<story><title>Iceland’s forest and bush cover has increased sixfold since 1990</title><url>https://www.icelandreview.com/nature-travel/forests-now-cover-2-of-iceland/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wnevets</author><text>&amp;gt; potential to be invasive.&lt;p&gt;Is that a real concern when it comes to trees?</text></item><item><author>BitwiseFool</author><text>Are those trees native to Iceland? I would hope that they aren&amp;#x27;t just trying to increase forest cover using species that have the potential to be invasive.</text></item><item><author>elevaet</author><text>I planted some thousands of trees in Iceland in the noughties. I believe the program was funded by Alcoa to offset the carbon produced by an aluminum plant they were building on the island. They paid farmers to plant trees on unused land, and the farmers hired and hosted us to do the work. It was an amazing way to see the country. We mostly planted larch, birch and alder from what I remember. It is a very beautiful country, like an arctic Hawaii.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>BitwiseFool</author><text>Absolutely, because the trees non-ecologists pick for rapid reforestation happen to grow aggressively and they tend to out compete the local species. They tend to pick either rapidly growing species, or particularly hardy ones. Both characteristics make removing them after introduction difficult.&lt;p&gt;Hawaii has a huge problem with this, but also California. The eucalyptus trees they imported from Australia have had the terrible affect of making wildfires in California even worse. There&amp;#x27;s also a horrible negative feedback loop because the Eucalyptus is adapted to recover quickly from such fires.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;It has been estimated that 70% of the energy released through the combustion of vegetation in the Oakland fire was due to eucalyptus.[41] In a National Park Service study, it was found that the fuel load (in tons per acre) of non-native eucalyptus woods is almost three times as great as native oak woodland.&amp;quot;
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Eucalyptus#Adaptation_to_fire&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Eucalyptus#Adaptation_to_fire&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Iceland’s forest and bush cover has increased sixfold since 1990</title><url>https://www.icelandreview.com/nature-travel/forests-now-cover-2-of-iceland/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>wnevets</author><text>&amp;gt; potential to be invasive.&lt;p&gt;Is that a real concern when it comes to trees?</text></item><item><author>BitwiseFool</author><text>Are those trees native to Iceland? I would hope that they aren&amp;#x27;t just trying to increase forest cover using species that have the potential to be invasive.</text></item><item><author>elevaet</author><text>I planted some thousands of trees in Iceland in the noughties. I believe the program was funded by Alcoa to offset the carbon produced by an aluminum plant they were building on the island. They paid farmers to plant trees on unused land, and the farmers hired and hosted us to do the work. It was an amazing way to see the country. We mostly planted larch, birch and alder from what I remember. It is a very beautiful country, like an arctic Hawaii.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>shakes_mcjunkie</author><text>Yes, why wouldn&amp;#x27;t it be? Any non native species can disrupt an ecosystem in any number of ways. For trees for example, they can shade or crowd out native species.</text></comment>