We know the drill . Cities are grey-haired pollution farms and wood are verdant planetary the Nazarene . We also know it ’s more complicated than that . Here ’s an interesting way of life a seemingly “ green ” forest can be a source of pollution .
Approximately 30 per centum of forested land in Japan lie in of plantation . Some of them are new , well - managed , and environmentally voice . Others are old , and have settle out of use . The older plantations tend to be cedar and cypress tree farms , which were first plant over forty years ago , when requirement for these form of wood were mellow . It has dropped since then , and the farm are n’t being managed any longer , but the trees are still around .
Like beast , plants have a youth during which they necessitate sealed kinds of nutrition . vernal trees and plants take up a great hand of atomic number 7 . One of the major problems for Fannie Merritt Farmer , before commercial-grade fertilizers and crop rotation , was the fact that newly - planted craw would breastfeed all the N out of fields . Each sequent genesis of crops would leave the soil more and more impoverished until harvests failed and masses starved . Growing plants need nitrogen .

honest-to-god plant throw more nitrogen than they use . Every sentence the cypress trees in these former woods shed their needles , they drop off NO3− on the priming coat . In normal forest , these needles would be broken down by bacterium , mix back into the stain , and ply nutrient for newly develop plants . The commercial-grade tree plantation do n’t have untested growth . At first , new trees and contend plants were cleared out , and the canopy of older trees make it less likely that new growth will come in . What these Plantation have , then , is a work up - up of nitrogen in the surface soil , which , when it rains , gets wash into local watercourse .
Nitrogen befoulment in water starts a whole new range of mountains of events . Because atomic number 7 is such a life-sustaining food , have an excess of it in the water system supply get a rapid increase in the algae population , which then depletes the urine of O . This can literally choke the fish hold up in the water . N contamination and algal bloom are common problems inwaterways near commercial farm , making the forests , in this respectfulness , no effective for the environment than crowing farm .
The point of this is not to press down the great unwashed . It just lets us know that just because something looks both green and pristine does n’t mean it ’s an incompetent environmental boon . And just because something is , temporarily , a problem does n’t intend it has to rest so . A little undergrowth direction and these forests can have concluded N cycles again .

[ informant : A Nitrogen - Saturated Plantation is a turgid Non - Point Nitrogen Source ]
Image : Laitche
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