8 ms·

The rationale that a certain amount of logging to thin forests is beneficial is correct. I don't know the details, or how they'll administer it to avoid excesdi

by lukasb 2y ago

The rationale that a certain amount of logging to thin forests is beneficial is correct. I don't know the details, or how they'll administer it to avoid excesdive logging, but at least in California we have almost 3x as many trees per acre compared to pre-white settlement: https://story.californiasunday.com/gone-paradise-fire https://story.californiasunday.com/gone-paradise-fire

Firerouge 2y ago
Trees per acre seems like a seriously misleading statistic. A freshly planted tree farm is going to have the highest trees per acre, but be the most useless forest. I would expect a few old growth trees in an acre would be a substantially better forest, visually, environmentally, and ecologically, than having three times as many young trees.
- greenie_beans 2y ago
  "basal area" is the term you need and now i'm curious what is the typical basal area for an old growth stand?
  - capitainenemo 2y ago
    http://talltimbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Sloan1998a_op.pdf http://talltimbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Sloan1998a... I found this, where they do note the number of trees has gone up markedly. They note the critical role of low intensity fire. I doubt selective logging can replace regular burns, but unfortunately there's a great deal of opposition to doing that. Mostly by people living in those fire-prone areas.
    - greenie_beans 2y ago
      lots of the public are very ignorant about ecologically sound forest management, unfortunately. "save the trees" is an effective emotional argument. i was once one of those people, but then i learned
      - neom 2y ago
        I spent a couple of years consulting to earthforce.io (they make forest management software)- before I started I thought I understood forestry, boy how wrong I was, how little I knew! For those interested in learning the basics, this is a pretty good playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvOmkebY7k2UP4N_BicWVKWZZOf9ahavp https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvOmkebY7k2UP4N_BicWV...
        mistrial9 2y ago
        where is the Board of Directors, owners and investors of Earthforce.io declared in public?
        zie 2y ago
        Unless it's a public company/non-profit they don't have to make any of this information public in most(all?) US states. Usually all you have to do is make public the name of the company and the registered agent(typically the lawyer you hire to receive legal notices for the company). They appear to be a private company: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/earth-force-technologies https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/earth-force-technolo...
        mistrial9 2y ago
        ah right crumchbase - founder with a "crunchbase rank" in the two hundred thousands range, stanford-stanford-harvard. there is something about stealth combined with valuations.. can't put my finger on it..
        neom 2y ago
        Well Justin, who to be fair is my buddy, isn't exactly unknown in the valley: https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/12/bird-confirms-acquisition-of-scoot/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/12/bird-confirms-acquisition-... | https://www.linkedin.com/in/jadawe https://www.linkedin.com/in/jadawe They're building a lot of physical hardware, hence the need for cash (it was a pretty huge seed round) - He's a cool dude for real, very decent human, curious what your concern is?
- seadan83 2y ago
  I think you and parent comment might actually agree. The 3x trees is an indication of too much, too many small trees, too much fuel. Places that burn and recover lose their "excess" trees. The trees get more space and are healthy top to bottom. OTOH, tree farm trees are bred to have few branches and are planted very close together. Tree farms grow tree trunks, not trees. There is a line of thought, which honestly I think comes from the timber industry, that growing trees are a bigger carbon sink than existing trees. They do argue that the tree farm is actually better because it is growing. I'm extremely skeptical of that claim. Particularly skeptical because the trees in tree farms are so unhealthy, the total amount of green vegetative surface on them is confined to a small canopy and has no vertical depth. In comparison, old growth vs tree farm is night and day for ecology. Tree farms are very dense, rodents thrive in them but not necessarily much else. Old growth OTOH is generally a pleasure to walk through. > I would expect a few old growth trees in an acre would be a substantially better forest There's indeed a mixture of ages unless we are talking a tree farm. A tree farm is a mono-culture with trees approximately the same age all growing like Q-tips together. Old growth trees are fire resistant. The younger ones trees get overshaded and don't grow, or they burn down before they get tall enough. The young trees that do survive, they go on to become the next generation of old growth trees. (My experience on the subject: extensive time camping & bikepacking in Northwest forests, I've traveled through a several thousand miles of northwest forests in the last 10 years)
  - parineum 2y ago
    > They do argue that the tree farm is actually better because it is growing. I'm extremely skeptical of that claim. One could measure the tonnage of tree farm wood extracted per day against the estimated tonnage of the trees in a non-farm environment pretty easily I would think. Frankly, the claim, to me, seems incredibly intuitive and your skepticism sounds like stubborn environmentalist thought.
    - pineaux 2y ago
      I don't agree with this claim. It is only intuitive on the surface. But growth in trees does not slow down as they get older. It actually accelerates. This article corroborates that: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12914 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12914 Sickness and bad conditions usually slow growth down. In tree farms almost all the trees are in bad condition. The low biodiversity creates a low quality environment. They catch fire very easily. It's low quality wood that ends up in a landfill (and then in the air via rotting) within a few decades. Eventually a tree will get sick and die. The most ideal situation would be to harvest the tree when it's dead. I would think there could be a businessmodel that maps dead trees and extracts them from forrests for high quality old growth wood. This is not about "stubborn environmentalism". Although I do agree with you that some environmentalist ideas are a bit short sighted (like dismissing all nuclear options without weighing the properly), it is generally based in science and research. The anti-environmentalist side are usually mostly based in money and corporate interests...
- adolph 2y ago
  The statistical trees per acre reminds me of: If the utilitarian state could not see the real, existing forest for the (commercial) trees, if its view of its forests was abstract and partial, it was hardly unique in this respect. Some level of abstraction is necessary for virtually all forms of analysis, and it is not at all surprising that the abstractions of state officials should have reflected the paramount fiscal interests of their employer. The entry under "forest" in Diderot's Encyclopédie is almost exclusively concerned with the utilité publique of forest products and the taxes, revenues, and profits that they can be made to yield. The forest as a habitat disappears and is replaced by the forest as an economic resource to be managed efficiently and profitably. Here, fiscal and commercial logics coincide; they are both resolutely fixed on the bottom line. “Seeing Like a State” Jaces C. Scott https://files.libcom.org/files/Seeing%20Like%20a%20State%20-%20James%20C.%20Scott.pdf https://files.libcom.org/files/Seeing%20Like%20a%20State%20-...
- akira2501 2y ago
  > substantially better forest Why is it better environmentally and ecologically?
  - pineaux 2y ago
    Environmentally because more diverse forrests tend to be more robust, depending on their climate (taiga is not very diverse). Tree growth doesn't slow down as trees get older. Their growth accelerates because: they have more foliage to gather sunlight and exchange gasses, everytime they add a growth ring it is a bigger ring than the last one, they grow taller or wider to get more sunlight and gas exchange. There is an optimal size/m² of course. Tree farms have ROIs and efficiency problems, they cannot take advantage of these qualities of forrests. They need straight timber and a payday at some point. Ecologically because old growth forrests have a much more diverse system with big fungal networks, ecological nooks and crannies, etc. A system takes time to build.
joe_the_user 2y ago
The thing is that, yes, development in wildland areas has produced scraggly areas that are not good ecologies but are serious fire dangers. But logging isn't the answer in the sense that logging companies have no interest in just taking small trees - they have no economic value. I live in one of these areas, btw (Nevada City). There are lots of stick-like trees, lots of scotch broom, lots of flameable underbrush. Removing that by logging is extremely expensive unless you do something like clear cutting, which uses a titanic lawn-mower thing. Cutting a single tall but thin tree requires a professional. Really, there's no solution for a situation of houses spread through the urban-wildland borders. The logging companies claim the fuel build up is the from logging restrictions but they will always claim that - actually, logging is no longer profitable in California because most large trees are gone, home owners won't let people clear cut and even clear cutting isn't economical given foreign competition and society's decreased use of paper.
sitkack 2y ago
Old Growth forests are already thin. The tree density is large because they are all thin and likely to burn.
goda90 2y ago
Better than logging would be to pull trees down and leave them in place on the ground: https://youtu.be/BiDBAU2d7oE https://youtu.be/BiDBAU2d7oE
zdragnar 2y ago
Where I live, the state government agency in charge of forest management will prioritize specific trees. Oak wilt, emerald ash borer and other diseases and pests mean that removing some trees is healthier than letting nature take its course. Additionally, they'll open up larger sites to thin out overgrown young growth, though they'll pre-mark what they want taken down in both cases.
m463 2y ago
that's quite misleading. In the california bay area, the beautiful 2000 year old redwoods were almost completely exterminated to rebuild after the 1906 san francisco earthquake. The regrowth pattern was usually a group of maybe 7 redwoods sprouting around the stump of a former giant. They compete with each other are not and will not replace the tree that was cut down. It is sad to hike around the hills, see this pattern and wonder what the big one was like. There are still some amazing old-growth giants, say in Henry Cowell state park. Just walk around there for an hour and your viewpoint on old-growth will probably change dramatically. The really big ones in Big Basin State Park burned in the fires, and although they are huge, they are very black and much has been lost.
whoiscroberts 2y ago
The planet was covered with forests before humans got involved in forest management. Why is it a bad idea to just leave the forests alone, declare them wilderness, and let the wildlife and ecosystem return to how it was?
- exabrial 2y ago
  This is a great question and proposal and it's how we got here. It's step 0, but it's not the end-all-be-all; as itself will create problems. You can let the forests grow, but you then _also_ have to let the other natural processes take place: disease and fire. Finally, you have to deal with something nature isn't good at: invasive species. So now we're onto steps 1 and 2: how do we protect these forests that we're rebuilding? We don't really want them to burn the ground (excessive fuel build up), we don't want them to be out competed by invasive species, nor succumb to disease. We have to emulate natural processes then to protect old-growth... which is the core of this proposal. Does that make sense? I too was pretty anti-interference until I attended university in the plains. For fun, I joined an outdoor club and assisted with nature research which studied many things, including fire, and realized that fire is very much a natural process that many species and ecosystems are dependent on.
  - whoiscroberts 2y ago
    Makes sense, but I also get the feeling that most of those points are only concerns because the forests that are left are so small, small enough that it is possible to entirely burn to the ground or be completely over run be invasive species. If there were 100, 1000, 10000 x the forest coverage we have now, would the concerns and land management strategy be the same?

by lukasb 2y ago

Firerouge 2y ago

Trees per acre seems like a seriously misleading statistic. A freshly planted tree farm is going to have the highest trees per acre, but be the most useless forest. I would expect a few old growth trees in an acre would be a substantially better forest, visually, environmentally, and ecologically, than having three times as many young trees.

greenie_beans 2y ago
"basal area" is the term you need and now i'm curious what is the typical basal area for an old growth stand?
- capitainenemo 2y ago
  http://talltimbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Sloan1998a_op.pdf http://talltimbers.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Sloan1998a... I found this, where they do note the number of trees has gone up markedly. They note the critical role of low intensity fire. I doubt selective logging can replace regular burns, but unfortunately there's a great deal of opposition to doing that. Mostly by people living in those fire-prone areas.
  - greenie_beans 2y ago
    lots of the public are very ignorant about ecologically sound forest management, unfortunately. "save the trees" is an effective emotional argument. i was once one of those people, but then i learned
    - neom 2y ago
      I spent a couple of years consulting to earthforce.io (they make forest management software)- before I started I thought I understood forestry, boy how wrong I was, how little I knew! For those interested in learning the basics, this is a pretty good playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvOmkebY7k2UP4N_BicWVKWZZOf9ahavp https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvOmkebY7k2UP4N_BicWV...
      - mistrial9 2y ago
        where is the Board of Directors, owners and investors of Earthforce.io declared in public?
        zie 2y ago
        Unless it's a public company/non-profit they don't have to make any of this information public in most(all?) US states. Usually all you have to do is make public the name of the company and the registered agent(typically the lawyer you hire to receive legal notices for the company). They appear to be a private company: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/earth-force-technologies https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/earth-force-technolo...
        mistrial9 2y ago
        ah right crumchbase - founder with a "crunchbase rank" in the two hundred thousands range, stanford-stanford-harvard. there is something about stealth combined with valuations.. can't put my finger on it..
        neom 2y ago
        Well Justin, who to be fair is my buddy, isn't exactly unknown in the valley: https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/12/bird-confirms-acquisition-of-scoot/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/12/bird-confirms-acquisition-... | https://www.linkedin.com/in/jadawe https://www.linkedin.com/in/jadawe They're building a lot of physical hardware, hence the need for cash (it was a pretty huge seed round) - He's a cool dude for real, very decent human, curious what your concern is?
seadan83 2y ago
I think you and parent comment might actually agree. The 3x trees is an indication of too much, too many small trees, too much fuel. Places that burn and recover lose their "excess" trees. The trees get more space and are healthy top to bottom. OTOH, tree farm trees are bred to have few branches and are planted very close together. Tree farms grow tree trunks, not trees. There is a line of thought, which honestly I think comes from the timber industry, that growing trees are a bigger carbon sink than existing trees. They do argue that the tree farm is actually better because it is growing. I'm extremely skeptical of that claim. Particularly skeptical because the trees in tree farms are so unhealthy, the total amount of green vegetative surface on them is confined to a small canopy and has no vertical depth. In comparison, old growth vs tree farm is night and day for ecology. Tree farms are very dense, rodents thrive in them but not necessarily much else. Old growth OTOH is generally a pleasure to walk through. > I would expect a few old growth trees in an acre would be a substantially better forest There's indeed a mixture of ages unless we are talking a tree farm. A tree farm is a mono-culture with trees approximately the same age all growing like Q-tips together. Old growth trees are fire resistant. The younger ones trees get overshaded and don't grow, or they burn down before they get tall enough. The young trees that do survive, they go on to become the next generation of old growth trees. (My experience on the subject: extensive time camping & bikepacking in Northwest forests, I've traveled through a several thousand miles of northwest forests in the last 10 years)
- parineum 2y ago
  > They do argue that the tree farm is actually better because it is growing. I'm extremely skeptical of that claim. One could measure the tonnage of tree farm wood extracted per day against the estimated tonnage of the trees in a non-farm environment pretty easily I would think. Frankly, the claim, to me, seems incredibly intuitive and your skepticism sounds like stubborn environmentalist thought.
  - pineaux 2y ago
    I don't agree with this claim. It is only intuitive on the surface. But growth in trees does not slow down as they get older. It actually accelerates. This article corroborates that: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12914 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12914 Sickness and bad conditions usually slow growth down. In tree farms almost all the trees are in bad condition. The low biodiversity creates a low quality environment. They catch fire very easily. It's low quality wood that ends up in a landfill (and then in the air via rotting) within a few decades. Eventually a tree will get sick and die. The most ideal situation would be to harvest the tree when it's dead. I would think there could be a businessmodel that maps dead trees and extracts them from forrests for high quality old growth wood. This is not about "stubborn environmentalism". Although I do agree with you that some environmentalist ideas are a bit short sighted (like dismissing all nuclear options without weighing the properly), it is generally based in science and research. The anti-environmentalist side are usually mostly based in money and corporate interests...
adolph 2y ago
The statistical trees per acre reminds me of: If the utilitarian state could not see the real, existing forest for the (commercial) trees, if its view of its forests was abstract and partial, it was hardly unique in this respect. Some level of abstraction is necessary for virtually all forms of analysis, and it is not at all surprising that the abstractions of state officials should have reflected the paramount fiscal interests of their employer. The entry under "forest" in Diderot's Encyclopédie is almost exclusively concerned with the utilité publique of forest products and the taxes, revenues, and profits that they can be made to yield. The forest as a habitat disappears and is replaced by the forest as an economic resource to be managed efficiently and profitably. Here, fiscal and commercial logics coincide; they are both resolutely fixed on the bottom line. “Seeing Like a State” Jaces C. Scott https://files.libcom.org/files/Seeing%20Like%20a%20State%20-%20James%20C.%20Scott.pdf https://files.libcom.org/files/Seeing%20Like%20a%20State%20-...
akira2501 2y ago
> substantially better forest Why is it better environmentally and ecologically?
- pineaux 2y ago
  Environmentally because more diverse forrests tend to be more robust, depending on their climate (taiga is not very diverse). Tree growth doesn't slow down as trees get older. Their growth accelerates because: they have more foliage to gather sunlight and exchange gasses, everytime they add a growth ring it is a bigger ring than the last one, they grow taller or wider to get more sunlight and gas exchange. There is an optimal size/m² of course. Tree farms have ROIs and efficiency problems, they cannot take advantage of these qualities of forrests. They need straight timber and a payday at some point. Ecologically because old growth forrests have a much more diverse system with big fungal networks, ecological nooks and crannies, etc. A system takes time to build.

joe_the_user 2y ago

The thing is that, yes, development in wildland areas has produced scraggly areas that are not good ecologies but are serious fire dangers. But logging isn't the answer in the sense that logging companies have no interest in just taking small trees - they have no economic value. I live in one of these areas, btw (Nevada City). There are lots of stick-like trees, lots of scotch broom, lots of flameable underbrush. Removing that by logging is extremely expensive unless you do something like clear cutting, which uses a titanic lawn-mower thing. Cutting a single tall but thin tree requires a professional. Really, there's no solution for a situation of houses spread through the urban-wildland borders. The logging companies claim the fuel build up is the from logging restrictions but they will always claim that - actually, logging is no longer profitable in California because most large trees are gone, home owners won't let people clear cut and even clear cutting isn't economical given foreign competition and society's decreased use of paper.

sitkack 2y ago

Old Growth forests are already thin. The tree density is large because they are all thin and likely to burn.

goda90 2y ago

Better than logging would be to pull trees down and leave them in place on the ground: https://youtu.be/BiDBAU2d7oE https://youtu.be/BiDBAU2d7oE

zdragnar 2y ago

Where I live, the state government agency in charge of forest management will prioritize specific trees. Oak wilt, emerald ash borer and other diseases and pests mean that removing some trees is healthier than letting nature take its course. Additionally, they'll open up larger sites to thin out overgrown young growth, though they'll pre-mark what they want taken down in both cases.

m463 2y ago

that's quite misleading. In the california bay area, the beautiful 2000 year old redwoods were almost completely exterminated to rebuild after the 1906 san francisco earthquake. The regrowth pattern was usually a group of maybe 7 redwoods sprouting around the stump of a former giant. They compete with each other are not and will not replace the tree that was cut down. It is sad to hike around the hills, see this pattern and wonder what the big one was like. There are still some amazing old-growth giants, say in Henry Cowell state park. Just walk around there for an hour and your viewpoint on old-growth will probably change dramatically. The really big ones in Big Basin State Park burned in the fires, and although they are huge, they are very black and much has been lost.

whoiscroberts 2y ago

The planet was covered with forests before humans got involved in forest management. Why is it a bad idea to just leave the forests alone, declare them wilderness, and let the wildlife and ecosystem return to how it was?

exabrial 2y ago
This is a great question and proposal and it's how we got here. It's step 0, but it's not the end-all-be-all; as itself will create problems. You can let the forests grow, but you then _also_ have to let the other natural processes take place: disease and fire. Finally, you have to deal with something nature isn't good at: invasive species. So now we're onto steps 1 and 2: how do we protect these forests that we're rebuilding? We don't really want them to burn the ground (excessive fuel build up), we don't want them to be out competed by invasive species, nor succumb to disease. We have to emulate natural processes then to protect old-growth... which is the core of this proposal. Does that make sense? I too was pretty anti-interference until I attended university in the plains. For fun, I joined an outdoor club and assisted with nature research which studied many things, including fire, and realized that fire is very much a natural process that many species and ecosystems are dependent on.
- whoiscroberts 2y ago
  Makes sense, but I also get the feeling that most of those points are only concerns because the forests that are left are so small, small enough that it is possible to entirely burn to the ground or be completely over run be invasive species. If there were 100, 1000, 10000 x the forest coverage we have now, would the concerns and land management strategy be the same?