How to grow a forest in your backyard

In this video, the presenter "Shubhendu Sharma" and his team has created a 100 year old forest in just 10 years.

This video basically contains 5 segments:

1. Short background
2. The damage we are doing to nature in the name of industrial approach
3. Process which is followed to establish small scale forest
4. How the nature takes over the exponential growth of the forest after few years
5. Conclusion

Best and lengthy segment is the process they followed to achieve this feet.

Lets get into the transcript

Background:

• A forest can spread for acres and acres of area. Or it can fit into a small space like as small as your house garden.
• He along with help of an entrepreneur to facilitate setting up a small scale forest for factories, resorts, schools, homes, apartment buildings, public parks and even a Zoo (Singapore Zoo).
• Most of the world we live in today was forest before human intervention. We build cities on the forest forgetting that we belong to the planet as good as 8.4 million other species on the plant.
• They have made 75 such small scale forest 

• 2 in US
• 1 in Netherlands
• 1 in Pakistan
• 70 in India and 
• 1 in Singapore

• All we have to do is just to bring all the resources which persists right around.
  

The damage we are doing to nature:

• Being an industrial engineer, we rip the sap out of rubber tree, convert into a rubber and make a tire out of it which is the product. 
• These products can never become a natural resource again.
• We separate the elements from nature and convert them into an irreversible state - That's industrial production
• Nature on the other hand works totally opposite way. Natural systems produce by bring elements together. All the nature products become a natural resource again.

Now getting into the process of creating such small scale forest:

1. Starting with soil quality by touching, feeling and even tasting it. If soil is made up of small particles they become so compact that water cannot seep into it. we mix some local biomass available around and even more peat and biomass to make soil capable of holding water and to stay moist.
2. To grow plants we need water, sunlight and nutrition. If the soil lacks nutrition, we don't add it directly into the soil which will be unnatural again. They add micro organisms to the soil. They produce the nutrients in the soil naturally. as a natural process the micro organisms eat the biomass and multiple. As they grow, soil starts breathing again and it becomes alive.
3. Moving on the what types of plants to grow in that locality. now how to get that data?? simple, whatever plants existed before human footprints are native. to identify the native trees they traveled to various forest in the region or go to the museum to view the collection of trees, research the ancient manuscripts, paintings etc
4. Once they decide the trees, they divide it into 4 layers each having various height and breadth, namely: 
1. Shrub layer, 
2. sub-tree layer, 
3. tree layer and 
4. canopy layer.
5. They collect the seeds and generate saplings out of them. They will make sure that the trees of same layer will not be planted next to each other to avoid trees fighting for same vertical space when they grow tall.
6. On the surface they spread a thick layer of "Mulch"
   
7. In the first 3 months trees penetrate up to a depth of 1 meter. These roots tightly hold the soil allowing microbes and fungi live throughout this network of roots. This takes of logistics of bringing necessary nutrition to the tree from where it is found.
8. Once these roots are established, forest starts growing on the surface. As the forest grows we keep watering it for next 2 to 3 years.
9. As the forest grows they block the sunlight. Eventually when it becomes so dense the sunlight cannot reach the ground anymore.
10. At this stage, every single drop of rain water that falls into the ground doesn't evaporate back into the atmosphere. This dense forest condenses the moist air and retains its moisture. They gradually reduce the water the forest. and even without watering the forest floor stays moist.

How the nature takes over to grow on itself:

Now when a single leaf falls on the floor it immediately starts decaying. This decayed biomass forms humus which is the food for the forest. as the forest grows more leaf falls and eventually more food for trees and forest grows still bigger. and this forest keeps growing exponentially

Conclusion: In a natural forest like this, "No management is the Best management". These trees works collectively. When the same species of plants were planted independently, it wont grow this fast and probably many may not survive. This is how we create 100 year old forest in just 10 years Thank you very much

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Video Stats:

• Channel: TED 
• Length: 9:10 
• Views: 921K (Subscribers - 14M) 

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