Redwood Reader

It is clear there is a need to get this information out to land managers. Glomalin has given us a clear picture of landscape dissolution, and shows us how to prevent it. Redwood Reader has been writing for two years that current regulations are on one hand inadequate and on the other stifling at best, that is, more restrictions are not preventing new damage. While we support growing big trees no financial mechanism is in place for landowners to do that, and so many continue to rely on traditional incomes. Nothing wrong with that except it keeps the depth of deposition of glomalin in the top layers of the soil, roots not extending into the subsoil. As we have stated before, this will maintain a steady glomalin level as deep as the roots go, and that will be not as deep as big old trees root systems. The important thing here is that the vegetation is doing its job but the amount of water available in late summer will be less than maximum capacity. Good managers are moving their animals around and preventing surface degradation and riparian impacts. Same with second and third growth- we can’t expect those roots to reach as far or mycelium to saturate the soil with glomalin as effectively. Maintaining water capacity has two aspects- handling peak precipitation events and maintaining late season flows. By understanding this concept all parties should be able to hammer out better regulations that allow more efficient and less destructive activities.
We have honored the Cattlemen last year and so it was sad to read the latest story about their annual meeting. I have contacted a few of the involved people and all involved agencies. I wrote many times to PL, who could have made a huge difference in getting this done but has chosen to sell off “unprofitable Douglas fir and ranch lands.” They have decided not to arrange multi party studies that would put everyone on the same page, or use their political clout or business influence to bring carbon trading to the NorthCoast or new science to Sacramento in search of regulatory relief. So they can squawk all they want about regulations but they have opted out of participating in learning something new that could alter all resource and development regulations and potentially bring in millions of dollars for resource managers and landowners. Someone did pickup part of the ball with HSU receiving money to Chair a Ecology of the Redwood Forest position, but the direction is not going to save other forest types and or illuminate managers and regulators to a basic principle of vegetations role in the ecology, and the proposition is in academia and out of the on-the-ground loop.
Cattlemen say feds are putting squeeze on them
http://www.times-standard.com/local/ci_3572035
PL bailing on Doug fir lands is not the only disappointing story we saw this week. The Hoopa tribe is accepting money to study small hydro generators on the tributaries of the Trinity. This is incomprehensible to me as it directly impacts spawning habitat, the Klamath system as a whole is in trouble, their subsidence fishery is closed and biomass and wind are available at no threat to the fish. The whole concept is baffling since the program covered Native Americans and renewable energy, you’d think they’d choose to study something less detrimental to their own tribal health. On the other hand, power plants earn far more money than fishing and lead to improved economic conditions in many ways. So it is a decision whether to further degrade an imperiled system for economic incentive.
In another light, white men lured Indians onto the reservation with shiny objects, the last Indian shed a tear for loss of the natural world. The Indians adapted and learned to lure white to the reservation with shiny casinos. Now the white men are standing in the parking lot shedding a tear for the lost habitat.
One of the leading lights on glomalin, Mattias Rillig of the University of Montana, worked under DOE rather than USDA grants for several years, and we have noted this important work before. This bore out our contention glomalin was a structural component and thus widespread throughout the fungi, and many species contribute to the soil storage building effort.
Our main contention about watershed health is not quite proven but we have filled in most of the pieces, especially where sediment, carbon sequestration and revegetation are concerned. What is needed is the overview study that demonstrates the biological influence upon landscape water capacity. This is shown in the forest model including glomalin. The samples can only be a snapshot in time. No note was made of the last floor disturbance, the age of the trees, the distance from them, the number of fungi and their place in succession or abundance or the rate of accumulation under various conditions. We also need to know more about the mechanics of foraging mycelium and its seasonal and successional interactions with other species. And we have to decide how much reduction in carrying capacity is acceptable for land use activities, from none to complete urbanization.
Hoopa tribe gets $103,000 for river hydropower studyhttp://www.eurekareporter.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?ArticleID=8987 We get to say one more time that the whole system is broken as we read About Pacific Fisheries Management Council upcoming talks in Seattle possibly shutting down the entire commercial salmon season for the region known as the Klamath fishery, about seven hundred miles from Carmel, California to the north Oregon coast. Clearly we are looking at a piece of a broken system. The emphasis on the juvenile salmon die off is only a symptom, of course, and is subject to repetition because it is the result of the effect of a decision about managing a natural system, water. Negotiations about removal of some or all of the Klamath dams are going forward, with no assurances. But no effort is being made to restore the lower watersheds health, or to improve stream flow on a systematic basis by reshaping roads, capturing rain fall or taking close care of any soil disturbances. Intensive precipitation management below dams may be a worthwhile tradeoff for power generators, at least leaving some part of the system healthy. There is also danger that natural events like SOD may cause a degree of forest decline that lowers the ability of the forest to regenerate itself. Like the pine beetles and spruce budworm, vast acreages of trees that remove CO2 from the atmosphere are losing their ability while people continue to burn the tropical forests. We are damaging the very tools we need to use to address problems like increasing CO2 levels and declining water availability.
Salmon Fishing Ban ConsideredDwindling runs on the Klamath prompt a proposal to put 700 miles of coast off limits.
By Eric Bailey, LA Times Staff Writer March 4, 2006

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/environment/la-me-salmon4mar04,1,1301866.story?coll=la-news-environment