Redwood Reader

California Oak Mortality Task Force sent a press release about imminent containment and eradication procedures for Sudden Oak Death in Southern Humboldt. This collaborative effort is a large scale experimental forest treatment centering on Humboldt Redwoods State Park lands just north of Miranda.
Collaborators include California State Parks, University of California Cooperative Extension, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF), the Southern Humboldt Fire Safe Council, and the USDA Forest Service.
The press release can be found at www.suddenoakdeath.org. It gives a summary of the situation explaining the critical importance of finding forest scale remedies for this problem. We note the possibility of undergrowth burning as a control, and remember the comment that there seemed to be less phytophthora in areas burnt less than fifty years ago. Fire maps may give some idea of likelihood of spread.
This project is in the Redwood to the Sea Wildlife corridor region. It has been a great year for the streams, many running all year that haven’t in years, or seemed to be drying up recently. But the very abundance of water and the rhododendron leave stream testing tell us the disease has probably gotten around a bit this winter. I have noted the critical importance of the canyon live oak in holding the landscape together. It is now under attack just over the hill. Also susceptible to death are tanoak and black oak, important wildlife foods, landscape community members and hosts to mycorhizzia fungi. Many native species are hosts or carriers with varying degree of damage to them short of death, including redwood, Douglas fir, madrone and most importantly California bay.
For more information about this project, contact Susan Doniger, District Interpretive Specialist with California State Parks at (707) 445-6547 x20; or Jay Harris, Senior State Park Resource Ecologist with California State Parks at (707) 445-7547 x 19; or Katie Palmieri, Public Information Officer for the California Oak Mortality Task Force (COMTF) at (510) 847-5482. For more information about Sudden Oak Death and Phytophthora ramorum, visit the COMTF website at www.suddenoakdeath.org.
Roadwork under Good Roads Clean Creeks held up very well throughout the storms so far. I stand corrected on responsible party for the road section through State Park lands- it is the County and not the Parks. I am not so certain about the stretch of road by the Rim Road. Anyway, the County is the level of governance we need to convince this new roadwork is a better solution for poor dirt roads where feasible because it doesn’t need scraping every year, which releases large amounts of sediment destined to wind up in the stream at some point. Annual scraping causes annual discharge. Also, level graded roads deteriorate from standing water causing potholes. Potholes don’t occur nearly as often on outsloped and dipped roads. This allows the streams to push clogging sediment downstream and for vegetative cover to establish a deep and durable soil community. We are aware of the needs for moving large loads, such as log trucks. These could be level graded at the start of a job and reshaped after the season or job, pretty much as they are required to do. The difference in putting the road back into rolling dips is the sediment savings from so much less scraping and elimination of berms, ditches, culverts and potholes.
The LA Times reported on the ‘Millenium Ecosystem Assessment prepared as a guide to the future. http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-fg-future20jan20,0,1203827.story?coll=la-home-science. Commissioned by the United Nations, the work is a four-year effort by 1,300 scientists from 95 countries. They begin with ascenario without controls and suggest ways to improve the various aspects of a growing population through green technology and building. One stunning point was that as many buildings will be built this century as had been built in all of human history. We see calls for changes in agriculture but still no mention of improving soils, forest health, air- or water quality by growing large trees.
Another recent paper showed the positive effect of CO2 on ozone in the troposphere. While it is known CO2 enriched air allows plants to respond to deadly increases in ozone, this article showed that some ozone is changed into beneficial products in the atmosphere itself. That is to say, nature has the ability to correct imbalances of materials familiar to it. In order to provide for the expanding population we have to harness nature rather than trying to replace it. A recent article showing growing trees releasing methane may have found some. The picture seemed to be in the snow, of a little tree. The entire plant is a result of atmospheric gas capture, yet they are interested in the tiny amount emitted as methane. IT may well have been created in the soil in the wet season. This is part of the regular drumbeat of misinformation about the importance of forests to clean our air and provide the precipitation interface all life depends on.