Glomalin and Conservation in Humboldt County The 1996 discovery of the soil glue glomalin is changing our understanding of the impact of elevated carbon dioxide, while giving important clues to forest health, watersheds, revegetation, wildfire and carbon sequestration. Here I share what I have found so others may read and draw their own conclusions, and relate it to my own experience, Humboldt County issues and stories from the news.

Tuesday, May 11, 2004

11. More Water Woes in the News
Boy howdy, I haven't even finished reading the papers and I see so many fixable problems it is hard to know where to stsrt. I guess you have to start with stating the premise-rising CO2 accelerates vegetative growth, which speeds soil aggregation through the processes of mycorhizzial fungi, increasing the ability of the landscape to absorb precipitation, control runoff, feed streams and biological systems, avoid flooding and drought, and modify climate through shade and aerosols. Rising temperatures additionally increase growth rates seen in rising CO2 environments. All the science of all the parts is in hand, yet the parts are in disarray like Black Elks broken Medicine Wheel. One good wheelwright and we are up and running in no time.

http://www.co2science.org/journal/v7/v7n19b1.htm Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi: Their Responses to Long-Term Atmospheric CO2 Enrichment ===========================================================================================----
http://www.co2science.org/carbon/carbon.htm Demise of Earth's Tropical Forest Carbon Sink Greatly Exaggerated For starters, Phillips et al. note that "ecological orthodoxy suggests that old-growth forests should be close to dynamic equilibrium;" and for many years, such appeared to be the case, which would suggest that any significant threat to their well-being would manifest itself in reduced growth rates. Just the opposite trend, however, has recently been observed in nature.
In one of the first studies to illuminate this new reality, Phillips and Gentry (1994) analyzed the turnover rates - which are close correlates of net productivity (Weaver and Murphy, 1990) - of forty tropical forests from around the world. They found that the growth rates of these already highly productive forests have been rising even higher since at least 1960, with an apparent pantropical acceleration since 1980, the period of time over which Phillips et al. say liana growth has also accelerated, which suggests that the latter phenomenon has not been an impediment to the former.
Phillips et al. additionally note that several subsequent studies have verified that neotropical forests are indeed accumulating both carbon (Grace et al., 1995; Malhi et al., 1998) and biomass (Phillips et al., 1998, 2002), "possibly in response to the increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (Prentice et al., 2001; Malhi and Grace, 2000)." Consequently, it would appear that tropical trees and their parasitic lianas are both being benefited by the ongoing rise in the air's CO2 content, with the ultimate consequence that rather than seeing the tropical terrestrial carbon sink "shut down" in the near future, we can expect it to continue to gradually increase in magnitude.
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Reclamatiohttp://www.times-standard.com/cda/article/print/0,1674,127%257E2896%257E2141144,00.html Reclaimation crimps Klamath flows to 2002 levels
http://www.times-standard.com/Stories/0,1413,127~2906~2141143,00.html Who's the real obstructionist here?==============================================================================
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/environment/la-me-grandcnyn10may10,1,6133150.story?coll=la-news-environment
A River Losing Its Soul
Along the banks of the Colorado, the Grand Canyon's habitat is still vanishing despite years spent trying to minimize the effects of damming.

1. A linchpin of the restoration program is adaptive management, an approach that is supposed to give officials the freedom to try something different if their initial game plan doesn't work.

But there are so many competing interests on the program's advisory committee - power producers, environmentalists and state water managers, to name a few - that Fenn says it's not easy to adapt.

"I think too many people are saying, 'I don't want anything to happen because I don't want to lose what I got,' " he said. "They're all well-meaning and want to do the right thing, but they have their interests."
2. Playing God is a lot harder than it looks," Raley said. "I'm not aware of a bold move we could jump to on this canyon that would be responsible."
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--Fight Over Dam Points Up Water Woes
The project, which would flood a Mexican canyon, would help avert a crisis in Guadalajara. But three villagers refuse to leave.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/science/environment/la-me-forest7may07,1,7986560.story?coll=la-news-environment
U.S. Planning for Heavier Use of Southland Forests
The Forest Service will take public comments on the plan for the next three months. It is available at <http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/scfpr> .
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Starting with the Arbuscular fungi current conditions are causing rapid increases in vegetative growth. We know this translates into rising glomalin production as hyphae increase thier searching activity sloughing off glomalin as they grow. Glomalin conditions soil to accept precipitation, and stores it as soil moisture in pores created by aggregation. Old growth forests in the Northwest may contain three to five years worth of precipitation. In a sixty inch a year area, that is five acre feet per acre per year, 15-25 acre feet total. Put 800 stems on that acre pulling 25 lbs of carbon a year- about five tons per year. Glomalin has a turnover rate stated as between 7 and 42 years although I know of no studies in temperate forest areas- the rate could be much slower in old forests. So it is a living system replenishing itself as a percentage decays, and catastrophically impacted by surface disturbances. Five tons times 7 years indicates a release of 35 tons per acre, while the upper limit is 220 tons per acre. We begin to see many land use practices are impacting CO2 rates that are not accounted for as causes of rising CO2. We can also see how quickly CO2 levels can be managed through our activities, and that those activities benefit all biological systems in place when we started, largely through precipitation retention. As a result we learn earths capacity to handle these problems is much greater than expected, and that the tools for this transformation are simple and readily at hand.
Waterforum, A Yahoo Group, has had long standing discussions on the Colorado BAsin, and much angst between MWD and certain posters who claimed artificial water practices ain California made all MWD supporters flunkies of a private interest group protecting its power and position by taking stances detrimental to natural systems. The fighting broke down over politics rather than scientific substance, regarding flows and schedules. One thread discussed lowered water tables after tree reomval to raise it. When brush filled in the empty spaces, even less water was available, so it was removed as the cause, and the water table sank again. Big mystery, charges of mismanagement, fixed, flawed and irrelevant data, protectionism of big project syndrome, environment over people, etc.. At no time was it realized the trees were responsible for the amount of ground water there to begin with, although the roles of buffalo, beaver and badgers was discussed. Many small dams on tributaries and land management practices to speed runoff into the reservoirs is causing all kinds of trouble. Lack of sediment in the river system was not one of them. Neither was the natural function of forests to intercept, absorb and dole out precipitation.
The Colorado River system is showing the effects of us "knowing what we are doing." From watershed to river bottom policies are based on greed (human commercial scale needs) and ignorance of natural systems. One oft-mentioned point was that many people who had used groundwater were now on distributed water systems because the groundwater was inadequate or polluted, increasing the need for more storage for distributed water in the form of dams. Many of the small dams are approaching the end of thier useful lives as sediment fills in the catchment. We can see in the article about Mexico, water rich 40 years ago and desperate for water now, how our new insights can be of real value. In many poor regions of the world fuelwood for cooking is a major component of deforestation. Recognition of forests for water needs flies in the face of needing to cook every day. There is no connection made between the two. Regimes of landscape stabilizing, water producing coppice forest can provide quick turnaround from both water table and fuel problems while creating habitat. This is a low tech fix with no infrastructure to protect except aginst trespass, which in these schemes will be a big legal deterrant to unauthorized uses, as well as a job creator.
All of which brings us back to Humboldt County. The Trinity-Klamath haves, with water behind infrastructure, demand economic benefit at the expense of natural resources. They have no plan to live within the limits of available water, which is much lower due to practices in the surrounding watershed from farming, development and logging. Fisheries are suffering mightily from inadequate flows. Various release schemes all omit some critical part of fish life cycle, and they keep bouncing these "fixes" around the calender with unpredictable consequences. The one side is keeping all the water they have. The other side insists they give it up. They are fighting over a diminishing resource which is readily replenishable. Without looking at a amp, we can be sure the watersheds above and below the dams are some fraction of what they once were, just in porous surface area, let alone in hte third dimension. Downstream habitat can be refurbished by improving watershed health for maximun water absorption, allowing more precipitation into the river later in the year. An impacted river should look at every available square foot of ground as a potential water source. The same is true of the Eel. Heavy impacts below the dams assure rapid runoff in developed areas, diminished area for precipitation interception, less conditioned soil for storage, a general drying of the ecosystem and the reason UNEP put this area on its map of desertification in a decade or two. It seems we may be able to really improve rivers and fisheries by rebuilding the damaged ecosystems downstream regardless of what they do upstream. A good example is the culvert replacement program, which open many miles of spawning habitat and in some cases improve the flow of sediment. Making water conservation a top priority will definitly have an impact. Then we could use additional flows to improve quality as needed without threatening the fish first.
The last article in a way relates tro what we said about creating more habitat for murrelets- a balance of recreation and preservation of functioning natural systems completely ignores the ability of the landscape to provide new opportunities. All public land agencies have recreation components in thier mandates. Protection of natural resources also has an important role. The definition of destruction of natural resources will change once glomalin production becomes accepted by agencies, and it will always be important to provide recreation opportunities. Areas of glomalin protection/production/preservation can handle low impact recreation indefinitly. Surface cutting sports like ohv's, mountain bikes, prospecting should be funneled into landscapes that can already bear the load. The prospect of converting large areas of forest into glomalin/water production areas leased for CO2 storage vastly increase opportunities for wildlife, a major component in recreation for many people. More suitable habitat may provide relief for endangered species, lowering protection and easing restricions, but only within the new management guidelines. Distributed ownership with a funding source and options assure us creative business types will keep the rent and still find income opportunities compatible with our sustainable vision.
One last note on this article: their general plan for four southern California National Forests is available for public comment for the next 90 days. Good advice on public comments, links to NEPA,etc.You can link directly to a downloadable version from the above site. Just a mountain of other useful information as well.


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