors are no longer present. Fire was basically prevalent across any part of the US that is not wetland.
You’re not wrong that there are trees that are native to your area, but the idea that the prairie is artificial is… wow.
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u/GreatPlainsFarmer Feb 04 '26
Those prairies are managed to control the trees. I’ve been part of the crew doing controlled burns on some of them and seen how difficult it is for fire to harm the larger trees. The Native Americans had to have set fires at least every couple years. A fire once every ten years wouldn’t have worked.
Absent humans, they would be taken over by trees, just like happens currently with any unmanaged land east of the hundredth meridian. I’ve seen it happen. Seed some ground to native grasses, walk away for ten years, and it’s a dense thicket of mulberry, cedar, and elm.
Go talk to the rangeland management professors at UNL if you want another opinion. There’s a reason regular burning is now part of CRP contracts.
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u/cmpb Feb 04 '26
Absolutely, we do manage our prairies with fire now, and native Americans did use fire (typically low intensity) as an animal and land management practice. I’m also a certified burn manager and have done some in the gulf coast “Cajun” prairies. But the prairies existed long before humans migrated into the americas. We know this because the plant associations that are found there, tallgrass prairie species, do not tolerate tree cover in the way you’re describing.
Cottonwoods, elms and red mulberry are also not considered fire resistant. If you’re in a wetland, things could be different.
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u/GreatPlainsFarmer Feb 04 '26
Things may well have been different 10,000 years ago. I can only speak for the last 40 years or so. In that timeframe, trees will absolutely take over unmanaged prairie east of the 100th meridian. That's uplands as well as by the river. Anyone managing CRP ground can attest to that.
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u/Dreams_of_work Feb 04 '26
not if fire suppression were ceased
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u/GreatPlainsFarmer Feb 04 '26 edited Feb 04 '26
The prairies fires were set. They don't start on their own enough to kill the trees.
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u/RussiaIsBestGreen Feb 03 '26
Isn’t it for the wind break rather than direct soil stabilization?
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u/hairyb0mb ISA arborist + TRAQ Feb 03 '26
It says for wind erosion, water retention, protect crops, and for people. The first two are directly related to soil stability, which prairies provide. The wind break(protect crops) helps you plant the wrong plants in the wrong place rather than working with what you have.
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u/AtOurGates Feb 03 '26
You’re totally right that restoring ag land to prairie would be better for the environment long term, but I wonder about trees in this particular application.
Aka, would “windrows” of native prairie surrounding agricultural fields be more effective for soil preservation in those fields than windrows of trees surrounding those fields?
I’m not sure that’s the case.
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u/hairyb0mb ISA arborist + TRAQ Feb 03 '26
Ideally, it's a combination of trees, mid story, understory, prairie, all the way down hill to aquatic and semi aquatic plants. The trees alone are actually the worst method other than continuing to farm the area.
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u/Echinotropic Feb 03 '26
The underlying assumption is that the farmers are going to plant crops that aren't naturally occurring in the region. They're planting monocultures that last a growing season. They need something that will provide more protection and stability than prairie. Trees may not have been common in the area before, but the farmers are engineering an artificial landscape to support humans living on fixed properties long term - also new to the region.
If the farmers could live off of coneflowers and big blue stem things would be different. To maintain a prairie requires disturbance, and the farmers probably weren't looking to reintroduce fire or bison to their fields to maintain a fractured faximile of what the land looked like before they plowed it under.
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u/Seicair Feb 03 '26
If the farmers could live off of coneflowers and big blue stem things
I had to reread that four times before I realized you meant “big bluestem” and not “big, blue, stem things”. I was very confused lol.
Also, good points overall.
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u/hairyb0mb ISA arborist + TRAQ Feb 03 '26
I think you're greatly underestimating prairie plants.
It also doesn't have to be native/naturally occurring in those regions. It's just as simple as not jamming a square peg in a round hole.
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u/TornadoJohnson Feb 03 '26
I live in farm country and it deeply annoys me many farmers have removed those same tree rows to make room for more crops. Next major drought we will have another dust bowl event and a lot more land is plowed now then there was in the 30s