Understanding the way trees reduce soil erosion
Leith Knowles
New Zealand Tree
Grower February 2006
New Zealand loses between 200 and 300 million tonnes of soil every year
to the oceans – a rate about 10 times the world average. Erosion is
fairly light to moderate over half of the country, but severe to
extreme on 10 percent of it. Downstream effects can be disastrous for
those involved, as shown by the 2004 storm in the Manawatu.
It is widely accepted that soil erosion under forests is much less than
under other forms of vegetation cover such as pasture, as the trees
have deeper stronger root systems. Reduction in mass soil erosion
following tree planting on pasture land can be predicted from estimates
of the dry weight of tree roots and their strength. This information,
combined with data on loss of root tensile strength after felling,
provides a basis for an understanding of the way trees of different
species, managed at different stockings and rotation ages,
reduce soil erosion over consecutive rotations.
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| Soil erosion in the 2004
Manawatu storm. |
Species differences
The main tree species planted on steep hill slopes in New Zealand are
radiata pine, Douglas fir, and poplar. Poplar is usually the species of
choice for erosion control on hill country pasture land. However the
benefits of such planting may be less than commonly thought.
Production woodlots and forests of radiata pine and Douglas fir on
steep country have a dual production and protection role. One has only
to fly over steep erosion-prone land already planted in trees,
especially after a storm, to appreciate their effectiveness in reducing
erosion. The other more sobering conclusion one may draw is that most
of our erosion prone land is in pasture, not trees. Pastoral farmers
have been slow to adopt sustainable land use practices on eroding land,
even with so called farmer friendly species such as poplar.
There is a good relationship between above ground and below ground
biomass for woody plants. The larger the tree stem, the greater the
root biomass. The relationship between diameter at breast height (DBH)
and root biomass for radiata pine, Douglas fir, and poplar is shown in
the graph.
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| Root biomass in kilograms against tree
size diameter at breast height |
For a given tree size, a radiata pine will have a larger root biomass
than a Douglas fir, which will in turn have more root biomass than a
poplar. If we compare the same species for root strength, the rankings
are reversed. With a tensile strength of 39 MPa (mega-pascals), poplar
roots are twice as strong as radiata pine at 19 MPa. Measurements of
Douglas fir roots in coastal Oregon showed a tensile strength of 25
MPa which is 1.3 times as strong as radiata pine.
It would seem logical that the soil holding ability of a tree of a
given size should be the product of its root biomass and its root
tensile strength. In other words, to compare these three species, we
need to multiply the poplar root biomass by a factor of 2.05, and
Douglas fir root biomass by 1.3. The result is illustrated in the
diagram below which shows the comparative soil holding ability of the
three tree species when grown to the same stem diameter.
Each species achieves the same outcome by a different strategy, either
by growing lots of roots that are not very strong, or by growing fewer
but stronger roots. So provided that trees are grown to the same size,
all species can be expected to do a similar job in terms of holding
erodable hill slopes in place.
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Root biomass multiplied by root
tensile strength relative to radiata
pine
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Stocking and site
Tree size is affected by growth rate, which will differ widely between
species, and by site factors and stocking rates. Poplars grow well on
alluvial terraces, but are not particularly happy on steep, exposed
hillsides which are the very sites that are erosion prone. Radiata
pine, while less productive on such sites, is generally the most site
tolerant, with Douglas fir next.
The number of trees per hectare will also be an important factor in
determining the effectiveness of plantings for erosion control.
Poplar is often planted as poles, at the widely promoted and
recommended rate of 50 or so per hectare. Cost constraints and the
desire to retain pasture production reinforce such practices. Radiata
pine is usually planted at 800 to 1200 stems per hectare, and Douglas
fir at 1250 to 1650 stems per hectare. Both these species are usually
thinned to waste to a final crop of 300 stems per hectare and 500 to
600 stems per hectare respectively.
Harvesting
Finally, what happens if the stand is felled and then replanted? Will
the hillside slip away in the first storm? The answer is generally no,
provided that best practice is followed in the way the stand is logged.
Residual roots continue to hold the soil in place long after the tree
has been felled. Measurements of root strength following felling show
that a radiata pine root system will halve its strength over 15 months.
This is referred to as its half-life. In other words, 30 months after
felling, the effective soil holding ability will be 25% of what is was
immediately before felling. For Douglas fir the half-life is reported
as 27 months in British Columbia and 46 months in Oregon. Other
research has shown that the loss of root tensile strength after felling
may be relatively constant for all tree species when expressed as
actual loss of tensile strength per month. A typical loss is around 0.5
MPa each month. This indicates that poplar roots should have a
half-life of
around 35 to 40 months. Rather surprisingly there is no evidence that
the actual half-life of poplar roots has been determined.
Thresholds
The radiata pine and Douglas fir Calculators
V2 allow the user to
predict the soil holding ability for these species, taking the growth
rate, silviculture, root strength and root decay for that particular
species into account. The output can be copied into a spreadsheet, with
profiles from repeated rotations simply pasted into place to show the
accumulated soil-holding ability over long time frames. This can also
highlight periods of vulnerability between rotations.
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| Output from the radiata pine
Calculator V2 showing root biomass on a
typical site for three 30-year rotations of radiata pine
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If we base evidence from cyclones Alison, Bernie, and Bola, and other
more recent storm events, a rule-of-thumb can be determined.
This gives a minimum threshold of 30 tonnes of radiata pine root
biomass per hectare which is necessary to hold soil in place on typical
erosion prone hill slopes. For the second and subsequent rotations,
root biomass typically falls short of this benchmark for a seven year
period, that is seven years out of 30.
So for 77% of the time, the stand should do the job of holding the soil
on the hill. For the remaining seven years, there is an annual
shortfall averaging 12 tonnes of root biomass per hectare. In other
words, over this inter-rotational period, the trees have on average 60%
of the root biomass required to do the job. Natural recruitment of
shrub species on to the cutover may help to fill this gap. The graph at
the bottom of the page shows an example for radiata pine without shrubs
against the 30-tonne per hectare threshold. The smaller reduction in
root biomass evident when the stand is age eight years is due to the
thinning to waste to 300 stems per hectare.
To evaluate a typical Douglas fir regime on a 45 year rotation, the
root biomass output from the Douglas fir Calculator V2 is
multiplied by 1.3 to allow for the differences in root strength. This
shows that once a Douglas fir stand is established, it meets the
threshold in 38 years out of 45, and the
average shortfall for these seven years is only six tonnes per hectare.
In other words, the stand is meeting 80% of the benchmark over this
inter-rotational period.
| Number of trees per hectare for a
given DBH required to control erosion |
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Unfortunately we do not have growth models available that would permit
us to do the same simple evaluations for poplar.
However, we can see from the first two graphs that even after allowing
for the stronger roots, at stockings of 50 poles per hectare and for
tree sizes up to 40 cm DBH, poplar plantings fall well short of
providing protection. At a stocking of 50 poles per hectare, poplar
trees would have to be around 55 cm DBH before such a planting would
meet the minimum protection of 30 tonnes per hectare of
radiata pine equivalent root biomass.
It is a simple matter to devise a table showing the number of trees for
a given DBH regardless of species required to achieve the equivalent of
30 tonnes per hectare of radiata pine root biomass.
Conclusions
This evaluation shows that there are a number of factors to take into
account when assessing the effectiveness of tree plantings in reducing
erosion. Large differences between species in root biomass for a given
tree size are effectively cancelled out when root strength is taken
into account. Smaller effects may be attributed to differences between
species in rate of decay of root systems following felling.
Growth rate and number of trees per hectare are the key factors
affecting how well trees control soil erosion. Provided trees of
different species grow at a similar rate, and do well on exposed,
erosion-prone hill slopes – although experience tells us that
many do not – then it is largely a numbers game. The low stockings
often employed for poplar pole planting may make them less effective
for erosion control than commonly thought.
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