Major Shelterbelt Projects
Forest strips planted on a limited scale started no earlier than the 19th century. Some of the early forest strips, such as the late 19th century Genko's Forest Belt in Russia's Ulyanovsk Oblast, have been declared nature reserves now.
Afforestation projects involving large-scale planting of shelterbelts have been more than once proposed by governments as a way to reduce soil erosion and improve microclimate in otherwise treeless agricultural areas.
- USA: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "Great Plains Shelterbelt" WPA project, which was launched in 1934 as an ambitious plan to modify weather and prevent soil erosion in the Great Plains states, and by 1942 resulted in the planting of 30,233 shelterbelts containing 220 million trees that stretched for 18,600 miles.
- Canada: The Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration was created by the federal government to mitigate soil erosion and land degradation, as evidenced by the dust bowls of the 1930s. From its tree nursery in Indian Head, Saskatchewan, the PFRA distributed seedlings to farmers. As of 2008 over 600 million trees had been provided.
- USSR: A section of Marshal Stalin's "Great Plan for Transformation of Nature" (October 1948) provided planting of a giant network of shelterbelts (Russian: лесополоса, lesopolosa, "forest strip") across the steppes of southern USSR.
- China: The Green Wall of China, a project intended to plant 4,800 km of shelterbelts across Northern China by 2074. The ADRECS (Aerially Delivered Reforestation and Erosion Control System) proposes aerially delivering mass forest planting,
- India: Smaller-scale shelterbelt projects have been proposed and implemented in India.
Read more about this topic: Windbreak
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