Chainsaw-wielding Robotic Submarine

merryprankster writes "New Scientist is running a story about Sawfish, a chainsaw-wielding robotic submarine used as an underwater lumberjack. There are some 200 million trees thought to be standing on the floor of hydropower reservoirs worldwide. Sawfish attaches airbags to, and cuts around 9 trees an hour - the trees then float to the surface for collection. Cue the jokes about robotic high heels, suspenders and a bra."

Comments

Re:It's not a matter of tree count

[The One and Only]

Uh, mod me as a troll, but what value to us is that wildlife? We seem to have done pretty well without it. It's not like we need those ecosystems, given the fact that we've been practicing agriculture for 6000 years, and are so good at it that were it not for price supports we'd have prime produce on sale for pennies.

Re:Old growth lumber

[mr_infiniti]

No, we are just saying that your understanding of the science of forestry is pretty limited.

Yeah, I was only born in northern Ontario (the deep, dark bush), and currently live in the Pacific Northwest where I still live in the bush. I have spent a lifetime hunting, fishing and prospecting for recreation. I worked in sawmills and as a mineral surveyor as a teenager. I later worked for many years with the government on developing land-resource information systems where all my peers were foresters, biologists, technicians, and meant I had to liase with both US and Canadian Federal government land management professionals, mostly foresters. Trust me, to develop a decision-support system for forest management/integrated resource managemnt, you learn a lot about the science, especially as it means acquiring the data from real foresters.

My opinions are based on the science I learned from all these people, and surprisingly, they're all in agreement. And your credentials are what? You live on the 20th floor of some building and go to work on the 17th floor of some other building? And pass a tree on the route in between?

I didn't write any of these points to create an argument, to be called a moron or be told my knowledge of forestry is pretty limited, because it is not. I submitted because, as always, I had some facts I wanted to share. I didn't expect all these close-minded, emotional responses.

Multi-100 year-old trees were quite common in the Smokey Mts prior to the 1920s when the loggers came in and took them down. There are still a few to be found if you know where to look.

I'm not disputing there are can be multi-hundred year old trees, as I even offered an example of 1000 year old trees from the Niagara Escarpment. I should have said "commonly" live to 400 years. Most people don't live to be 100, but that doesn't mean they can't or that it's impossible. Look at a map of North America: the largest contiguous forests of the continent are the boreal forest of the north; jack pine, spruce, eastern red cedar, white birch, etc. Everything I stated in my previous submissions will apply to these trees, and most other trees commonly found throughout North America, not just some isolated watershed in your county. While no one has mentioned it yet, I'm open minded enough to accept that the Florida Everglades probably has some trees that are pretty wild and unique, but that doesn't mean it's common, and I admit I know nothing of them.

Here in the Pacific Northwest, we have a tree called Arbutus, that is really something unique, but I don't expect it's attributes to be considered common for a tree.

Some references:

Boreal Forest: http://www.radford.edu/~swoodwar/CLASSES/GEOG235/b iomes/taiga/taiga.html http://www.sierraclub.org/ecoregions/boreal.asp

Forest Renewal: http://www.birchbrook.com/fire.html http://btobsearch.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/is bnInquiry.asp?sourceid=00395996645644787198&btob=Y &endeca=1&isbn=1559638834&itm=1

Arbutus: http://www.gulfislands.com/foxglove/barn082801.htm http://web.mala.bc.ca/firstnations/doris/treemala. htm

...and these are vallid links