Brought to you by ames87 and a century of forestry research
Decision analyses are based on patterns of change in forests with the goal:
To create a more meaningful life
Decision Forest Summary
ames87’s life decision:
Full or Part Time Work The possible answer:
Part-Time
How this changes your forest:
Grows lots of trees
This change is best for:
Redefining what it means to be “full” can improve the health of many trees that may have otherwise been struggling.
Your current forest:
New Forest
This decision is:
At this stage, almost any type of growth is great!
Similar to people, forests are complex and always changing.
Patterns of change in forests can help us make decisions in our own lives.
Understand where you are now:
Your Current Forest
About Your Forest
Trees establish and grow rapidly
Translation: Whether just coming into the world as a child, or starting over from a major life change, small trees and open space mean lots of potential for growth in what you find meaningful in life.
Your Previous Forest
e. Redwoods in-transition (a couple very important trees with space for new trees)
How You Got Here
Transitional & Unknown: The last big change was when I was preparing to be a mom. Now I am a mom and have to balance being an employee and mother.
Primary Cause of Change
My son caused the change. = Good
How is Life Now?
Good
Age Group
30’s
This Decision: Grows lots of trees
How this changes your forest:
Changing conditions can cause forest expantion.
Translation: Maybe you won the lottery or found a supportive community, either way limited support is no longer a challenge.
Ideal for:
Redefining what it means to be “full” can improve the health of many trees that may have otherwise been struggleling.
Less ideal for:
An expanded new “normal” is not necessarily better. It is also easy to over-expand and create an unstable situation.
Your actual forest change may be much more subtle depending on the magnitude of the decision.
Your Future Forest
This forest has the most trees and it generally becomes more rare through time
Often this stage is the first time the forest is full
Adding new trees is typically done by replacing others, or expanding what it means to be fullSTRENGTHS:
– Highly resilient to disturbances (ability to bounce back) due to high number of trees.
CHALLENGES:
– Trees need to grow to stay alive – thus it is difficult to stay at this stage for an extended period (or the forest will become over-full).
– While each tree has the potential to have long life, generally, most will be lost in time.
– Lost trees are not gone! – see what it means to lose a tree : lose a tree
– Having the environmental stability and deep rich soils (produced by many cycles of resistant, resilient/resourceful, and revolutionary trajectories), are rare in this forest type.
– The lack of environmental stability and intense competition among trees tends to result in frequent disturbances.
Translation: This forest is reminecient of High School where each friend group, class, and after school activity seemed like a different, unrelated thing. Some people are able to maintain lots of diverse things and relationships indefineatly, but most of us try to simplify life. The strength of this forest type is resilience: for example if one friend flakes out you have a several others that can take their place. The challenge is that meaningful things will have a high turnover rate and many may be lost over time.
Related Decisions:
What it means to lose a tree..
[gathering more community stories]
Now the decision is:
IS THIS THE FOREST YOU WANT?
Comment below if this was helpful!
Here are some additonal directions that may help create an Old Growth forest
![[Or maintain your Old Growth]](https://thenatlas.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/ForestTradingCards.005heading.png "[Or maintain your Old Growth]")
Becoming an old growth forest is unique for everyone. We are developing more customizable online tools to help with this – until then, feel free to contact us for guidance; AND, try to follow all of the 6 key forest change strategies:
Resistance: Grow big trees bigger for greater resource efficiency and disturbance resistance.
Disruption: Forest disturbances are inevitable, use it as an opportunity to identify the strongest trees.
Resilience: Grow new trees and prevent small trees from being lost for better ability to “bounce back” after a disturbance.
Expansion: Make sure your forest is actually full, but don’t overfill
Focus: Full forests often change because the have to (i.e. self-thinning), where-as forests with open space have greater opportunity to stay the same or grow new trees.
Revolution: Figure out how trees can better coexist and support each other; or, let healthy better-adapted trees force out toxic (allelopathic) large trees.
Copyright 2020 ThenAtlas Analytics llc
I learn something new and challenging on blogs I stumbleupon everyday.
Thank you ever so for you article post.
Like!! I blog quite often and I genuinely thank you for your information. The article has truly peaked my interest.