Tree farm
A tree farm or plantation is a forest of usually fast-growing trees planted by humans either to replace already-logged forests or to substitute for their absence. The term tree farm is also sometimes used for tree nurseries which produce seedling trees for tree farms and reforestation. Tree farms differ from natural forests in several ways:
- Tree farms are usually monocultures. That is, the same species of tree is planted in rows across a given area, whereas a conventional forest would contain far more diverse tree species.
- Tree farms may include unconventional varieties of trees, including (in a few cases) hybrid trees and genetically modified trees. Since the primary interest in tree farming is producing wood or pulp, the types of trees found in tree farms are those that are best-suited to industrial application. For example, pines are popular because they grow extremely quickly and are good for furniture and lumber.
- Tree farms are always young forests. Typically, trees grown in farms are harvested after 10 to 60 years, rarely up to 120 years. This means that the forests produced by tree farms do not contain the type of growth, soil or wildlife typical of old-growth natural forest ecosystems. Most conspicuous is the absence of decaying dead wood, a very important part of natural forest ecosystems.
Tree farms are planted by state forestry authorities (for example, the Forestry Commission in Britain) and/or the paper and wood industries and other private landowners. Christmas trees are often grown on tree farms as well. In the Kyoto Protocol there are proposals encouraging the planting of tree farms to reduce carbon dioxide levels (though this idea is being challenged by some groups).
Critics charge that due to the vastly different nature of the ecosystem that develops around tree farms, they are not a fitting substitute for old-growth forests, and the replacement of old-growth trees by tree farms results in the loss of biodiversity. Tree farms may also involve draining wetlands to replace mixed hardwoods that formerly predominated, with pine species.
