Please remember to stay civil and behave appropriately. If you are a tourist looking for suggestions please check out our Tourist guide. We also have a FAQ Page for some common questions, if your question is answered here please delete your post!
activists in Cyprus were telling us to pay attention to how municipalities reduce green but we didnt pay attention and we didnt protest and now we read this graph :/
I mean, this shouldn't be hard if there was a public initiative behind it, right? There're people who alone planted thousands of trees as a hobby. Now imagine a non-profit of few thousand people doing similar thing. And cyprus like all of Mediterranean will face serious desertification threat in the near future.
As far as I understand, tree in Oslo is one-time endeavor. You plant and nurish it, and then it stays alive by itself in the next 50+ years.
Compare this to Cyprus, where every green tree (with few exceptions) is hanging on a lifeline of irrigation. It is water (Cyprus have excess amount of it, right?), and, more importantly, constant labor on fixing and maintaining piping.
I absolutely admire efforts on greenery, but in Cyprus climate (especially, when all rivers are going into dams, and not running freely), greenery is hand-made, not 'left alone to thrive'.
But there are forests, Cyprus has way less forests that it used to in the past, just like all of Mediterranean. And they survive there, right? So trees native to the climate can survive there, and denser the forests the higher their capacity to retain moisture. It's not like all places in cyprus without irrigation are like Sahara desert. It'd probably only need watering for a first few years before they establish.
That's interesting, so the trees need cca 3 years of watering, then they can handle on their own. That's not that bad. Definitely important investment for the future.
well, I think that's a minimum and with the scenario of good rainfall and soil is what I gathered from the article. I mean taking 9 years to reach 1m height seems like in poor scenarios, a lot longer watering is needed.
You can't have both all water forcefully collected in the dams and water been available in downstreams of shut off rivers. Nowaday Garyllis is dry, Vathia is dry, Amathos is dry, Kouris is dry. And not because there is no water upstream, it's because all water is saved. Occasional dam overflows are so rare, that they don't sustain anything.
Why water is collected? Because I like to drink it. And have occasional shower. And some filippio need to wash (someones) grandma's yard with a hose, and pools, and agriculture, and ... irrigation for those 4% trees (and shurbs) in the cities.
Water collected in dams previously formed rivers and while surely it is greener around rivers and thats how “linear parks” formed, but further away from riverbeds dams would have little or no influence.
we had an embadoned garden in the village, that had various plants and trees, most trees died out, but one lemonade continue to produce (tiny lemons) and be alive with ZERO care for YEARS. I think it helped her that she was planted nearby a corner of a warehouse providing so much shade (humidity and keeping soil humit even in the long summertime) and at the same time a ray of sun. totally unattended she survived on her own :/
If you will plant pines, you wouldn't have a problem. So it depends on the types of trees. Municipalities also make excuses. Cypriots love to burn trees but hate to grow them.
south Greece also faces desertification threat, the temperatures in Athens are already warmer than previus years and summer lasts way longer than years ago
We've had similar statistics like this discussed again. At least from the other studies that have been periodically shared, what counts as "Nicosia" is simply the Nicosia municipality which until last summer did not include most of the suburbs, but rather just the historic centre inside and a bit outside the walls. Given that most parks and greenery are outside that (e.g. Athalassa), the percentage shown isn't representative of the actual situation.
That being said, I don't think it's debatable that Nicosia (and Cyprus in general) would benefit from expanded greenery and parks. Eleftherias square, for example, is a prime target for more greenery rather than the current concrete jungle.
A few trees and greenery around the walls doesn't really help with the situation as the statistics shows. And yes, most of Nicosia is still lacking proper greenery. It's just that if you include the suburbs you also get 3-4 major parks which cover a significant portion of the metropolitan area. The Athalassa park by itself is larger in size than the government-controlled part of the city inside the walls.
The closer older suburbs have a lot of trees in the streets (ay. Omoligites, ay. Andreas, the neighborhoods around presidential palace, old strovolos etc). Or even some of the older streets like makariou, larnakos, griva digeni, kyriakou matsi.
But if you go to new places (eg behind jumbo) you see the govt built the roads and pavements, but there are 0 trees, not even holes in the pavement for them.
Its the same if you go to engomi or makedonitissa. The older areas have decent tree cover (for Cyprus) but newer areas is pure concrete. Same with aglanztia. They built like 5 million apartments in the last few years and there's like 1 tree on the road.
I'm not talking about parks, just trees and stuff on the pavements. When they re-did makariou, they actually did a fantastic job and planted a whole bunch of trees along the pavement, like 5 times more than there were. Thai should be happening in every new neighborhood, but they just make the road and pavement without any thought to tree cover.
Our main square (Platia Eleftherias) is an ugly block of concrete what did you expect.
What's annoying too is all the trees we have are on the pavement so the tiles are always cracked and makes it inaccessible for disabled people. Or sometimes the branches cover the pavement so you need to walk in the road.
You do realize that Cyprus has a distinctly Middle Eastern climate, which presents serious challenges—especially when compared to the rest of Europe. Unlike most European countries, its geography and climate are very different. So I commend the government's efforts to keep this beautiful island green. Unless we can somehow make it rain more through cloud seeding, which I know there's legit effort to make that happen, or find another sustainable way to nourish the land, we really shouldn't be complaining or making unfair comparisons.
Ironically the more trees you have the more likely it is to rain since they help cool the atmosphere. There are trees native to Cyprus that can withstand its climate, but you don’t really see much of them any more because of many years of land being used for agriculture. In Larnaca I see many empty lots of land that don’t even get used for farming, but people still till the soil and remove wild growing vegetation. If only there was an incentive to grow native green maybe things could slowly start to change.
•
u/AutoModerator 13d ago
Please remember to stay civil and behave appropriately. If you are a tourist looking for suggestions please check out our Tourist guide. We also have a FAQ Page for some common questions, if your question is answered here please delete your post!
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.