Indian village beats tsunami with tree power
Two years ago, drought-stricken farmers in a village on the southern coast of India walked into the Guinness Book of World Records by planting the highest number of saplings in a 24-hour period.
On Dec. 26, as the killer tsunami struck down thousands of people and homes in Tamil Nadu state, the casuarina and eucalyptus trees which had been planted to appease the weather gods saved the lush green village of Naluvedapathy.
Of the nearly 8,000 people who died in the state, including 6,000 in one fishing village, only seven were from Naluvedapathy.
Read the Full Article at Reuters AlertNet
On Dec. 26, as the killer tsunami struck down thousands of people and homes in Tamil Nadu state, the casuarina and eucalyptus trees which had been planted to appease the weather gods saved the lush green village of Naluvedapathy.
Of the nearly 8,000 people who died in the state, including 6,000 in one fishing village, only seven were from Naluvedapathy.
Read the Full Article at Reuters AlertNet
Unknown at 8:39:00 pm |
I don't know about casuarinas but eucalyptus wreak havoc on the environment in many places, owing to their large water intake and therefore their suppressing of other vegetation. This is a real problem in places like Portugal, with something of a "eucalyptus mafia" behind it consisting of landlords trying to defend this easy cashcrop and deterring traditional farmers from growing anything else, often violently. So be wary of reports like these that don't offer a lot of background insights. I've heard similar reports about cashew plantations which are economically valuable but environmentally dubious owing to the chemicals involved in their production method.
I did the imagery analysis found on the Ground Zero Information page. I saw this same thing in several places, including the few images of Sri Lanka and Thailand that I saw. While trees didn't help much in Banda Aceh, where there were trees between the beach and inhabited areas, there was less wave damage. It might be beneficial to determine which trees provided the best protection, and to build "wave-breaks" between beaches and housing, the way some countries use trees as windbreaks. Even where the trees didn't provide complete protection, they mitigated the power of the waves to some extent. I also noticed that the more densely packed the trees were, the more protection they provided, especially along the west coast of Sri Lanka and portions of the Maldive Islands. This is definitely something worth looking into, and a possible means of sheltering coastal areas from extreme damage in the event of another tsunami.