Interesting Links for 22-11-2021

[andrewducker]

Wearing socks in bed increases your chance of orgasm

(tags:clothes orgasm socks )

Wolves make roadways safer, generating large economic returns to predator conservation

(tags:wolves cars economics viaCharlesStross )

When younger siblings try to copy older ones

(tags:family children funny video )

Happy Not Quite Almost Christmas Time!

(tags:Christmas video music funny )

A former fusion scientist on why we won't have fusion power by 2040

(tags:Fusion video )

Scotland's forests are back to the coverage they were at 1,000 years ago

(tags:forests Scotland GoodNews )

Comments

Scottish Forests

[danieldwilliam]

There were a couple of comments on the Scottish forestry tweet pointing out that a lot of the new forest was plantation monoculture pine.

I wonder if we know what the tonnage of wood in Scottish forests was in 1,000 AD.

And we must have a some measure of bio-diversity, or perhaps just a proxy for it and I wonder what the comparision of biodiversity in Scottish wood is between now and a thousand years ago.

Re: Scottish Forests

[original_aj]

I do know that Scottish Forestry are requiring diversity in plantations as a condition for grant funding. And that includes a proportion of broadleaf as well as a variety of pine species. So it's moving away from monoculture. The trees are planted and maintained at carefully calculated separations to optimise straight up growth and minimise brabching, to reduce the number of knots and maximise straight grain wood so probably much denser than a natural growth woodland would be.

Even 1000 years ago quite a bit of woodland would have been managed, coppicing for fast growth smaller stems etc. It isn't like they were all big old oaks.

Also, the new thing in farming that is being pushed is putting back isolated trees scattered around pasture rather than planting pure woodland. It's better for the animals if they have some shelter and doesn't sigificantly reduce the grazing area.

Re: Scottish Forests

[danieldwilliam]

The management of woodland in medieval times *is* quite interesting - says me who has so far read the first chapter of Seeing Like a State which is about German's planting trees in straight rows so you could count them easier but no further.

What's driving my question about density of actual wood is my assumption that some part of modern forestry in Scotland is fast growing softwood and less old-growth or slow growing harder wood - but you make and excellent point about things like coppicing and how the management and use of medieval woodland would change the density of it.

Re: Scottish Forests

[original_aj]

The commercial driver is for monoculture fast growing softwood, hence why Scottish Forestry are using the grant schemes to leverage the inclusion of slower growing hardwoods and a variety of softwood types.

Trees are planted in rows here too, but that's because it's all done by machine now. Interesting (to me, anyway) cunning technique used to establish how many saplings have been planted in an area, and to what density: Put a stake in the ground in a randomly chosen point in the enormous and very uneven bit of land that's been planted. Attach a piece of string which is SQRT(20/PI) metres long - about 2.5m. Walk in a circle at the extent of the string counting how many saplings the string passes over. Repeat in a few different places until you are confident you have a consistent average. That's how many are in 20 square metres, multiply up to the size of the plantation. Saves trying to count a huge hillside, but only works until the saplings are too tall to get the string over them!

[mountainkiss]

I am pretty sure that the sock thing must be that people just do better in bed if they are willing to put comfort above how they look to the other person.

[andrewducker]

I can totally believe that warm extremities mean your body is happy to dilate blood vessels more, making it easier to engorge things.

[mountainkiss]

I am not convinced prima facie that the size of this effect would be significant compared to all the other interconnected things that are going on during sex, but am not a medic.