How to grow a forest in a desert, coal mine or on a sea isthmus alone?
We have compiled a selection of six unique places in Russia and the world where trees appeared only thanks to humans.
Curonian Spit: Kaliningrad region, Russia
The Curonian Spit is a 98 km strip of sand separating the Curonian Lagoon from the Baltic Sea. The spit formed by itself several thousand years ago – winds and sea currents helped.
In the 11th century, this territory was inhabited by one of the Western Baltic tribes – the Curonians. By that time, thousands of trees grew there. Two centuries later, the knights of the Teutonic Order (German crusaders) came to their lands. To build ships and fortifications, they cut down forests and burned trees for charcoal. The spit's natural protection from the wind disappeared: the dunes were destroyed, and the sand from them covered the villages.
Local residents began to fight desertification only in the 19th century, when the territory was under the control of the Kingdom of Prussia. Professor at the University of Wittenberg Johann Titius proposed creating a protective wall of plants on the sea side, and the Danish scientist Søren Bjorn developed his idea. Having built fences from brushwood, enthusiasts united the dunes into a barrier line and began planting forests on the spit.
Towards the end of the 19th century, Ludwig Müller, the chief royal forester of Königsberg, took up the matter. He brought mountain pine seeds from Denmark and tried to root them in sandy soil. It took more than ten years to achieve success. In parallel with Müller, the royal dune reforestation inspector Franz Efa worked. He came up with an original way of planting pine trees: he placed seedlings with a clod of earth in small cages made of brushwood and reeds.
By the beginning of the 20th century, the forests on the spit had grown, and desertification had slowed down. After World War II, the territories were transferred to the Soviet Union, and several decades later, the Curonian Spit became a national park.
Lindulovskaya Grove: Leningrad region, Russia
The Lindulovskaya grove (named after the Lindulovka River) appeared at the beginning of the 18th century, 63 km from St. Petersburg, not far from the Roshchino railway station. The first trees were planted there by order of Peter I: a lot of larch trees were needed for the construction of ships at the Kronstadt shipyard.
The German forester Ferdinand Gabriel Fockel and his Russian students began to carry out the order after the emperor's death in 1738. The first seedlings were brought from the Arkhangelsk region, and the entire territory was planted in several stages by 1750. Thus, the Lindulovskaya grove became the first larch grove grown by human hands.
A century later, in 1856, when more and more trees became suitable for shipbuilding, the grove became a nature reserve. In 1990, it was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List – some larches from the Peter the Great era still grow there.
Growing a forest today – how realistic is it?
Is quite real. True, it all depends on what kind of forest you need.
A forest is a difficult-to-eradicate ecological system. It will stop developing only if it is paved or built over.
For example, the historical complex of Siem Reap in Cambodia (you may remember it from the films about Lara Croft) is completely captured by the jungle: the forest there grows on the roofs of old temples and other buildings.
Forests grow independently not only in tropical countries – in Russia too (for example, in abandoned fields).
However, the properties of such a “self-regenerating” forest may not be so attractive. For example, if we are talking about a source of raw materials or oxygen, we will be interested in specific trees. It is important for us that certain species that people need grow in the forest: spruce, pine, oak, beech or cedar. To grow such a forest, you need to make a lot of effort: constantly planting new seedlings, caring for it, and removing unwanted vegetation.
Without human help, the forest will be restored by other species, which nature uses to quickly heal wounds. In Russia these are birches and aspens. They do not have the same raw material value for humans, although they are suitable for recreation – say, a park for walking.
It is important not just to plant trees, but to create diverse forest landscapes that are resistant to climate change and pest outbreaks.
Are forests planted differently today than they were before?
Technologies have not changed much since the Lindul Grove. They still use, for example, the Kolesov sword – this is an elongated heavy shovel with a metal handle, which was invented more than a hundred years ago. The planting time today is chosen in the same way: in the spring it is a maximum of three weeks, in the fall – a month.
Alexey Sibirsky
Ecobloggerin a year and a half, together with his team, he planted more than 50 thousand trees
What does it take to grow a forest?
First of all, study the experience of other people, read articles by experts on the Internet. I don't think you need a college education to grow forests. The main thing is to start taking action. To make plantings effective, I turn to forest engineers or other specialists who work “on the ground” and understand specific locations.
Forests are usually managed by district forestries or private organizations. The latter cut down trees for production needs and are then obliged to restore them. There are also many enthusiasts around the world.
In my experience, just to plant 10 thousand trees requires about 30 people for 1-2 days. If we want to grow a large forest, then it is not the number that is important, but the time. The seedlings can be cared for by 3–4 people who will do this constantly.
Forests in Skopino: Ryazan region, Russia
Forests in the Skopinsky district on the lands of former coal mines appeared thanks to local forester Viktor Solovyov. By the 1990s, only rubble dumps remained there, from which the wind constantly carried stones into the gardens nearby.
In 1992, Solovyov tried to sow this area, but the seeds were quickly blown away by the wind and washed away by rain. Then he began to use another technology. Under his leadership, more than 20 tons of fertile soil and about 10 tons of water were lifted into waste heaps. More than 17 thousand spruce, pine, oak, rowan and birch seedlings were planted on the territory of the former mines. In 2011, President Dmitry Medvedev awarded Viktor Solovyov the title of Honored Forester of the Russian Federation. In total, over the years of work, he planted and cultivated 240 hectares of forest crops. In 2013, Viktor Solovyov died.
Forest in Surkhandarya: Surkhandarya region, Uzbekistan
In 2009, a resident of a mahalla (as local communities living in a certain quarter are called in Uzbekistan) on the outskirts of the city of Jarkurgan, Nomoz Jumaev, decided to fight desertification.
Uzbekistan consists of 80% deserts and semi-deserts, so the problem of landscaping areas there is especially acute. In 2009, Nomoz Dzhumaev was inspired by the story of local ecologists and decided to try to grow a forest in his mahalla so that sand from the desert would not spread through its streets.
The first plantings did not take root, but Dzhumayev decided to try again. The following year, he began planting saxaul and other desert species, adding a little clay to the roots. Over the course of three years, he produced about 15,000 seedlings. In a few years, the forest grew to 50 hectares – almost 35 football fields.
One person without any special education grew a forest. Are there many such examples?
There are teams of enthusiasts or simply people interested in growing forests all over the world: Jadav Payeng in India, Davis Salgado in Brazil, Ivan Sanzharov in Russia. They did not have any special education, but they could not be called ordinary people either – they studied literature, consulted with scientists. The experience they have acquired over the years is more important than education.
A simple example: several years ago my son wanted to grow oak trees in his dacha. We decided to make a “school” in our garden and plant acorns. Half of them did not emerge the next year. We dug up these acorns and looked: it turned out that mice had eaten them. We realized: in order to move on, we need to protect the acorns with a net.
It works the same way with forests. It is important not to stop and learn from what happened.
Lack of talent is a very rare talent, anyone can grow a forest. Usually failures are connected with the fact that a person did not succeed in something once and either did not want to or could not understand why it happened.
Jadava Payenga Forest: Majuli Island, India
Majuli Island on the Brahmaputra River was the largest in the world in the last century, but over time, soil erosion and floods destroyed it by almost a third, and the shore was turned into a desert. Local resident Jadav Payeng has watched the island's degradation since childhood. After another flood in 1979, he noticed dead snakes on the banks of Majuli and realized that trees could save the island from such natural disasters.
In the late 1970s, Jadav Payeng planted 20 bamboo seedlings on the bank, and they took root. He then became a participant in a government program to plant trees on a deserted area of the island, and after its completion, five years later, he continued to plant trees on the Brahmaputra shallows alone.
Today, the forest area cultivated by Payeng exceeds 560 hectares, which is about 780 football fields. The forest contains bamboo, kukuba, delonix reginae and bombax kapok.
The Great Green Wall of Africa: A strip from Senegal to Djibouti across 21 African countries
The Great Green Wall project was launched in 2007 in the Sahel, a tropical savannah region of Africa that is one of the driest on the planet. Environmental activists proposed an ambitious plan to combat the expansion of the Sahara Desert and land degradation.
21 countries (among them, for example, Benin, Eritrea, Somalia, Chad, Ethiopia, Libya, Egypt, Gambia) plan to plant about 100 million hectares of forest in the form of a strip 15 kilometers wide and 7,775 kilometers long. Experts settled on 40 species of trees that can grow in arid climates: for example, calotropis tall, Egyptian balanites and Nile acacia.
By 2024, the wall will be approximately 18% complete. In the Sahel, more than 25 million hectares of soil have already been restored. In Senegal alone, more than 18 million trees have been planted, and in Niger, the project has created more than 330,000 jobs.
How do you even grow a forest in the desert?
Forests are being restored where there is at least some water and where trees once grew. If you simply plant a forest in the desert, in the middle of the Sahara, Gobi and Karakum, nothing will work. The “Great Green Wall” in Africa is, in my opinion, a feasible project. However, success will depend on whether its participants can competently work with errors that are inevitable on such a scale.
In any case, combating desertification requires a lot of labor and technology. You can try to completely remove dune sands from a certain area until the ground appears. And then – sow. Another option is to make ditches in the sand and plant drought-resistant species (their roots reach the aquifers). For example, on the Curonian Spit, eryngium is grown for this reason, and in Kalmykia, some types of poplars are grown. Saxaul, some types of acacia, and tamarisk are also suitable.
Alexey Sibirsky
Ecoblogger
When growing forests, is knowledge or motivation more important?
Planting trees is not a calling. People simply have different levels of motivation and efficiency. There are those who are not interested in growing anything at this stage of life or in general. And that's okay: to each his own. And if there is a desire, anyone can master the skills.
Some knowledge comes with experience. For example, sometimes we understand that the grass will “clog” the space around new seedlings and prevent them from growing. In this case, we organize agricultural care: we periodically remove the grass and trample the ground so that new ones do not grow.
In fire-prone regions, we leave a line of soil that separates new plantings from the existing forest. We used this strategy in Buryatia in 2022. Before we started work, there was a fire there, so our team decided to play it safe. We planted in the same place in Buryatia for several years in a row. The survival rate there is about 70%. Interestingly, the result of planting directly depends on how well they are organized: how they work with the roots of the trees, what they do with the soil around them. It happens, for example, that one row remains alive, and the neighboring one is completely dead.
