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102M dead California trees 'unprecedented in our modern history'
- fred_is_fred 10y agoWelcome to pine bark beetles California. We had them before they were cool. Signed - Colorado, Montana, Idaho et al
- notadoc 10y agoThey're mostly dying in California from drought and lack of snowpack.
- jzawodn 10y agoWhich weakens the trees such that the beatles can get 'em... Source: I live in an affected area. Without the drought, many trees would effectively protect themselves.
- dugditches 10y agoLots of Municipalities/Cities require planting of trees be done such that there's a variety of species. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_elm_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_elm_disease (also transmitted by a beetle) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerald_ash_borer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerald_ash_borer etc
- wavefunction 10y agoWe need large and widespread forest fires to combat the beetles and rejuvenate these biomes. There's a reason the beetle epidemic coincides with expansive human habitation of the West and poorly considered forestry policies.
- JustSomeNobody 10y agoDoesn't California burn every other year on its own?
- wavefunction 10y agoI think you'll find most of the fires of the recent past are human-initiated.
- rabboRubble 10y agoMontana has had the major fires in and around the park system. The trees that are left are still heavily affected by beetle blight.
- wavefunction 10y agoOf course they are. The fires burn the trees with the beetles, and the fires also clear dense forest leaving meadows that the beetles won't traverse.
- rabboRubble 10y agoThe fires in question weren't from recent years. These lands and tree regrowth are in the burn areas from the late 1980's and 1990's. The types of pines that burned in Montana require fire to procreate; fire causes the cones to open spreading seeds. No fire no new trees. There are no meadows after burn. After 10-20 years, you have dense thin tree regrowth. The beetles do great there. Link to tree type: http://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/lodgepole-pine-trees-love-forest-fires/ http://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/lodgepole-pin...
- username223 10y agoNo kidding. I was in the San Juans in SW Colorado this summer, and the forests are absolutely decimated. Actually much worse than "decimated," since decimation only killed one in ten. See 'em soon before they burn, or come back in 50 years when they're all covered in aspens.
- hyperbovine 10y agoOh nonono. Aspen trees are not going to fill that niche. http://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/beauty/aspen/decline.shtml http://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/beauty/aspen/decline.shtml
- username223 10y agoI hadn't heard of that. I guess it's buckthorn, oak brush, and similarly evil stuff instead. Bring your machete...
- bdamm 10y agoUnlikely to be oaks as the Sudden Oak Death is spreading in California as well.
- codecamper 10y agoGlobal warming is not real! (Will the world really just accept this from Trump? Don't mean to turn on a flame war but it's really about this. Think global warming is bad now? How about in 20 more years?) I hope Zuckerberg & Brin will do something to improve the direction things are going. New billionaires seem much smarter than the old ones.
- Mz 10y agoKeep calm and pee on a tree. I am not actually being flippant: http://peeonatree.blogspot.com/ http://peeonatree.blogspot.com/
- douche 10y agoGo directly to jail. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. Register yourself on the Sex Offenders list. Make sure your house is not with 200 yards of a school.
- Mz 10y agoI pee on a tree every single day and have for years. So far, no one has arrested me -- for anything at all. But, hey, feel free to keep your squeamish "Oh, my god, it's a PEE PEE!!!" attitudes while the world literally goes to hell around you. Cuz: Priorities! This would seriously not be a problem in Europe. America is weirdly uptight about a lot of things.
- fern12 10y agoSkimming your blog, I see you live in the desert. Well, many Californians do not live in the desert, we live in urban areas where there is a higher population density, and for health and sanitary reasons, we have modern plumbing. Maintaining standards of public health and sanitation is a priority. Ever hear of cholera? Would you like someone with a drug-resistant strain of gonorrhea urinating near your living space? And for those of us who are pre-menopausal and not on the pill, well, peeing on a tree is just about unthinkable (not to mention gross) for 3-4 days of every month.
- theparanoid 10y agoThey've been cutting trees in Yosemite for hazard prevention. Driving is like playing frogger.
- Esau 10y agoI wanted to read this article but the LA Times is evidently a member of the annoying website design committee.
- pfarnsworth 10y agoMore will grow in its place, like what has happened throughout history.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- kozikow 10y agoWe (https://tensorflight.com https://tensorflight.com) are working on utilizing deep learning for detecting trees the most affected by drought in aerial images collected by UAVs, among other things. We detected several hundred K trees last week. Contact me (kozikow@tensorflight.com) if you want to get involved in any capacity (either as client, partner or coworker). Disclaimer: I am a cofounder.
- blondie9x 10y agoAfter those areas have been detected and a pattern emerges what are the resulting action items? Can building models actually help mitigate the losses?
- kozikow 10y agoSelective irrigation can deliver water to trees with the most need for water. There is no good automated system for selective irrigation yet without human irrigators or expensive installation. Autonomous irrigation drones will happen at one point. I must add that so far we have been focusing on orchards rather than forests. We are looking into expanding to forests and we have been in touch with the government.
- arcticfox 10y ago> Autonomous irrigation drones will happen at one point. Will that be cost effective? Water seems enormously heavy for what it is. Or will they be automated land irrigators?
- blondie9x 10y agoWhat percentage of the images surveyed classify as candidates for selective irrigation? What if that area is more than available selective irrigation capacity?
- blahi 10y agoHey, I'm very interested in remote sensing. Forestry applications are dire to my heart, but at the moment AG has a lockdown on my attention. I have stats/ML knowledge an have done initial research about remote sensing and I've got questions. Is it OK to shoot you an email or two even though I probably won't fit in the 3 groups you mentioned? PS: I'm at the other way of the world, if that makes a difference.
- tomcam 10y agoThese trees have been too big and too numerous the last 50 years or so. Some sort of cull was to be expected. Lightning has traditionally been nature's way of cutting back undergrowth and surplus trees but that's no longer considered an option.
- Aloha 10y agoThis is a really important thing - this dead tree thing - while caused by drought, is largely a function of poor forest management (read, no fires allowed, ever) for a century or so.
- kpennell 10y agoThat's an interesting perspective
- Implicated 10y agoHe's not alone with that perspective. [1] > Due to decades of fire suppression, a changing climate, and a shortage of forest restoration efforts, there are significant areas of overgrown, diseased, dry, and threatened forests throughout the 25 million-acre Sierra Nevada Region. While fire has historically been a natural part of the Sierra ecosystem, the unnatural conditions in our forests today can lead to fires that do far more damage than good. 1. http://www.sierranevada.ca.gov/press-room/sierra-wildfire-wire/state-of-the-sierra-nevadas-forests-report-says-forests-are-in-decline-immediate-action-is-needed http://www.sierranevada.ca.gov/press-room/sierra-wildfire-wi...
- jonmc12 10y agoWas curious how this drought compared to direct human impact on trees, quickly mashed together some facts. There just over 400B trees live around the world, 7.3B in California. Thats 1.8% of estimated world tree population vs holding 0.5% of people population. 301M of 4.9B (6%) trees died in Texas drought of 2011. Drought in California currently accounts for 102M (1.4%) of trees in the state dying. Also note California has about 1 tree per person in the world. The worst famine in 150 yrs would kill 30M humans / year if it happened today. This considers the % of human deaths / year by famine of 1876-1879 as a benchmark. The article would imply 72M trees dying / year per drought in California. Not sure how comparable that is given different lifespan / reproduction rates, but kinda interesting. Worldwide people cut down 15 billion trees each year. Maybe 7B for fuel, 6.5B for paper/etc and 1.5B for lumber. If this was distributed equally (which its probably not in reality), that would be equivalent of 274M trees cut down by humans in California / yr. The global tree count has fallen by 46% since the beginning of human civilization. [1] http://time.com/4019277/trees-humans-deforestation/ http://time.com/4019277/trees-humans-deforestation/ [2] https://www.quora.com/How-many-trees-are-cut-down-a-day-for-paper https://www.quora.com/How-many-trees-are-cut-down-a-day-for-... [3] https://www.quora.com/How-many-trees-are-in-California https://www.quora.com/How-many-trees-are-in-California [4] http://www.chron.com/news/article/2011-Texas-drought-slaughtered-301-million-trees-3893965.php http://www.chron.com/news/article/2011-Texas-drought-slaught... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines [6] https://ourworldindata.org/famines/ https://ourworldindata.org/famines/
- joshvm 10y agoCurrent (highly uncertain) estimates of the number of trees globally are around 3 trillion. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v525/n7568/full/nature14967.html http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v525/n7568/full/nature1... The uncertainties are pretty large, but it's reasonable to assume that 400 billion is very much a lower bound.
- TheRealDunkirk 10y agoSo here I come along, as a mechanical engineer who's made a living writing software and administrating servers and networks, with a more-than-passing interest in climate science and what it might mean for mankind. In just these 2 comments, I see a perfect example of what puts me off to try to wrap my head around the "debate." First guy says there are 400B trees, down around 50% from the beginning of time. That puts the original figure at about 800B. Second guy says there are actually 3T trees presently, which would mean an almost 400% increase over the first guy's original figure. Both cite sources, which I'm sure are well researched, exhaustively written, were presented in peer-reviewed journals, and which made their authors famous, and got lots of grant money for their respective universities. Which am I supposed to believe? That we're killing off all the forests, or we're drowning in them? It's one figure, but it makes all the difference in the argument, and the laws which might be written AROUND that argument. I'm not asking for clarification. I'm just pointing out that there are reasonable people who are interested in the discussion, and care about the outcome, but get put off by the inconsistencies in the facts by the published reports. (And don't get me started about reading the studies themselves. They are purposely obfuscated with domain-specific language, which would require a degree to decipher.)
- bby 10y agofuck this. I am done. if trees are dying, i'm dying too