The Boreal Forest Prairie

 

The Boreal Forest Prairie

I have been addressing this problem for two decades now and a lot has become clear.  First of, we have a million square miles of this biome in Canada alone.  All of it is a natural recent outcome of the Great Ice Age that ended rather recently.  however I want you to undeerstand something.  It can almost all be transformed into a living grassland which already extends north through the Prairies into Northern Alberta.

What is preventing this already happening are acid soils and post glacial conifer cover.  The immediate take home is that changing this will open up potential for deep grassland soils throughout.

We now know enough about cattle management to understand that we can massively augment the potential changeover.

The process includes forest grooming that opens the canopy to sunlight,  sheep grazing to knock down weed cover growth and tight cattle grazing to chase whatever grass appears.  Throw in deer grazing to hold back tree growth as well.  obviously as the grass assserts itself, the cattle herd size will increase accordingly.

As seen, it is all biologically complicated, but all this is already working and human management is now catching up.  Again a large herd is maintained and humans attend to scare of preditors.  winter foder can be silage made from bullrushs whose productivity is better than corn.  Hay can also be brought in to roll out and introduce grass seed when appropriate.

We are talking about a fully sustainable agricultural culture including a massive fishery able to sustain a population potential of 1000 people per square mile.  That translates into a potential population of one billion folks.  and Russia has three times as much potential.

right now no one is doing this but is is within sight.  The new grassland will extend well up along the shores of James Bay and Hudson Bay to easily include Churchill and much of Quebec.  i think that it will take around twenty years for grassland to become entrenched properly.