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A comment on Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by over 80% in beef steers. Parent comment

Re:Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by ov... by titzer on Monday March 22, 2021 @11:22AM (#26542109)
Is that sarcasm? Pretty much the entire midwest was forest before colonization. Now take a look at Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri...they're basically one big farm criscrossed by roads, highways, sprinkled with small spinneys of trees, and dotted with cities. Just load up Google Earth, satellite mode, turn off all labels, and zoom out. It's astonishing.
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Re:Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by ov... by bpodgursky on Monday March 22, 2021 @11:58AM (#26542620)
This just isn't true. The Eastern half the US was heavily deforested by colonization, but that's really not true in the midwest. It was prarie.

There are actually a lot of researchers who believe that the Native peoples were keeping the forests back via controlled burns, since grassland is better for hunting and agriculture, and the forests have regrown substantially _since_ most of the indigenous people died via disease.

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Re:Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by ov... by titzer on Monday March 22, 2021 @12:02PM (#26542685)
Go argue with historians, if you like: https://blog.history.in.gov/tag/forestry/
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Re:Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by ov... by pmayrgundter on Monday March 22, 2021 @01:02PM (#26543503)
Indiana is the beginning of the Eastern forests. Prairie starts in Illinois and extends over most of the Midwest and runs North/South along the Rockies well into Canada and down to Texas, New Mexico.. nice map: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallgrass_prairie#/media/Fil...
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Re:Red seaweed supplementation reduces enteric methane by ov... by bpodgursky on Monday March 22, 2021 @12:27PM (#26543023)
Like, I'm not saying wikipedia is an infallible source of truth, but I'm not exactly arguing for ancient aliens here:

> In the Eastern Deciduous Forest, frequent fires kept open areas which supported herds of bison. A substantial portion of this forest was extensively burned by agricultural Native Americans. Annual burning created many large oaks and white pines with little understory.[10]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_savannas_of_Nort...

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