Susan replied to me: > But you can plant seedlings for trees - there are already ways to replant > forests by dropping 1-2 year old spruce treed from a low flying plane.
There is also the time factor of growing things. Drop or plant trees, and you'll have a forest in a century. Drop grass seeds, and you have the beginning of a meadow in a year. If the grass is then used to feed a herbivore, tree seedlings might suffer in the process. [...] > Besides to start off with you need to seed things in > order - so when you put the plants down generally nothing will prey on > them until you put either the fungus, insects or herbivores down. When > you put the herbivores down then they won't have enemies for the first bit > (which is what makes invasive species so problematic in today's world). For a barren world, I could see a spiral. First grass, then insects, then rabbits, then foxes, then bushes, then goats, then wolves, then trees, etc. > It also has a lot to do with the ecology of the world you are starting > with - is it bare rock or is it a planet with it's own ecosystem? For a lifeless rock, the first stage would be gross mechanical terraforming, like dropping comets or spreading black dust or black algae over the pole caps. That calls for a factory ship to support lots of robot tugs and shuttles. When that is done or not necessary because of native life, the ecoformers go in. Doing it to a fresh world is a setting for man-against-nature adventures. Doing it to Earth or the home of nice cuddly teddy bears brings real drama. I'm giving the 15-megaton Terraforming Support Ship point defense xasers in the 360 MJ range. _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
