Stanford scientists create a synthetic wood substitute, for flooring and furniture.

[JohnWxy]

If we could come up with a substitute for wood that wasn't made of some carcinogenic material and was biodegradable this would be the most direct way to reduce deforestation.


http://www.theengineer.co.uk/Articles/310527/Synthetic+wood.htm

Researchers at Stanford University in California have developed a synthetic-wood substitute that may one day save trees, reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and shrink landfills.

The wood is made from a novel biodegradable plastic that could be used in a variety of building materials and perhaps replace the petrochemical plastics now used in billions of disposable water bottles.

'This is a great opportunity to make products that serve a societal need and respect and protect the natural environment,' said lead researcher Sarah Billington, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering.

In 2004, Billington and her colleagues received a two-year Environmental Venture Projects (EVP) grant from Stanford's Woods Institute for the Environment to develop artificial wood that is both durable and recyclable. The research team focused on a new class of construction material called biodegradable composites or 'biocomposites' - glue-like resins reinforced with natural fibres that are made from plants and recyclable polymers.

(more)

[katmondoo]

1. Could prevent a lot of termite damage

they almost ate my house to the ground here in Florida.

[JohnWxy]

2. I'm not sure if this is considered strong enough for structural components though.

Very sorry to hear about the termite damage. They can cause $10,000's in damage - by the time you realize they are there!

I understand these are asian termites that came over hear after WWII in packing crates and they are threatening all the SouthEastern U.S.

[izquierdista]

9. Easy solution

Steel 2x4s. But will the housing industry continue to build with wood in areas endemic with termites? You can bet on it!

[shraby]

3. The problem I see is if it's biodegradable, how

can houses or anything lasting be build from it? It's made to self destruct.

[DCKit]

4. That's why there's paint, aluminum/vinyl siding, roofing shingles, etc...

Silly goose.

[tabatha]

5. Wood is more biodegradable.

[JohnWxy]

7. OF course, recycleability is better. Which this material is. But it breaks down faster than wood

if it gets tothe point where it can't be recycled any more.

from the article:

"Unlike wood scraps that can sit in landfills for months or years, hemp-PHB biocomposites decompose a few weeks after burial"

[tabatha]

10. After burial.

[JohnWxy]

6. In the article at the link it states that this material breaks down when not in the presence of

Oxygen. Anaerobic bacteria will break down the material.

[Fotoware58]

8. Why use a wood substitute?

Unless it simulates a beautiful exotic wood, why should we use a wood substitute. Well-built stuff made out of wood can last far longer than the tree that grew it. Especially now when fires are turning trees into CO2 with a vengeance. The western US is plagued with too many trees for the scarce amounts of water that falls as precipitation. Entire forests are dying because we can't/won't intervene, tangled with lawsuits and contradictory laws, rules and practices.

Yes, being an eco-lawyer these days is quite lucrative as long as you've had your conscience removed and your soul pawned.

What is wrong with restoring our forests to pre-European conditions?

No one seems to be able to answer this one not-so-simple question for me.

[tabatha]

11. You have a very simplistic idea of nature.

Trees absorb CO2 - the cause of global warming which is causing the fires.

Trees are being felled at an alarming rate, which will only exacerbate the problem of fires and global warming.

There are NOT too many trees "western US is plagued with too many trees".

Yet, you contradict yourself here "What is wrong with restoring our forests to pre-European conditions?" when there were FAR FAR more trees.

There is nothing wrong with "restoring forests to pre-European conditions", but all the furniture-making ("why should we use a wood substitute") and toilet-paper production is decimating our trees. Once again you contradict yourself.

[Fotoware58]

12. On the contrary!

Nature is so complex that most people, like you, do not even understand the basics. Fires burn when the combination of heat, fuels and air combine with a spark to produce fire. Control the fuels and you control the fires. If we could control the heat and the air supplies, we could stop fires but, that is clearly impossible, Tabatha. Trees emit MASSIVE amounts of GHG's when they burn. High intensity fires do a lot more than just kill trees, too. A study of the Biscuit fire shows that soil carbon and soil nitrogen has been depleted because of the ultra-high temperatures of today's wildfires. Even some of the soil itself was lifted into our atmosphere, leaving a less fertile and more rocky soil composition. Intense fires also greatly accelerate catastrophic erosion that will linger for decades. The tremendous heat actually slightly melts many soils to produce a hydrophobic soil layer that prevents water from penetrating into the soil. Increased siltation and reduced soil moisture further impacts the health and productivity of our forested lands for years and years.

Trees are NOT "being felled at an alarming rate"!! I'd be willing to bet that the Clinton Administration cut substantially more trees than the Bush Administration. Timber volumes off National Forests are currently at one tenth of what they were in 1988 (admittedly too high). Tens of MILLIONS of dead trees from wildfires and insect infestations lie on the ground or are still standing, waiting for the next fire. Clearcutting was banned in National Forests in California since WAY back in 1993, as was "high-grading". Historical records and photographs show that tree densities were very much less than they are now, Tabatha. There aren't as many BIG trees in our forests but, the sheer numbers of trees just don't lie. Too many trees in our forests means a LOT less water to go around.

Restoring tree densities (AND size distributions!) to pre-European conditions would go a VERY long way to making our forests resistant to drought, bark beetles AND fires. Tree densities haven't been adjusted for the amounts of precipitation and THAT is what is causing most of our forest health problems. Sequestering the carbon in all those excess trees by cutting them allows the remaining improved forest to sequester MORE carbon instead of allowing that carbon to be pushed into the upper atmosphere in horrendous mega-firestorms. BTW, not much ponderosa pine is used in making furniture or toilet paper, Tabatha. Same for true firs and cedars.

It seems that many people on these eco websites just want the climate to be magically changed so that we can have more rainforests instead of dry "natural" forests. Talk about "pie in the sky"!! Indians managed their forests so, why don't we?!?

[tabatha]

13. deforestation

a) Try reading this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation

b) The Indians did not manage their lands in the environmentally destructive way that we have. NOTHING can compare to the devastation that white colonists have done to land and cultures all over the world.

c) Try reading this:
http://www.californiachaparral.com/chaparralmyths.html

[Nederland]

14. I read your Wiki article

This stood out:

"Among countries with a per capita GDP of at least $4,600, net deforestation rates have ceased to increase."

Sounds like deforestation is a problem in third world countries, not the US.

[tabatha]

17. Be careful.

"have ceased to increase" does not mean returned to good levels.

[tabatha]

18. Also, please note that most of the destruction in third world countries

is being done by corporations of first world countries.
Such as the Amazon, where they are exploring for oil, and cutting down trees for the toilet paper used in the US.
Threatening the livelihood of aboriginal peoples.

Most countries, such as those in Africa, Australia, South America, North America were in pretty pristine states before the arrival of the colonists.

[Fotoware58]

15. More Reality

The Indians set fires and manipulated their environment in a destructive way. Destructive from the conifers point of view, that is. They preferred oaks and other plants essential to their survival. They also had to manage the fuels around their homes so that firestorms wouldn't wipe them off the planet. Chapparral is its own biome and by definition, it has nothing to do with forests other than it might be a successional stage on the way to a mature seral stage. Brush DOES occur in burned-over forestlands and it WILL inhibit the return of forests, including endangered species habitat. I've worked in forests in 12 states and seen many, many examples of unmanaged and dying forests. No one is proposing that we "deforest" our national treasures, Tabatha. We've learned that many of the old practices of the 70's and 80's were very, very bad. However, groups like the Sierra Club strive to eliminate projects that produce lumber from the excess trees in our forest (and their sequestered carbon), while leaving proper canopy closure, stocking and erosion control, etc. Today's timber management is a far cry from the slash and burn clearcutting of the last millenium.

The forests we have today are what we have to work with. Bringing race into the argument is disingenuos and serves no role in this debate. Today's Indians cut and sell Giant Sequoias off their lands and no one makes a peep. Today's choices are whether we manage our forests back to pre-European conditions or to stand by and watch them go up in smoke, leaving bare ground and brushfields where there once were majestic conifers. Indians managed their lands with quick, cool burns that enhanced their preferred landscapes.

How many more years of ten million acres burned can we endure before the government intervenes and uses science instead of rhetorical dogma? Obama said he would follow the science and he has already passed into law a plan to do just that, in 50,000 acre chunks. I will not hold my breath on its implementation, as most lawmakers don't even know what they signed on to in the Omnibus Amendment.

Again, what is wrong with restoring our forests back to pre-European conditions??

Hiding your head in the sand isn't going to stop a firestorm, folks! Do people have to die before our forests are made safe? I think so because that has already happened. We ARE in the middle of a huge disaster and no one seems to care, allowing up to 300 tons of GHG's per acre to spew into our atmosphere through incineration. Millions of old growth trees are dead and dying but, if one gets cut (not that I am advocating the cutting of old growth), people scream "forest rapers" and "tree killers". If old growth is so rare and precious, why are we allowing small fires to become HUGE and VERY destructive? Are we now resorting to Vietnam Era rhetoric in saying "We need to burn down our forests to save them"?

[tabatha]

16. Actual reality.

http://www.independent.com/news/2008/dec/24/chaparral-not-our-enemy/

[Fotoware58]

19. Changing topics?

I'm not arguing about chapparral fires. Basically, those occur when some dumb human sets them, whether they be by accident or purposely. Big Bear and Mount Palomar, however, are NOT chapparral but did endure massive bark beetle mortality. Other forests are experiencing the same thing, on an even more giant scale. We surely don't need to exchange old growth forests for chapparral but, that is exactly what is happening across the west.

The topic was about using fake wood instead of real wood for stuff we need and use. This is one very good way of sequestering carbon that is otherwise streaming into our atmosphere. Reducing fires sizes and intensities should be our goal instead of what is happening today. We must reduce those live and dead fuels to "natural" levels before we can reinvent fire as the great tool used by Indian cultures. Sequestering that carbon and GHG's into durable wood products is essential to surviving our own modern human stupidity.

Prescribed fire works very well in the southeast part of the country but, here in the west, they are quite limited for multiple reasons. Uncontrolled fire in our forests just isn't good for forests, animals and humans....period! It is like trying to burn small parts of a huge haystack without losing the entire pile. The Biscuit fire started out as a single tree on fire and grew to a half a million acres. Rare Brewer's Spruce and other "legacy plants" were incinerated because we didn't act. Fires burned for 3 months straight in northern California with the smoke reaching as far east as Wyoming.

Wildfires are ALWAYS bad for the environment....ALWAYS! (in this present reality!)

Sorry, Tabatha....back to science class for you! ;^)

[tabatha]

20. ahem!

How can you say back to science class for me, when I was merely providing links to people who know a lot more about it than you.

I provided the links because these experts were, in many cases, saying the opposite of what you were saying.

And please cut the condescension - it does not provide any substance to the discussion. It is a tactic used mostly by those who are not winning the argument, much like obfuscation.

[Fotoware58]

21. You might try...

...sticking to the topic of using real wood instead of using a less environmentally-destructive compound. In essence, my postings ask, Is it better to use real wood to build stuff we need, sequestering massive amounts of carbon, or to use "synthetic wood" (with all its impacts and effects on our environment) and just let the forests burn, losing all those GHG's to an atmosphere already laden with decades of pollution?

The links you provided don't apply much to our own unhealthy and overcrowded forests. I surely don't appreciate your implication that I know very little about forests and nature. I've provided ample "substance" and you have provided meaningless websites and a weak argument. Sequestering carbon is essential to improving our natural world and you seem to want the absolute opposite situation.

Nature WILL rebalance our forests in ways we humans surely will NOT like. It's already been happening and if you can't see that, then I should leave you to your idealistic and definitely non-scientific ignorance. Feel free to "ignore" me if you can't back up your "beliefs" with sound science in the face of an ongoing disaster. All I want to do is to show America that the path we are on (and can't easily get off) will result in additional disaster and environmental destruction that dwarfs the era of clearcutting. You can support that if you want but, all humans will suffer as our forests disappear into smokey GHG's by the mega-ton.

[tabatha]

22. I was replying to this

"The western US is plagued with too many trees for the scarce amounts of water that falls as precipitation. Entire forests are dying because we can't/won't intervene, tangled with lawsuits and contradictory laws, rules and practices."

That is your statement --- if you think I was changing the subject, then it was because of what you said about the west having too many trees.

You, not me.

[Fotoware58]

23. It IS a part of the discussion!

The original topic was about using wood substitutes instead of real wood. I proposed using real wood, since we have tons of excess wood already dead or dying in our forests. Wood is the original "green" building substance and using excess wood is even "greener". It is perfectly related and an important issue in any decision to use a wood substitute or real wood. Such a debate absolutely HAS to include forest ecosystem science, which you seem to know very little about. Why not make 2x4 studs out of a 10" diameter excess trees instead of letting them burn in a catastrophic fire? Why not use the wood waste, slash and submerchantable trees as a renewable energy source instead of using coal and nuclear? (Alas, Federal biomass is specifically excluded in the the latest energy bill for use as a clean, sustainable and renewable energy source....Al Gore himself said there was no scientific reason we couldn't use Federal biomass for energy production. It is clearly due to a political reason he didn't elaborate on. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1L3L8mcGXbo <----Walden made Gore look like a fool! )

Answer me that, eh?

[tabatha]

24. There are various theories about forest ecosystem science.

One is the use of fire, and the other is to allow nature to run its course. On that subject, here are some thoughts - not a link - because you don't seem to get the parts that dispute your theories:

<snip>

"While the ecological processes involved in overstocking are relatively simple, the question of which variable, grazing or active fire suppression, is the primary cause of overstocking long vexed scientists because it was (and still is) difficult to find an ungrazed ponderosa pine forest for a control plot. In 1923 Aldo Leopold wrote "Whether grass competitors or fire was the principle deterrent to timber reproduction is hard to answer because the two factors were always paired, never isolated. Probably either would have inhibited extensive reproduction." We know of three field studies which were able to isolate the "paired" variables: these studies have identified grazing as the principle factor in causing overstocking.

Rummell (1951) studied two neighboring and ecologically similar ponderosa pine forests in central Washington. One had been grazed for 40 years while the other had never been grazed by livestock. Neither had experienced a fire for at least 125 years. Rummell characterized the ungrazed forest as "one of the few relicts of virgin ponderosa pine forest and range" with "an almost unbelievably lush mat" of pine grass. It could be, Rummell felt, "a top standard against which many other pine forest ranges with similar climate and physiography can be compared."

Significantly, very little pine reproduction was found: only 85 trees per acre less than 4' dbh were present. In sharp contrast, the grazed forest had little grass and 3,291 trees per acre less than 4' dbh (2,033 pines, 1,016 Doug firs, and 242 Western larch).

Rummell concluded that the high density of herbaceous understory vegetation on the ungrazed forest contributed substantially to the low tree reproduction rate. Overall, "heavy grazing of the herbaceous understory vegetation, rather than exclusion of fire, appeared to be the prime factor in explaining the dense tree reproduction" on the grazed forest (emphasis added).

A similar study was conducted in 1983 on two areas in Zion National Park "almost identical biotically and environmentally." They had similar fire histories but markedly different grazing histories. The Horse Pasture Plateau was heavily grazed until about 1960, while Greatheart and Church Mesas - isolated by cliffs and slickrock - were never grazed and approximated pre-settlement conditions. Both areas were dominated by Ponderosa pine and Gambel oak, and both had a similar history of browsing by large ungulates.

The authors characterize the study area as "uniquely suited to allow independent assessment of the relative importance of fire cessation and livestock grazing in the conversion of savannas to forests." They state that the visual contrast between the areas was obvious, with dense thickets of Ponderosa, Gambel oak, and Rocky Mountain Juniper saplings prevalent on the grazed plateau and largely absent on the ungrazed mesas. They note that fire was excluded from all the study areas but state that decreased fire frequency alone is not the essential factor needed to cause these physiognomic changes. The presence of savanna conditions on Church and Greatheart Mesas despite long fire-free intervals is the strongest evidence yet for our contention....The fact that there were no thickets of "dog-hair" ponderos pine on either mesa despite a comparable absence of fire, implicates livestock grazing as the critical factor (emphasis added)."

</snip>

Indian use of fire was primarily NOT in forests. They converted chaparral and sage scrub to grassland for a number of reasons - one of which was to increase the number of deer who had more food in grasslands than chaparral. There is very little native grass left in California (> 99% are alien species). The reason for this is that non-native grasses found it easy to colonize in California when whites arrived because of the type conversion from chaparral/sage scrub to grasslands by Native Americans. Non-native grasses which dry out rapidly in the summer provide enormous tracts of fuel for fires. Hence, using Native American fire practices as an example is not commendable.

Also, from the excerpt above, it can be seen that without realistic study, it is easy to jump to the wrong conclusion about the efficacy of the use of fire in land management.

[Fotoware58]

25. Numbers don't lie

and each forest is different. It is a known fact that Indians burned their summer hunting grounds in the high mountain forests before they left each fall. That had allowed the fire resistant pines to thrive without competition and dominate most areas. The west is full of steep terrain that cows avoided and those areas are radically overstocked as well. I won't argue that past practices were bad for our forests, though. I'm talking about the present and the future of our forests. I've never been a big fan of grazing, as I have seen modern-day impacts, up close and personal. I did aspen surveys in central Idaho and saw how there were few restrictions on grazing in aspen stands.

Back to the issue, the wood substitute is a very good example of "greenwashing". The article talks about "saving trees" but, just what are they "saving" them for? Catastrophic fire?!? They talk about a new biodegradable resin to mix with hemp fiber. Let's analyze that avenue for a bit. First of all, we'd need vast areas to cultivate hemp. Where would these prime farmlands come from?? Would we displaced food production?? Would we cut down trees to plant hemp?? And just what is involved with the process of producing the resin?? Are there nasty by-products and imported substances involved in making the resin?? How much extra coal-powered energy is needed to produce the resin?? Will there be unforseen health effects from this resin in the future?? We already have vast amounts of excess trees we don't have to cultivate or expend energy or land on. Harvesting excess trees and sequestering their carbon has plenty of beneficial environmental effects. Today's forests are currently big sources for GHG's, spewing 6-8% of our total human GHG production, increasing each and every year, with the government seeking to expand their Let-Burn program.

On the other hand, the utilization of the forest's annual growth has plummetted since 1988. That year was the peak of timber harvesting. The annual forest growth was distributed with almost 50% of the growth being harvested. 23% of the annual growth died each year and 27% was added to the forest as new growth. Currently, those numbers are 36% of our annual growth dying each year, through mostly insects and fire. 58% of all growth goes into our forests making them overcrowded and unhealthy. That leaves a miniscule 6% being harvested today, in thinning projects and forest restoration. This situation is very damaging and completely unsustainable. We NEED to reduce stocking levels to match the annual rainfall. Try not to ignore 30-40 million dead trees in the Rockies.

Once we have reduced fuel loadings, we can safely use beneficial prescibed fires in many areas to improve forest health and habitats, just like the Indians did. Use that excess wood to reduce GHG's and carbon spewing from our forests. Otherwise, get used to living with toxic smoke and dead trees. What happened in the past cannot be changed but, we can be good stewards of our forests and our world. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to this ongoing disaster. We need to design and implement thinning projects to enable forests to survive drought, bark beetles and fires, as well as climate change.

[XemaSab]

29. Indians were responsible for the most recent mass extinction in North America

How can you say they weren't destructive? :shrug:

[Fotoware58]

31. Historical evidence

"b) The Indians did not manage their lands in the environmentally destructive way that we have."

It is very interesting that evidence is out there is saying that Coast Range Oregon Indians had programs that were apparently quite successful in eradicating many conifer forests. Even though the ample Oregon rainfall seems to encourage conifer growth, why are there no 1000 year old cedars, Sitka spruce or other confier species that are known to live that long? No, loggers did NOT cut any, although they did cut lots of 300 year old trees. Did catastrophic fires level huge swaths of forests in Biscuit-sized fires? Apparently not because there would be evidence of snags or even charcoal from those fires. The evidence leads to a concentrated and continuous program of set fires that would promote camas and other plants essential to their survival, as well as improving grazing habitat for animals which kept Indians well-fed.

There are bits of evidence still in place showing that Indians did major forest management upon the landscape. The Grassy Knoll Wilderness area has very little grass left within it, due to a lack of Indian "management". For them, deforestation was absolutely necessary for survival. It was their only defense against catastrophic wildfires to manage the fuels. When disease arrived with the white man, conifer forests made a BIG comeback, like a huge clearcut back from the ashes.

Luckily, the humans of today could strike a balance in our environment very different from what the Indians accomplished. Somehow, today's endangered species survived the Indian's intensive "management".

[malakai2]

26. Nothing is wrong with it

You just need to define "pre-European conditions".

As far as I'm aware, conditions in North America immediately prior to colonization by Europeans didn't include wide-scale logging, but did include frequent fires with an uneven burn mosaic. Enter logging and attendant high grading, coupled with fire suppression, and current conditions differ in that 1) forests are much more evenly aged than they were historically, 2) there are very few truly old and/or large trees in most habitat types relative to historic conditions, 3) species composition has changed dramatically, so that species like American chestnut, longleaf pine, and American elm are no longer dominant in their native ranges, and 4) standing dead trees are a much smaller component of biomass in forests currently than under historic conditions.

If you want to restore forests to the "pre-European conditions" of the 1500s, then your tools are fire and brush removal, thinning via low grading, and definitely NOT anything including road construction or high grading. Your dominant species are going to be things like oaks in savannas of the midwest and intermountain west, longleaf pine in the southeast, a handful of pines and spruces in the Great Lakes region, and a selection of conifers out west. You'll leave lots of standing dead timber. Unless you do something to remove a handful of noxious invasive weeds from the landscape, you'll eventually lose a lot of understory diversity to plants like garlic mustard and cogongrass.

If you want to restore forests to the "pre-European conditions" that didn't include anthropogenic fires, lots of luck to you. The last time North America functioned like that, much of it was under a mile-thick sheet of ice.

If you want to restore forests to the "pre-European conditions" that included frequent logging with attendant high grading, road construction, limited regulation, few fires, and forests that still managed to crank out and endless stream of old growth that scaled tens of thousands of board feet per tree, then you'll be in for some disappointment. That set of conditions came about post-colonization, and while it originally did allow the felling of many trees that scaled ridiculous board feet, that old growth was quickly depleted. That set of conditions, coupled with the land ownership checkerboard, is a very large reason the forests of the US look the way they do now, as opposed to the way they did in the 1500s.

[Fotoware58]

27. Almost!

Ahhhhh! Someone who knows something about forests! I totally agree with your statements 1, 2 and 3. Restoring those items is desirable and somewhat attainable. Alas, the loss of the chestnut was a big blow. Let's hope that we can discover a way to re-insert them back into our eastern hardwoods. Your number 4 statement is just not true, though. Since western forests had MUCH less stocking than historical records and photographs show, there is no way there were more snags back then than now. If you didn't know, overstocking, fires, drought, bark beetles and climate change have led to astounding numbers of dead trees. A concerted effort to eliminate all salvage logging has led to "saving" a great many of those snags, only to become fuel for the next round of damaging wildfires in the future. Currently, there are at least 30-40 MILLION dead trees in Colorado and Wyoming. We have at least 7 Million acres of forest that have at least 25% mortality within them. (Canada has even MORE than that!). Surely you can't say that this is a good trend for our forests. The blame lies squarely on the idea of eliminating timber management principles and silviculture, in favor of doing absolutely nothing in the face of accelerated forest destruction.

The consensus of the best minds in forest ecosystems say that we MUST intervene to save what is left of our old growth. Now is not the time to let our forests be.

BTW, a big tree is not necessarily an old tree. And an old tree is not necessarily a big tree. We need to be smart about being good stewards of the land.

Thanks for your thoughtful reply!

[malakai2]

28. Snags n such

From what I've read, the proportion of snags was much larger in undisturbed (by humans) forests, but the stem densities were, in the types of habitats we're discussing, still lower than present. The only pictorial I can think of that illustrates this is in the book Exploring with Custer: The 1874 Black Hills Expedition. In it, 48 landscape photographs of the Black Hills taken by Illingsworth in 1874 are coupled with pictures taken sometime around 2000. The stem densities are plainly higher in the modern photos, and the standing dead wood component is visibly smaller (in some cases, much smaller), at the very least relative to the overall stem density. Of course, this is just qualitative comparison of photos, but quantitative comparisons are a little tough to do when the snags themselves decompose over time and aren't leaving pollen deposits or something else useful in determining their historic and pre-historic densities.

This should make some sense, because in the more fire-prone ecosystems with shorter fire return intervals, ground fires didn't burn hot enough to consume entire standing dead trees in a single session, and especially in pine forests, frequent ground fires cause the surviving trees to increase resin production that then makes the tree much more resistant to burning after it dies. Then too, red pine/white pine forests seem to have had fire return intervals on the order of 250-500 years, over which time considerable dead wood could accumulate and lead to mixed severity fires. Jack pine and black spruce forests, on the other hand, have much shorter fire return intervals and tend to burn as as running crown fires, not because they are overstocked with snags, but because their growth pattern provides abundant dead branches as fine fuel that runs from the ground right up to the top of the trees.

The standing dead component in the western forests now seems to be driven by mountain pine beetle infestations, which in turn are driven by an increase in minimum winter temperatures so that winter kill is no longer controlling outbreaks, and by extremely high stem densities created by an absence of fire during the control era. The beetles are going to run their course, that horse is out of the barn and over the horizon. As they run their course, they'll solve the stem density problem too. I think this particular problem is so far ahead of what any lumber company or group of companies could accomplish that some catastrophic fires are inevitable. The Forest Service and other land management agencies don't have the money or manpower to go out and selectively thin tens of millions of acres within a year or two...NEPA alone for a program like that could take several years. Even if these companies or agencies could do it, there is no economic return to them. What marketable products start with doghair pine stands and overgrown striped maple as raw material?

And as far as the big tree issue...I was thinking specifically of truly giant white pines (200+ feet), cypress, hemlock, redcedar, stuff like that. Trees like that, you're looking at 200 or more years for the white pine to reach that size, and for the other three to reach massive size, it's on the order of 500-700 years. Not so with something like a cottonwood, but then cottonwoods need to grow fast because they're prone to washouts in riparian areas. Also not so with pinon pine or bristlecone pine. I was focusing mainly on trees in forest types with longer fire return intervals.

[Fotoware58]

30. Another good post

Obviously, you know more about eastern forests than western forests. I've learned that the eastern forest issues are quite different from our huge problems here, out west. The Lewis and Clark Expedition described being able to ride and walk through open pine stands for most of their journey. The history of Lake Tahoe documents majestic open pine stands before the logging during the Comstock Lode era. That leads to the main problem causing the beetle explosion.

Too many trees! I don't have the time or desire to write a 10 page summary of the history of logging but here's an attempt to clarify my contention. Many human activities over many decades have led to this situation and we are still making poor forest management decisions today. It seems that each and every era has had negative impacts on our forests. It also seems that each successive paradigm destroys more and more forest, not following what the latest science is saying. The pendulum on public lands swings wildly, far away from the middle where science says it needs to be. When too many trees occupy a piece of land with limited precipitation, the entire stand is put under stress and bark beetles land some successful hits. As the attack begins, the bark beetles put out a pheromone that attracts all other bark beetles in range to overwhelm large clumps of trees. All pines defend themselves by producing pitch within their bark to push out the newly-laid eggs of bark beetles. When there is little water to suck up, because of radical overstocking and drought, the trees die. Ponderosa pines are the most drought-adapted trees in our forests and they are dying in colossal numbers, second only to the susceptible lodgepole pines. Over the years, fire suppression has allowed the lodgepoles to invade into ponderosa pine forests, stealing water and making perfect fire ladders for these overstocked pine stands. For the last 15 years or so, the idea of strict preservationism has become popular and the courts have largely enforced this belief due to complicated and complex (and often conflicting) rules, laws and policies. Even when "Healthy Forests" was signed into law, in a nearly unanimous bi-partisan vote, very little was done to improve the health of our forests and funds were very hard to find. We are now left with massive amounts of mortality due to having up to 1000 more trees per acre than was found by the pioneers.

That brings us to today, where climate change is gaining strength and water is even more scarce. Placing forest inside new wilderness areas is probably a death sentence for these overgrown and dying forests, as fire will soon level those unthinned forests. Some people seem to prefer a giant snag patch with thick brush instead of a thinned, clean and resilient forest that will survive drought, bark beetles, fires and such.



I did spend some time in eastern forests and I was impressed at the great diversity of trees to be found. I did stand exams in South Carolina and my species list was up to 45. I also got a chance to go to the Congaree Swamp National Park, where you can find 16 National Champion trees that somehow survived through the centuries (I did see some hurricane Hugo damage, though). The old growth in NW Pennsylvania was quite disappointing. Scraggly hemlocks and contorted white pines didn't really impress me but, I am fine with saving that piece of history. Matter of fact, I'm a big fan of old growth, as it is pretty essential to keeping endangered species populations safe and growing.