well-temperedforum.groupee.net The Well-Tempered Forum Off Key Can genetic engineering bring back the American chestnut tree?Go | New | Find | Notify | Tools | Reply | |
| Can genetic engineering bring back the American chestnut tree? | Login/Join |
Has Achieved Nirvana |
Hope you can get to this NYT article. Fascinating stuff. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/0...erican-chestnut.html
| ||
|
Beatification Candidate |
I'm really ambivalent about GMOs because of unintended consequences, although natural occurrences of genetic modification such as COVID-19 clearly demonstrate that nature is not a benign agent, at least as far as risks to our species are concerned. Given the various blights, insects, and fungi that have attacked a variety of trees (like the sturdy white ash trees that the emerald ash borer destroyed in my yard), I think some degree of tinkering is warranted. A landscape without trees has enormous implications for global warming, among other risks. I've wondered what it was like when chestnuts spread through eastern forests. I'm old enough to remember dead ones still standing that we cut for firewood when I was a young man. I know I will never see the primeval forests that existed before the changes that modern man brought to Penn's woods. Big Al
| |||
|
Minor Deity |
I love hiking in old growth forests. There still are quite a few, although the acreage is minimal. Here's a list, you night find some nearby. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...orests#United_States
| |||
|
Minor Deity |
] The one in Oklahoma is only two hours away. Cool! And there are some spectacular-looking ones in Arkansas that are only four or five hours away. When the lockdown is over...
| |||
|
| Minor Deity |
Red Rock Canyon in Hinton is very nice. About an hour west of OKC if I recall correctly. It was pleasant enough that we camped an extra day there on the way back from San Diego once. Not old growth but still very nice. Coming through OK in October was quite beautiful, The fields were plowed up with all that red earth. Very colorful.
| |||
|
| Minor Deity |
Red Rock Canyon's about two hours from here. I've only been there once for a couple of hours, but it was gorgeous. That's where my friend and I took some of my new author pictures last fall. I'd like to get Quirt over there for a hike, but it did look like the kind of park that might get people-y, so we may wait a while. There's a hike at Black Mesa Nature Preserve that I really want to do, but it's about six hours away and will thus have to wait for post-Corona when we could safely do an overnight trip. It's very unlike these you listed, as there are almost no trees. It's a mesa rising up out of the prairie to form the highest point in Oklahoma, but is still a relatively easy eight-mile hike because it starts flat and ends flat, with a short steep section that gets you up on the mesa. It's high enough and the surrounding area is flat enough that you can see the Rockies from there. And there's a cool bonus of dinosaur tracks that are a short walk from the parking lot.
| |||
|
| Minor Deity |
Looks beautiful from the pics - kind of the start of the mesas of New Mexico and the panhandle.
| |||
|
| Beatification Candidate |
There are some lovely old-growth forests but they're not the forests that preceded the settlement of the North American continent by Europeans. Here in Pennsylvania, the immense evergreen forests populated by giant white pines and hemlocks is unlikely to ever exist again. The pine seedlings are eaten by the white-tailed deer that have thrived in the absence of the their natural predators, the wolves and the hemlock are subject to attack by the introduced pest, the woolly adelgid. That pest has devastated hemlocks in great stretches of the Appalachians, in particular, the Blue Ridge Mountains. There are definitely old-growth forests in much of the USA now, but they are vastly changed from the primeval forest that covered this land before immigration and settlement by Europeans forever altered the landscape. We can't undo what has already been done, but we can consider and thoughtfully choose what may be done in the future. Big Al
| |||
|
| Minor Deity |
Still a lot of hemlock down in SE Ohio. beautiful .
| |||
|
| Minor Deity |
There's a virgin forest near Columbia, South Carolina that's pretty magnificent. It's more of a river swamp, so a lot of the big old trees are cypress. I've hiked in a stand of virgin longleaf pines in central Florida and it was very special, but they were not the massive longleafs I've seen in pictures. The forester with me said that the size of trees in virgin forests varied a lot with the fertility of the soil. In the Pine Belt, where I grew up, they would have been huge, but the sandy Florida soils wouldn't support that much biomass.
| |||
|
Minor Deity |
Apparently, chestnut forests (pest-resistent ones) could "suck" an immense amount of the ever-growing carbon dioxide out of our atmosphere. That said, I too am suspicious of anything Monsanto is involved in, having done a certain amount of research of Agent Orange and how the company has dealt with its appalling (still on-going) aftermath. I certainly hope Monsanto's involvement with this project is genuinely harmless (though I doubt it could be "altruistic"). As a general rule too, about GMO plants, I am fearful of any corporation or individual's ability to patent a very species especially when it can spread to neighboring farms and cost those farmers' money. Plants and other species can be modified for good or ill, but the greatest danger is the underlying human greed behind the motivation which is same old, same old and the ultimate parasite of our specie's nature.
| |||
|
| Powered by Social Strata |
 | Please Wait. Your request is being processed... |
|
well-temperedforum.groupee.net The Well-Tempered Forum Off Key Can genetic engineering bring back the American chestnut tree?