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One Third of California's Trees Are Dead (sfgate.com)
"There are about 21 million acres of trees spread across California's 18 national forests, and the latest figures show 7.7 million of them -- more than one-third -- are dead." An anonymous reader quotes the San Francisco Chronicle:
California's lingering drought has pushed the number of dead trees across the state past 100 million, an ecological event experts are calling dangerous and unprecedented in underlining the heightened risk of wildfires fueled by bone-dry forests. In its latest aerial survey released Friday, the U.S. Forest Service said 62 million trees have died this year in California, bringing the six-year total to more than 102 million.
Scientists blame five-plus years of drought on the increasing tree deaths -- tree "fatalities" increased by 100 percent in 2016 -- but the rate of their demise has been much faster than expected, increasing the risk of ecologically damaging erosion and wildfires even bigger than the largest blazes the state's seen this year.
An ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey says that on the bright side, this gives scientists a good chance to study how trees die.
Scientists blame five-plus years of drought on the increasing tree deaths -- tree "fatalities" increased by 100 percent in 2016 -- but the rate of their demise has been much faster than expected, increasing the risk of ecologically damaging erosion and wildfires even bigger than the largest blazes the state's seen this year.
An ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey says that on the bright side, this gives scientists a good chance to study how trees die.
What are they supposed to do, drink salt water ?
Most of the water for California comes from the Sierras from snow pack, or from the Colorado River (again, snow pack) not the ocean.
That would be well & fine for those areas from which the water was directly removed. The millions of trees the article is talking about, however, are mostly in the mountains and the associated foothills, upstream from where the water is eventually redirected. The trees get their water from precipitation, either directly as rainfall or from later snow melt. The years of drought have reduced the amount or rainfall, and removing every bit of infrastructure in the state's water system won't change that one bit, so please save you armchair engineering.
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There are invasive non-indigenous inspect species that are killing large swaths of California forest. Its not just drought problem.
Most of California is not a desert. It's a diverse region from desert to mountain to swamp to rainforest.
The majority of the crops are grown in the central valley, most of which is definitely not a desert (only in the far south-west end does it get close to desert naturally). It gets plenty of rain, and likely would be deciduous forest except most of the rain happens in the winter (instead of year-round), which is why irrigation is important.
There is currently an anti-farmer campaign going on in California, and there are good arguments for re-negotiating (some of the water allocations along the south of highway 5, by Patterson, are ridiculous, for example); but there is a lot of resistance to change, because if the water rights are ever re-negotiated, municipalities like San Francisco would probably lose their senior water rights status. Those holders guard their rights fiercely.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Never ever do some back-of-the-envelope calculations like the average rain fall of the whole of California being something like 500 mm rain per year, which means that the amount of water you have to desalinate to replace rain would be about 424,000 km times 1/2 meter, or about 212 cubic kilometers, which weigh about 212 billion metric tons. To evaporate 1 kg of water, you just need 2,26 Megajoule, and for 212 billion metric tons, it's just shy of 500 trillion Megajoule. Each year. Just to achieve that, you need 15 Terawatt of continuous power.
The largest nuclear power units ever being in use were the soviet RBMK-1500 reactors, which had 1500 MW output each (Tchernobyl used the smaller RBMK-1000). You would need 10,000 of the largest nuclear power plants ever built, just to replace the rain of California.
Approximately half of California is a desert (an area of 10 inches of precipitation or less per year): map
An additional large portion is arid (~10-20 inches per year) - more specifically "hot mediterranean climate".
Which as you can see from the above map mostly ranges from desert (Bakersfield) to arid (Fresno, upwards to around Sacramento). The far north end (Sacramento Valley) isn't very arid, but it's also not as major of an agricultural area as the south.
Growing crops in the desert and arid regions gets good yields because of the abundant sunlight and warm days, but it requires water that you have less and less of every year. And you've already destroyed parts of your state (like, for example, the Owens Valley) to get the water that you do have.
It would be what it was before irrigation: scrub.
Wingus, Dingus! Listen up!
Those insects are taking root strongly because the trees have been under significant stress for years due to...
you guessed it: drought!
Only I can judge you.
Well most populous areas of CA would be a desert wasteland if it were not for civil engineering. Maybe ought to let it revert it it's natural environment.
OK, let's put an end to this misguided disinformation. It's a desert wasteland precisly BECAUSE of "engineering".
The largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi USED to be in California. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulare_Lake
And here's the hero of the plot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Griffin_Boswell
And let's not forget what the Spanish found upon exploration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacramento–San_Joaquin_River_Delta
Most other developed nations that utilize a lot of desalination (Saudi Arabia, Israel, UAE, etc.) actually pay less than 1/3rd per liter for desalinated water than we pay for water in Ventura County. If we could desalinate our water, we should be able to - theoretically - slash our water costs by a factor of 3...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
To be fair, actually, most of the trees dying in California are not natives, at least not in that location. Most of the places with lots of pines on them now used to be full of something else. For instance, in Lake County, CA the land was covered with redwoods up to the ridgeline between here and hopland, and oaks thereafter. First, there was a lot of slash and burn to create cattle land. Then, the federal government paid $1 for each black walnut tree planted, as an inducement to the settlers to destroy the oaks that the natives depended on for food. The walnuts have never been an economic benefit to the region, although some people grafted a more desirable variety onto the stumps of some of their trees and have been able to make a little money.
Droughts are a regular feature in California, and the trees are dying from it because they are in areas where they're not supposed to be, and because redwoods dramatically alter climate, and they are missing.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"