Redwood Reader

The Times-Standard reports Rep. Mike Thompsons bill to designate 273,000 acres of Northcoast lands as wilderness and 51,000 acres as a recreation area for mountainb bikes and off-highway vehicles. Five years in the making, it has already passed the Senate twice, where it returns for final consideration. It designates Mendocinos Black Butte River as a wild and scenic river and is the largest California designation in over a decade. A coalition of traditional foes is helping make it a reality.
http://www.times-standard.com/ci_4092435
Meanwhile, I continue my road trip looking at the effects of diminished glomalin at the root of an inconvienient truth. IN this area, hundreds of years of land use has resulted in lots of farm and pastureland and young forest. It seems generally obvious that the land is underperforming in carbon storage, since this was all forest and large trees abounded. One result of this is higher runoff rates that, together with paving and buildings, leads to flooding of streams and creeks and eventualloy the rivers. The rise and fall of these after a downpour is amazing and we have to wonder how many days of no precipitation it woould take to cause low flows and drought conditions.
We have viewed forest land visited by a tornado six years ago and find the damage flabbergasting, a huge swath ten miles long flattened. This was an extremely rare event here and we wonder about the power of trees to prevent or diminish these wind storms. We also note that where cleanup ncrews used heavy equipment the land is just starting to grow back while other areas are already covered with young trees and complete brushy cover.
The place we visited is a park. Several ponds provided water power and ice for 19th century industries which were left by the wayside with the advent of electrical power early in the twentieth century. After the industry left the remaining forest was clearcut. The state bought the land in the tweneties. CCC came in in the thirties and did some great building nad tree planting. Today there are many acres of even aged white pines, all similar in height and diameter. They exhibit all the characterisics of side pressure or maybe root zone limitations, and the largest are several more feet away from their neighbors than average, while the smaller ones are closer. I would say the average tree is sixty feet tall and ten to twelve inches in diameter, just about pole size. There appears to be less split trunks from insects killing the terminal shoot than just a little further East, where virtually every white pine has been damaged by this.
Hardwoods were allowed to grow naturally and some of them are pretty large although the majority appear younger than the pines. I cannot tell if the mix of mostly maple and ash with some cherry is anything like what was before but I tend to seriously doubt it. This leads to wondering about forest historians and if there is such a thing, since many other trees live or were present here a hundred years ago.
Earlier this month we reported on the extensive caterpillar damage we were seeing with whole hillsides denuded. I am glad to say that the caterpillars metamorphosized, stopped eating the leaves, and the trees have refoliated themselves so you wouldn't be able to tell anything was wrong at a glance. We suspect general forest health decline and a slower growth rate above and belowground as well as lowered resistance to future pest attacks.
Riding over hill and vale one can see how much more carbon could be stored in the landscape. No human activity in this area creates more glomalin than previously existed, virtually all development diminishes the amount and ability of the landscape to store carbon and it is clear huge amounts have left the ecosystem, a truly inconvienient truth.
The July 13 issue of the Northcoast Journal had a real good article on Sudden Oak Death called Tree By Tree. www.northcoastjournal.com While we disagree about ancient Douglas firs giving way to skinny tanoaks (we think Indians managed for tanoak acorns, tanbarkers took all the big tanoaks and Douglas fir benefitted from 80 years of conifer release as reported in early issues of this blog), the troubling spread of the disease and its consequences are well reported, including the difficulty in characterizing phytophthoras as a fungus or something else. The article ends with probable changes in forest makeup. Here again we will say that loss of glomalin production will have dire consequences in large rain events in devastated areas made up primarily of trees that die. Mixed areas of less affected trees will have less vigor but will fill in the holes in the woods with survivor species so there will be a window of real worry in tanoak rich regions as well as increased fiuel loading coupled with diminished ground water storage adding to the fire danger.
Finally we may be witnessing global warming in the form of less upwelling (www.sfgate.com) causing failure in the breeding season for seabirds, and possibly other marine animals too. record temperatures seem to be more evidence that the carbon that should be in the ground is heating up the atmosphere- truly inconvinient.