I haven't run the numbers, but your assessment seems about right. The lower the humidity, the greater the potential for evaporative cooling, and the higher the max tolerable temperature. No reason to avoid moving to the tropics anytime soon.
5
Trees could be spying on illegal gold mining operations in the Amazon rainforest.
(www.frontiersin.org)
2
Trees could be spying on illegal gold mining operations in the Amazon rainforest.
(www.frontiersin.org)
"Non-native grass removal" indeed. Life would be so much easier if people didn't plant grass in the first place!
“I tried planting, but the goats ate everything,” says Maria Kanyere, a widow raising three children. “I don’t have time to fence them off.”
Domesticated animals are the bane of reforestation projects worldwide. Simply planting trees is not enough; there needs to be an ethical shift among the population of the area in order to ensure long-term success of both the reforestation project itself and efforts to mitigate climate change and food insecurity.
As meaning dry summer? Oof. Those droughts are the worst. Here's a quick-and-dirty list. For the sake of easy management, I won't list any vines or short-lived plants. Trees and shrubs and palms only. This is by no means exhaustive. No guarantees of accuracy.
More Suitable
Depending on the exact temperatures and precipitation at your site, as well as the soil, these would probably do well.
- Adansonia digitata (savanna / dry forest)
- Anacolosa frutescens (mixed forest)
- Annona senegalensis (savanna / gallery forest)
- Antidesma bunius (mixed forest)
- Breynia androgyna (humid forest edge)
- Byrsonima crassifolia (savanna / open woodland)
- Canarium schweinfurthii (rainforest or gallery forest)
- Carissa macrocarpa (open woodland / scrub)
- Chrysophyllum lacourtianum (semi-deciduous forest)
- Citrus hystrix
- Citrus japonica
- Citrus × latifolia
- Citrus × limon 'Improved Meyer'*
- Citrus × nobilis*
- Citrus × sinensis*
- Cordiera sessilis (gallery forest / savanna woodland)
- Dillenia indica (evergreen rainforest or gallery forest)
- Ficus carica* (dry forest / savanna)
- Flacourtia indica (dry forest)
- Garcinia xanthochymus (humid forest)
- Limonia acidissima
- Mangifera indica*
- Morinda citrifolia
- Morus macroura
- Mouriri guianensis (rainforest, mixed forest, savanna)
- Myrciaria tenella (seasonal forest)
- Pometia pinnata (open woodland / gallery forest)
- Pouteria gardneriana (gallery forest)
- Pouteria macrophylla (coastal moist forest)
- Pouteria venosa (savanna / dry forest / moist forest)
- Sclerocarya birrea subsp. caffra (dry forest / savanna woodland)
- Sonneratia caseolaris (tidal muck)
- Spondias dulcis (secondary forest / dry forest)
- Spondias purpurea (secondary forest / open woodland)
- Syzygium samarangense (rainforest or high water table)
- Terminalia catappa (dry forest / mixed forest)
- Ximenia americana (dry forest / scrub)
- Ziziphus mauritiana* (dry forest / savanna / scrub)
More Questionable
These plants might be suitable depending on the specific climate conditions at your site. Some of them would not do well with too much rain in the wet season, while others would always require irrigation in the dry season. Some of them could survive the climate just fine, but fruiting is questionable due to the wet and dry seasons being inverted. Many more plants native to Aw regions could probably be included here, but these seem (potentially) more suitable for dry summers.
- Alibertia edulis (savanna / open woodland)
- Allagoptera arenaria (sand dunes / scrub / coastal forest)
- Allagoptera caudescens (savanna / open woodland)
- Annona squamosa* (secondary forest / open woodland)
- Ardisia compressa (humid forest)
- Artocarpus heterophyllus* (rainforest / gallery forest)
- Canarium album (mixed forest)
- Ceratonia siliqua (dry forest)
- Dovyalis caffra (savanna / scrub / open woodland)
- Eugenia luschnathiana (deciduous forest / open woodland)
- Flacourtia jangomas (mixed forest)
- Genipa americana (moist forest / gallery forest)
- Inga spectabilis* (moist forest / gallery forest)
- Malpighia emarginata (moist forest)
- Manilkara zapota* (moist forest / gallery forest)
- Morus alba
- Nauclea xanthoxylon (high water table)
- Nephelium lappaceum (moist forest)
- Nephelium ramboutan-ake* (moist forest)
- Opuntia ficus-indica (open drylands)
- Plinia cauliflora × aureana
- Porcelia macrocarpa (secondary/seasonal moist forest)
- Pouteria grandiflora (secondary/seasonal moist forest)
- Punica granatum (steppe / dry forest)
- Syzygium aqueum (moist forest / gallery forest)
- Syzygium jambos (moist forest / gallery foret)
- Vangueria madagascariensis (open woodland)
* highly recommended if your conditions are suitable
Without knowing where you are, I can't recommend any seed/plant sources, but feel free to ask for more information about any of the plants that I listed. I also recommend these resources for information about food forests, especially in your climate.
Convert the pasture lands to syntropic food forests and native forests, and then the birds and other native animals will have a place to live again.
Yes absolutely, though I find it a difficult spectrum between pure conservationism vs ecology. I want to plant as many natives as possible, but perfect is the enemy of good, and ultimately I believe creating habitat and restoring a functional ecosystem takes precedence over trying to wind back the clock on colonisation.
Reforesting with plenty of fruiting plants, both natives and non-natives that aren't too invasive, probably achieves the most reasonable balance. The land gets reforested, and you also get food, meaning that you don't need to buy produce that was grown by deforesting somewhere else.
Does your eco-community have any online presence?
Let us not forget that this is primarily due to deforestation, whether directly (due to loss of tree cover for moisture retention) or indirectly (due to climate change).
Anyway all policy scenarios with any hope of staying below 2ºC, let alone 1.5ºC, include a lot of net reforestation. So we’ll have to turn this around, somewhere.
It seems like people are working on it in various places, especially in the Amazon:
Did you sort this out?
Not all, but yes, some components are inevitably lost in the drying process. There's a reason that dried fruit is often treated with sulphur dioxide as a preservative. Of course, preserving the colour doesn't prevent the loss of large amounts of essential nutrients like vitamin C. Fresh is best whenever possible.