Issue 6

Research Makes Afforestation Work

Let’s say you have inherited a few hundred acres of farmland in the Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley (LMAV), the vast, 25-million-acre complex of forested wetlands running from Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico. You’re standing outside taking it all in, fertile farmland rented out for soybean production, dotted with isolated stands of elm, ash, sugarberry, and oak.

Back in the early 1900s, that land looked a lot different. Rather than a few trees here and there, your acreage was filled with bottomland hardwoods so thick the canopy darkened the understory. The trees provided habitat for wildlife and kept the surrounding air and water clean. Over the next 100 years, it was drained and deforested for agricultural use, damaging the ecosystem and contributing to erosion, decreased water quality, and greenhouse gasses.(...continued...)