[ERA] Wood Vaulting
Owen Allen
Comments? https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-wood-vaulting-could-help-slow-climate-change/
Owen Allen
Ecosystem Support
Dasein Tropic
Qld, Australia
Mob: +61 423430941
You are the Betterment of the World
edib korkut
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Subject: [ERA] Wood Vaulting
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Owen Allen
cheers
Owen Allen
Ecosystem Support
Dasein Tropic
Qld, Australia
Mob: +61 423430941
You are the Betterment of the World
Erica Gies
edib korkut
Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2025 6:46 PM
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Subject: Re: [ERA] Wood Vaulting
Ananda Fitzsimmons
Erica Gies
Owen Allen
Indeed Erica, that was my first thought. Edib's point about inefficiency is then secondary to even going there. There's an interesting consideration in forest ecosystems about how much wood is allowable as human resource? We would have to consider it in any equation dealing with human needs vs conservation and restoration. 10% of mature and dead wood at anyone time? Would vigorous restoration actually increase the resource supply for humans? What about the conservation values of the forest itself - the very old tree to the seedling and all the 'web of life' Erica mentions? Can agro-forestry increase food productivity (food security) while providing timber and also millenial long conservations that include the oldest trees? For mine if you were to remove 10% of dead wood in forests then manufacturing biochar might still be the best way of giving it permanent sequestration and integrating into a food production / soils maintenance system. I know there is often an avoidance of economics in regard to conservation values but I think when there are 8 billion upward to 10 or 11 billion people on the planet over the next century, these are the very important resource explotation guidelines we need to have.
kindly
Owen Allen
Ecosystem Support
Dasein Tropic
Qld, Australia
Mob: +61 423430941
You are the Betterment of the World
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Owen Allen
Edib,
I think it is a human needs resource exploitation model problem and it is based in political fear. Fear that if we don't have a recipe book that shows how everyone gets adequate food and resources there will be political chaos. This is a very real fear but holding a course set by the past that has caused most of the abundance problems is unlikely to more than delay that political reality.
We have been yet unable to get our mind operating with the complexity of an ecology that includes us as homo economicus, at a political level. Many individuals do it quite well but due to lack of resourcing from the larger collective, can only make small impacts. Science has the problem of having to identify very clearly distinct characteristics to design research parameters. However that is the very strong left brain rational function and we need a very strong input from the right brain which carries the functions of big picture view, dealing with complexity, creative and novel insights. In his book the master and the emissary, Psychiatrist Ian McGilchrist, asserts that the right brain must be the master and the left brain the emissary or toolbox (emissary because the left brain provides speech expression for what we know). That's a bit simplistic but the bottom line is that our brain functions optimally when we have integrated the work of both hemispheres into a whole as a feedback system.
We need to bring the ability to stand back from the details to look at the possibilities for a future, and then begin modelling (whole designs), learning from modelling (research on elements and the workability of the whole design) , modifying modelling (reformations and developments of the whole design) and more research and learning and so on
We are currently in a early modelling phase with economic and human productivity practices as a feedback loop (that's what donut economics is trying to model) and so there is yet to be enough learning for the population and startups etc to begin a mass migration towards those restorative, conservative, and flourishing models. The number one message I think is that vigorous ecosystem restoration is the flourishing of human populations - I just can't prove it - which probably just means I don't have at my fingertips the salient research that does prove it.
bests
Owen Allen
Ecosystem Support
Dasein Tropic
Qld, Australia
Mob: +61 423430941
You are the Betterment of the World
On 2025-10-17 10:11, edib korkut wrote:
To begin, when a tree is planted and left standing all the carbon accumulated stays in the tree. Are we so short of space that we don't have areas to afforest or is it just that nobody recognizes this "carbon credit" since it is "reversible" with cutting of the tree? I think that it is silly since a solution for 20 years looks good to me and we will see after that. And we don't need full "carbon credit" only a fraction of the money to plant the tree and leave it standing.Burying the wood just seems to be a costly way of "securing permanence".Am I missing something or are the above problems (area and permanence) the reasons why large-scale afforestation is not done?Best
From: ecorestorat...@googlegroups.com <ecorestorat...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Owen Allen <ecosy...@daseintropic.au>
Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2025 6:35 PM
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Subject: Re: [ERA] Wood Vaulting
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Owen Allen
So in principle, deviating a little of the woody 'waste' to a human utility that can also assist the restoration of soil, food production including food trees and also integrated with light re-afforestation. Am I getting that picture right?
Owen Allen
Ecosystem Support
Dasein Tropic
Qld, Australia
Mob: +61 423430941
You are the Betterment of the World
Michael Pilarski
Hello Owen, Erica, Ananda, Edib, et al,
First time I have heard of wood vaulting. Lots to consider here. But all in all, I am dubious of this proposal.
Ananda is right about hugelkulturs. The buried wood gives us a financial return
in whatever is grown on the hugelkulturs.
I am a big fan of hugelkulturs and have made dozens of them from small
to massive. The carbon in the buried biomass
is gradually returned to the atmosphere.
Usually in terms of decades.
All biomass is fertilizer for ensuing forests. Burying all of a forest’s carbon deprives further forest generation of needed nutrients. Too heavy a removal is definitely bad.
The heavy equipment and fossil fuels needed for this approach negates a lot of the benefits and won’t be available in a post-collapse scenario.
Biochar is another way of taking forest biomass and sequestering it for long periods of time. Biochar is very helpful to soil water holding capacity and nutrients. I think biochar is one of the ways forest waste (sic) can be used for climate stabilization.
Mostly I think we need as many healthy forests as possible. Healthy forests (and agroforestry systems) sequester carbon.
Erica Gies
At each of 10 sites across British Columbia, the researchers have created five treatments: clearcut, seed tree (retaining 10 percent of mature trees to provide natural seed for regeneration), 30 percent retention in clumps, 60 percent retention leaving the canopy while harvesting from the understory, and control (unharvested). At every location, each of the five treatments is replicated three times, at random spots across the landscape.