Redwood Reader

I am celebrating my 100th post with a recap of what I have learned. Throughout this blog are articles that relate to this issue from many different fields of science. And yet, as an unknown law, its simplicity and directness are easily grasped, easily quantified but a threat to economic powers that are already in place. We have a wonderful tool for assisting in the developing world as well as in our own communities. We have the research, conditions, qualified people and economic need to do this work here in Humboldt. This could bring a large new round of natural resource research funding, especially to become players in the carbon market. Here also is why it is easy to pass off one hillside of fir as redwood with land failure and sedimentation the result.
Trees act as two-way pumps between the atmosphere and the soil.
Trees are the primary photosynthetic producers in the forest.
By means of photosynthesis trees process enough carbon dioxide and water for both tree growth and to support belowground partnerships with mycorhizzia in order to assure itself of water and nutrients.
Forests form large networks of plants and fungi by means of hyphae infecting a variety of plants in vicinity.
One cubic centimeter of soil may contain a kilometer of hyphae.
Hyphae are the “grass” of the subsoil world, the bottom of a food chain counting on the trees as primary producer.
Important bacteria hide from predators inside hyphae.
Most forest plant communities have at least two associated dominant tree types and many smaller plants, assuring a host plant if one species comes under attack.
Patches of different plant communities combine to make a forest.
Many under story plants are infected by the network and create a fungal reserve against when trees are removed.
Many of the networked plants have differing rooting styles adding to the capacity of the forest to gather nutrients.
Forests are not maximized as trees become old growth but only arrive to take on the duties of mature individuals.

Water must be captured in the root zone whether to remain in the biological cycle or to percolate into deeper aquifers
Water in the root zone is what we call surface water.
Rivers are the emptying of this system. Springs are a result of an abundant root zone capacity.
The percentage of precipitation biologically captured for use is a primary measure of watershed health. Rapid reduction will lead to runoff and flooding from a similar previously harmless rain event
Aquifers are recharged by percolation through the root zone.
Insufficient water in the root zone leads to gradual desiccation of the landscape.
Stored water gets the forest through dry seasons, drought, insect attack and disease.
Trees encase insects in sap as a defense when there is enough water.
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Mycorhizzia are a type of fungi forming mutually beneficial relationships with plants.
There are seven types of mycorhizzia.
Most species of plants have mycorhizzia associates.
Mycorhizzia infect plant roots seeking carbon products from photosynthesis.
Mycorhizzia deform root tip hairs in convoluted shapes, greatly increasing the absorbent surface area of the roots.
Mycorhizzia then spread as hyphae into the environment in order to collect water and nutrients to share with the hosts.
Studies of mycorhizzia in farm soils led to discovery of glomalin by government scientists in 1996 at USDA’s Sustainable Agriculture Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland.
Glomalin research has focused on vaso-arbuscular mycorhizzia, a major crop mycorhizzia.
Tilling exposes glomalin to the three things that destroy it: running water, ambient air and sunlight.
The root zone is destroyed by soil compaction as well.
Destroyed glomalin reverts to carbon dioxide and returns to the atmosphere.
The results are brought to bear as no-till farming, saving fuel, time and soil and preserving the glomalin..
This has led to farmers being paid to sequester carbon while still producing crops from the land.
One third of US cropland has gone to this method since the late nineties.

Glomalin is produced as a material, a stiffener for the walls of the thin two-way transfer tubes, which constitute hyphae.
The tubes transfer water and nutrients from the soil to the root tips and carry carbon products back to the growing end of the hyphae.
As a structural material, glomalin is produced by many species of mycorhizzia, and probably other fungi as well.
Glomalin is a glycoprotein, containing a nitrogen atom and tightly binding one or more iron molecules.
Mussels use a similar glue to adhere to rocks in the surf line.
It becomes available as a soil product after the hyphae die in several weeks.
Glomalin molecules are tough and durable living 7-42 years in the soil, accumulating in the soil.
Glomalin acts like soil glue, aggregating silt and clay particles into porous top soil.
28% of the annual carbon dioxide intake of trees is converted into glomalin.
Previously only 6% was found in the form of humic acid, because glomalin was hard to detect
Glomalin reservoirs in forest act like sponges, retaining two to three years worth of precipitation in the root zone.
Glomalin holds sediment in place in the watershed.
Glomalin is difficult to observe, even in the lab, but several methods of isolation are available.
Glomalin is distributed over a wide range of the earth. Most vegetated areas have at least some.
Glomalin presence is on a scale from old growth through recovered forest to fallow lands, pastures, croplands and finally developed areas of lawns and landscape plants still maintaining several inches of topsoil.
Higher concentrations of glomalin are reported in the least disturbed area, such as windbreaks.
Large glomalin reserves reduce the amount of runoff in rain events by absorbing a higher portion and delaying much of the runoff through vegetative growth, litter and duff.
Glomalin reserves and shade keep old growth moist and cool, reducing fire risk.
Much of the glomalin stored in the soil has been released to the atmosphere since the agricultural revolution up to today. This has not been accounted for.
Unrestricted forest growth will lead to fuel buildup.
Shaded fuel breaks can get it all done.

Most forest trees, about 4000 species, associate with ectomycorhizzia.
Ectomycorhizzia extend hyphae through the environment just like VA mycorhizzia.
Douglas fir is ectomycorhizzial.
Douglas fir associate with over three thousand species of fungi.
One 0.5 cm root tip as infected with seven species. One needle had 26 species.
Douglas fir cannot survive without mycorhizzia.
Individual trees associate with many species of fungi.
One tree may fruit several species at different times of the same winter.
Douglas fir benefits greatly from release after it has established its roots.
Douglas fir does not stump sprout. Land cleared of it must be replanted.
Stumps hold steep landscapes together but they are no longer supporting the fungi.
The ability of the land to handle precipitation is greatly reduced, diminishing for years after the cut.
Regrowth occurs as from barren ground, each seedling conditioning enough soil to survive the first years.
More tree energy is used at this stage of life growing rather than feeding fungi. But they are essential so they must be accounted for from the beginning.
Redwood and tanoak are mycorhizzial but also stump sprout.
When the main stem is cut the plants activates adventitious tissue to create several new leaders.
The plants immediately sprout new photosynthetic material in order to continue to feed the fungi.
There is some loss of depth but the total impact is not the same as on Douglas fir.
In redwood type lands ground disturbance is as much or more the problem.
Planted redwood in tough conditions may show three inches of heartwood in a five inch stem.
Redwood grown from huge stumps may have the same amount in a fifteen inch log.
This shows the trees respond by restoring the photosynthetic machine and the canopy before production of defensive chemicals.
An area goes through a succession as trees age: morels at disturbance, rhizopogons with seedlings yielding to truffles as the canopy closes in. which persist until late seral conditions bring on chanterelles.
Some mycorhizzia are species specific and others are generalists.
Many mycorhizzia fruit underground, some form mushrooms. Many fruit sporadically.
Cultivation or inoculation is difficult at best and unreliable. Wildlife does it best.
The result is a dynamic soil population changing over time with many species spreading hyphae through the same region over and over while also expanding with the trees roots annual growth and depositing large amounts of glomalin.

Some types of trees root all the way to bed rock regardless, like live oak. They pin the landscape down with massive root systems that create large storage capacity..
Some trees root relatively laterally, creating a mass of roots and mycorhizzia ion the root zone.
Some trees form large networks of individuals through root grafts.
Douglas fir grows in high precipitation areas with silty unstable soils and steep slopes.
Plant communities and drainage systems have shaped the landscape into what it was before the twentieth century.
Douglas fir adds strength to the slide prone landscape by its roots, fungi hyphae acting as miniature threads in the soil by the billions, and by emitting soil glue from hyphae running through the root zone.
Adding glomalin to the landscape allows it to condition more soil into porous water storage and glues it into one semi-solid sponge.
Trees also help by reducing the impact of rain drops, creating a duff layer, creating root zone pores and shade.
Trees capture fog drip in summer.
Trees are responsible for droplet formation from vapor through emission of various gas products.
The net effect of water storage and shade is a reduction of fire risk.
Thus the individual tree has ensured its own survival several ways, the forest has emergency water and stability.

Cutting down trees starves the mycorhizzia.
Cutting down trees removes the canopy, exposing soil and fungi to sunlight, wind and rain impacts.
Tractor logging destroys duff, exposes fungi to water, light and air, destroys glomalin and surface drainage and compresses soils.
Surface disturbances create volumes of water that can only overwhelms re-growing landscapes in heavy rains.
More running water leads to more erosion sites as surface running runoff is unnatural..
Clear cuts remove all cover for the fungi, return topsoil to transportable soil particles and rob the area of its water storage, creating sediment filled runoff, and limiting percolation deeper into aquifers.
Select cuts preserve at least some of the depth of glomalin storage and allow quick refilling of the canopy.
Clear cuts release huge amounts of carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere besides the above ground vegetation.
Storage capacity is a dynamic thing but its destruction will take time to undo.
It may take centuries to replace via growth.
It may never recover if rotations are kept short and no allowance is made for accumulation by large trees.
Glomalin is why re-vegetation projects are successful, and how nature heals itself.
Desertification in many places is thus manmade.
Reclaimation by tree planting has won one woman a Nobel Prize.
Destruction of glomalin has led to the current unsatisfactory conditions in streams and landscapes.
We have seen conifers growing in restore summer flows.
Accelerating late seral conditions through thinning early in life provides plenty of jobs in the woods and reduces fire risk.
This also tales advantage of the new trend in timber company machinery for handling smaller trees.
Leaving for extended rotation and only eventual select cutting will restore the landscape, rivers, fish and water.
We can take advantage of the atmosphere rather than suffering from it.

Carbon dioxide is rising in the atmosphere, and is about 360 ppm today from 290 in 1900.
Most plants show accelerated growth with rising CO2. A lot of work has been done here.
Experiments show double the growth, triple the roots and 5 times the glomalin in elevated CO2.
Growth and production rates go up in warmer conditions.
Plants handle many stress situations much better in heightened CO2 atmospheres, from drought to ozone to slowing mineralization but increasing fixation of nitrogen to make more available for vegetative growth.
Glomalin accumulation is the reason creeks resurface and revegetation works as a restoration tool.
Glomalin captures precipitation, creates absorption, slows runoff, and reduces flood and landslide risk.
Glomalin stores greenhouse gases as a usable, necessary material in the soil.
Glomalin makes a good management tool for restoration as well as clearing the atmosphere.
Glomalin is measurable, making carbon sequestration quantifiable and doable, and bringing a true measure of sustainability into the picture.
Growing large trees that benefit from fuel reduction and TSI will result in restored stable and profitable landscapes that benefit the public in many ways.
We can base land use regulation on sound science although things will always be trade off economically..

Nature is reacting to the rising CO2 faster than we are.
As a result, the permafrost line is moving hundreds of miles north with green vegetation including trees on the march.
Coral reefs are recovering faster than expected.
Heavy storms are creating landslides in many parts of the world as a result of logging.
Fuel loads are increasing throughout the US west, in a record drought.
Annual grasses rely on seed dormancy in summer rather than stored water.
Perennial grasses are mycorhizzial, with many plant community associations and a water reserve.
Replacing perennial native grasses with feedlot annuals has cost the landscape a large portion of its water capturing potential.
In the Great Basin 3 million acres of sage is being replaced by low nutrition easy burning cheatgrass, an introduced annual that will not help store the limited rainfall. Aridity will increase.
Transpiration is up, cycling water through landscapes faster.
Many areas in Alaska are experiencing longer warm weather each year, allowing normally contained forest pests to reproduce several times a year, greatly affecting wide spread areas of Alaska.
Trees are be3ing overwhelmed in other areas because there is not enough water to contain insect attacks through sap information.
The result is a massive fuel load in a lengthening fire season, more runoff fouling streams and an area that will continue to dry out under these conditions.

Fungi are at least 400 million years old and associate with plants ever since.
Glomalin production occurs in most terrestrial ecosystems.
Glomalin unites many types of land managers.
Glomalin guides us in what is sustainable.
Glomalin repairs watersheds, forests and the atmosphere.
Glomalin is involved in the recharge of aquifers.
Glomalin delays the exiting of ground water due to gravity, extending the lifetime of each droplet in the terrestial biological zone.
Glomalin accumulation determines what percentage of precipitation is reserved in the watershed.
An understanding of glomalin and current best management practices can put us on the right track.
Glomalin thus provides us with a useful world view to rate development of all kinds against, and shows us what we must prepare for when we do impact the landscape.
Denying the impact of this issue means a continuing downward spiral for the regional ecosytem as we know it.
Denying this impact means continuing downward spiral of global conditions and the heightened ability to impact us.