THE Deforestation Thread (merged)

[pstarr]

And how exactly does the 'free market' rectify this situation? Can we blame Obama? I have a better question; upon which tree does one string up the Republican? The Ash? Beech? Or do we merely club it to death with a Louisville Slugger?

[Repent]

About a hundred years ago the City of Winnipeg planted thousands of non-native Elm trees; making them a majority of the trees in the city. Prior to this the city was swamp and floodplain with no major tree group systems.

From a flight into the city you can't see most of the houses for the towering Elm trees, however Dutch Elm disease is now killing them. The bugs have wiped out most of the Elm's original areas in England and Holland, and are well on there way to killing off the trees here.

The city has launched an expensive and all out campaign to preserve the Elm's, but are loosing the batte to the bug infestiation. My dad asked me recently, why do they bother trying to preserve the Elm's at all, but instead plant and maintain native trees like Birch or Maples? In one hundred years Elm trees may well be an extinct species, having no remaining 'natural' habitat. (The bugs being a victim of their own success, will hopefully die off with them).

[Fishman]

Pstarr, it seems you are decending into mental chaos as your liberal world collapses around you.

"And how exactly does the 'free market' rectify this situation? Can we blame Obama? I have a better question; upon which tree does one string up the Republican? The Ash? Beech? Or do we merely club it to death with a Louisville Slugger?"

For the entirety of the Bush administration everything was blamed on Bush, buck up buddy, your guy sucks worse. Do you have any evidence a non free market makes trees happier? As to the stringing up reference, I thought it was the right that had all that hate language by your view.

As to the trees, some perspective might help. Tree species have struggled in the past, the american chestnut started struggling back at the turn of the last century. Other species filled in the niche. Now the "free market" funded American Chestnut Society has back crossed the american with the chinese chestnut to develop resistant varieties. I've watched the trees in the Smokies struggle also. Lest we abandon logic and become tree animists, know that other trees will fill the niche.

[davep]

This is pretty old news, but also relevant:

Earthworms have long been considered a friend to farmers and home gardeners, playing a vital role in soil quality. However, recent studies have shown that glaciated forests in North America—forests that evolved without native earthworms--now face the invasion of European earthworms from agriculture and fishing.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081122083747.htm

I read an update recently, but can't find the link.

[pstarr]

Lest we abandon logic and become tree animists, know that other trees will fill the niche.

That's impossible Fish. God created all the trees species already. There can't be "new" ones.

[dohboi]

"bare eroding soil washing down to choke the life out of our river estuaries"

Coming soon. The time to panic is now.

Ash Borer is just starting to hit here in Minneapolis. Dutch Elm has been taking out our main avenue trees for years--very few left now. Mostly replanted with smaller species (including Ash--oops!). I'm surprised it's taken this long to hit Winnipeg.

Do any of our Texas friends care to chime in here?

[RikkiTikkiTavi]

In OK half our pines and a few of the smaller oaks on our place died in the past year. The oaks are sick, rotting from the inside out.

[pstarr]

Enough dilly dallying. It's time to place the Creationists, Republicans, Wealthy, their stooges (and the Vegans for good measure) into work camps, where they can be good capitalists, and work for their food. Assemble the Iputz for the good consumers, liberals and tweens. Then we can go about the difficult work of re-engineering a sustainable steady-state economy based on sharing, hard physical work, love, drugs, and rock and roll. That will save the trees.

[Fishman]

So you're pulling an NBC and altering what was actually stated pstarr.
"That's impossible Fish. God created all the trees species already. There can't be "new" ones."
I posted "other trees"
Perhaps any botanists out there have any information ?

[pstarr]

So you're pulling an NBC and altering what was actually stated pstarr.
"That's impossible Fish. God created all the trees species already. There can't be "new" ones."
I posted "other trees"
Perhaps any botanists out there have any information ?

Fish. Oh. I understand now. The "other trees" will fly themselves into the devastated ecosystems and re-vegetate in a winky-dinky. I had you mistaken for a Creationist Republican. Most tend to be these days.

[AgentR11]

Do any of our Texas friends care to chime in here?

Hard to say at the moment... Of course there were a lot of dead trees from the drought, but a surprising number in this area survived and are now well leafed out. I don't really worry about the pine trees, as they grow like weeds here; even unassisted, they'd be back in business before their dead seniors fell over. I say its hard to know though because oaks could still die from last year's drought even though they have leafed out now; depends on how much damage to that water pumping process occurred. If they're ok inside, they should be safe as we've had a lot of rain, and surface soil is finally good and wet; if they're injured, they could die as summer kicks in.

Personally, on my residential lot, I lost two big, old, but diseased oaks, and one younger one that was never quite right (tall, thin, never branched out). On da farm... a decent percentage survived, but lets just say the end of the world will happen before we run out of firewood.

[dohboi]

Thanks for the updates A and RTT. A, keep in mind that the fiery end of the world is likely to be fueled in part by all that dry dead wood.

RTT, is that typical in your area--half the pines gone in one year? And most of the oaks moribund? That's pretty stunning!

[Snowstorm]

I've noticed stressed out forests in many places too. The immediate killer of trees may be pests or drought but if they're stressed to start out with they'll be more likely to succumb. Acid rain and other air pollution is a big one. Who knows what effect all the various toxic chemicals of industrial society are having on the forests? One of the reasons I chose to move to the Ozarks is that although we certainly have our share of environmental problem here, it's less than other places I've lived, mostly because of lower population density, unsuitability of the land to industrial agriculture, and more limestone and alkaline minerals in the soil makes it less vulnerable to acid rain. The forest as a whole is still healthier here than anywhere in the east or the corn belt that I've been.

[dohboi]

Good description of the Ozarks. Of course, those conditions do not protect the area from heat and drought. How has your area held up through the drought and heat of the last year?

[CelticCross]

The US forest Service has a Climate Change Tree Atlas for the Eastern US that may interest some of you. You can see the current distribution of trees on a map and view the predicted changes in distribution over the coming decades under different climate models. You can also click to the silvics manual pages for each species and learn a lot about the tree and the threats they face.

http://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/atlas/tree/tree_atlas.html

You can get a list of the species winners and losers for each eastern state. This link is for Michigan. To sort it click on the model For example the HadHiDif. The species with the lowest negative number is the biggest loser, the tree with the highest number is the biggest "winner"
http://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/atlas/tree/MI_mean_fz_winlose.html

This link is the main menu for selecting state tables:
http://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/atlas/tree/mean_winlose_states.html

There are many problems facing trees, and the industries/activities that depend on forests. Seed stratification and gemination is an example. Black Walnut seeds, for example, need to remain cool for 120 days before they can germinate. Sugar maple seeds have variable stratification periods, but almost all germination occurs at 1 degree C.

The Forest Service has a companion Bird Atlas, accessible from the menu.

[Snowstorm]

Yeah, I'm most concerned about the summer impacts of climate change. So far, there's actually been a slight increase in total average precipitation, but that seems to be in the form of heavier rains rather than more often. I sis actually see a study that showed heavy rain events were becoming more common in most of the country, possibly even from this site (I'm an occasional visitor to peakoil.com rather than all the time). Last year our total rain was actually a bit above average, but that was because of the 18 inches of rain we had in a 2 week period in late April/early May. Then it got dry, a "flash drought" in the summer, with only one significant rain event between late May and early August, although lots of near misses. I started using the term "thundersprinkles" because that's what we kept getting. A few places in the area were getting more if they happened to be in the heart of the storm. We hit 112 degrees one day at the beginning of August, with many places in the area recording their all time record highs. Then we did finally get some good rains in mid-August when I got many of my fall plantings in, then one last hot/dry period from late August through mid-September. It was a bit of a hard year for the garden, but nothing like what Texas had, we just got a little finger of that drought. One of my highest priorities is building up the organic matter of my soil, which stores more water among other benefits. The drought wasn't bad enough to affect most of the forest trees, some lost leaves early but are looking fine again this spring. However I have noticed a number of sassafras and serviceberry that are dead this spring, which I haven't seen any other year. They are minor components of our forest, and there are still plenty of those tow species that seem to be doing well, but the uptick in dead ones this year still caught my attention. The weather event that's had by far the most impact on ouf forests over the last few years, however, was the January 2009 ice storm.

One thing I've been noticing about the weather is that what seems even more unusual about these warm spells than the temperatures themselves is how long they've lasted. Down here, the warmest March on record, but only a few daily record highs were set, and those by a few degrees at most, but what was the weirdest about it was just how long it lasted. From around the tenth of March until now, every day has been above average, and all except for a three day stretch of rainy days a couple weeks ago have been closer to the record high than the average. It's finally supposed to get cooler for a while now, although only back down to near average.

I'm wondering of one of these years, we'll get something like they got in Russia in 2010 over the midwest corn belt. Something like the pattern you typically see in the most intense heatwaves of the summer in the midwest, but this time lasting for a month or two rather than a week. Once the pattern had been entrenced long enough that the soil was dry over a large region, I could see weeks of 100+ temperatures over most of the corn belt with such a pattern entrenched in place. Not that it's likely to happen in any given year at this point, but after Russia 2010 and Texas 2011 I wonder where's next. I'm not as doomerish as some on this site but still do see a radically changed world ahead.

[Snowstorm]

Thanks CelticCross for the forest service website. I have been planting a few trees with ranges further south to hopefully add more resilience to the forest. To me the biggest issue with climate change is not that our current climate state is inherently better than a warmer one (the Earth has had climatge shifts and much warmer climate states before and was lush with life) but the fact that everything from ecosystems to human societies is adapted to our current climate. The concept of assisted migration in an era of climate change is gaining more traction, and I support it especially since our human impacts of habitat fragmentation cuts off the corridors that have allowed species to adapt to earlier climate shifts.

[kiwichick]

how stupid are we?


http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/04/0 ... ermafrost/

[M_B_S]

http://www.times-standard.com/ci_204800 ... enviro-law

Brazil's Congress approves changes to enviro law

The bill allows smaller farmers and ranchers to work land closer to riverbanks and on hilltops, which environmental activists say will lead to increased deforestation.

"This vote is a big setback," said environmental lawyer Raul do Valle with the watchdog group Instituto Socioambiental. "What Brazil built for decades, legislation that protected its forests, is being nullified." .....
*******************************

When the last tree is gone......

Look @ Easter Island and you get it.

M_B_S

[ritter]

http://www.times-standard.com/ci_20480056/brazils-congress-approves-changes-enviro-law

Brazil's Congress approves changes to enviro law

The bill allows smaller farmers and ranchers to work land closer to riverbanks and on hilltops, which environmental activists say will lead to increased deforestation.

"This vote is a big setback," said environmental lawyer Raul do Valle with the watchdog group Instituto Socioambiental. "What Brazil built for decades, legislation that protected its forests, is being nullified." .....
*******************************

When the last tree is gone......

Look @ Easter Island and you get it.

M_B_S

When push comes to shove and you've got to house and feed people, environmental regulations fall by the wayside. It has always been so. It is only when the environment becomes uninhabitable that we will leave it in peace. Until then, the cancer will grow.