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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.
Next up: lung cancer causes smoking!
Wingus, Dingus! Listen up!
I'm a little unclear here. Do you believe droughts are visited on states that vote Democrat?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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.
As long as Nestle is still getting their water, who cares if the trees gets theirs.
No, just that they're bad at water management.
See also: Flint, MI.
Ah, the old "It's not dead, it's just sleeping".
Let me guess, it also has a beautiful plumage?
It's interesting that these reports are always released on rainy days (Which are pretty rare in SF actually)
Yes if you go up to Mt. Lassen it really probably is 1 in 3 trees. Certainly 1 in 10. If anything though, this is natural selection in progress; the only way to produce drought-resistant species is to have a serious drought, a big fire to clear out all the dead species, and then re-seed them with the drought resistant ones. If anything this is a good, big step forward for California over the long term in destroying the less viable/invasive species.
moox. for a new generation.
And He's coming for you, too.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Your aunt died of shame.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I am going to support them financially by buying as much almonds as I can.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
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.
Much of the death is from an outbreak of various insects, moths and beetles. At least up in the sierras. There's also a disease spreading amongst oaks. Add in a drought, and there's a lot of dry tinder waiting for a spark.
No worries. Trump says he'll build a "terrific and huge" plant on the west coast to pump all that free seawater to the farms and people of California. This is the beauty of having science advisors.
Sure there are always some dead trees in a forest, as anyone who's ever hunted or rambled in a forest knows. But one out of three? And from drought? It's not normal for the historical period.
However... There have been prehistoric droughts in California lasting decades, even centuries. Since we know this from tree rings, we know some rain must have fallen, but less than we are accustomed to as "normal" in historic times. These have been correlated to "radiative forcing", natural climate change mechanisms such as variations in the Earth's orbit and volcanic activity. Warmer Earth == drier California.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Aunt that a shame.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
What are they supposed to do, drink salt water ?
Of course not. What they should do is build some nuclear power plants and desalinate the water. There is no shortage of water but it does take energy to make it suitable to drink or water crops. Any shortage of energy they have in California is self imposed. Their policies against nuclear power because of a mistaken association with nuclear weapons does fit my definition of being brain dead.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
If I'm reading this correctly, then:
2016 - 62mil
2015 - 31mil
2010-14 - 9 mil
I'm not sure this is 'much faster than expected' so much as 'Holy Crap we have a problem'.
As a non-biologist I'd tend to assume that:
1. Fires are going to get ugly when all that new dead biomass starts to dry out in a year or so.
2. Mycorrhizal nets are going to be stunted, probably exacerbating the situation.
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.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
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.
The dying trees are in areas with naturally occurring forests, in regions above 5,000ft elevation that have local water sources. In the North and the South.
Contrary to popular belief, not all of California is arid desert. The trees TFA is talking about are not cultivated crops or or ornamental trees planted in urban/suburban areas, they are pine and Sequoya trees naturally occurring across thousands of square miles of subalpine forest in the Sierra Nevada region and in the hardwood/conifer forests found in the Pacific Coastal Range. Some of these ares receive far more than 80 inches of rain in an average year, and many of the affected trees are hundreds of years old.
As for the most populous areas in the state being desert, I could be pedantic and point out that potential natural vegetation in LA, San Diego, and the bay area would be predominantly chaparral, grassland, and coastal sage scrub, but I do get your point. However, those aren't the parts of the state that TFA is concerned with.
There are invasive non-indigenous inspect species that are killing large swaths of California forest. Its not just drought problem.
Which would serve the purposes of drinking water, but watering entire forests? Impractical doesn't even begin to describe it.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The trees get their water from precipitation, either directly as rainfall or from later snow melt.
And the water in the rainfall came from the humidity in the air (which was then "squeegied out" by the mountains forcing the air upward).
But much of the water in the air came from the imported irrigation water, evaporated by transpiration in irrigated plants (and a bit from wet surfaces). Very little of the water imported to west-of-the-Sierras ends up in the Pacific Ocean or refilling overpumped underground aquifers, nearly all ends up in the air, blowing toward the mountains, to fall as rain or snow.
This is good, because the water off the coast of California is mostly the Alaska Current. It's cold, so it doesn't humidify the air much. (Swimming in it will kill you in 15 to 30 minutes. The dewpoint in Silicon Valley, when the wind isn't coming from the land, runs around 50F.) Indeed, much of the humidity coming from the ocean is the result of the imported water that DID make it to the Pacific - arriving substantially warmer that what was already out there.
So, though the mountain trees get their water from rain, snow, or fog, the rain, snow, or fog gets ITS water largely from the imported irrigation water.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
There is no "pipeline out of the Sierras".
The California Aqueduct carries water out of the Delta and runs it down to So. Calif.
This was done a LONG time ago by Mulholland.
The folks in No. Calif don't really like it but the voting power is mostly in So. Calif.
There isn't much of a choice.
California agriculture uses 80% of the developed water supply. Almonds use 8% of that water supply.
Try googling about if you doubt the information.
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!
Culling would only work if you sent them before they procreated. Chances are high that they'll already have offspring by the time they ship out. Also, it isn't the soldier who goes off to war that decides to start the war, he just needed a job in a fucked up economy. It is generally a group of old fat-fuck "elected" "leader" who votes for and approves our little adventures. Their kids are generally safe and starting a nice family in Virginia or some other nice place. BTW, the fucked up economy was courtesy of the same old fat fucks that decided to start a war.
Only I can judge you.
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.
that would be because heat-stressed trees are much more vulnerable to bark-beetle infestation
Only I can judge you.
Well, the article does not tell us what percentage of trees are normally dead, or historical average. They just say a lot are dead and the rate has increased. So what is the difference on a historical basis? Seems like that would be good to relay in the article.
To evaporate 1 kg of water...
You don't typically evaporate water to desalinate. You just pump it through reverse osmosis filters. Much less energy (but still I doubt it's practical to replace California's rain that way).
Just wait until Trump's in the White House. Those trees will have so much water they'll get tired of it.
With that attitude, you're sure to be welcomed with open arms.
Sea water has salt. Salt kills plants.
No way, salt is an electrolyte, electrolytes are good. - Idiocracy
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I was. Spent slightly over a year there. Met a lot of intelligent, really nice open-minded people. OKC is a great city and I would really enjoy living there long-term. Except for the lack of avocados and fresh vegetables, there is almost nothing bad about it. It is clean and has lots of room if you're looking for that. I wasn't too into the fracking so I turned tail and headed back to Cali.
Only I can judge you.
Those insects are taking root strongly because the trees have been under significant stress for years due to... you guessed it: drought!
I recall insect problems from years before there were drought problems. I'm sure drought complicates things but things were not healthy before the drought.
Luke 4:24
You are welcome on my lawn.
Trees in the Southern California mountains have been dying for years due to smog. That's pretty much a home-grown problem. Ozone concentrations tend to be highest in the areas that have had good forests, and pines (especially) seem to be sensitive to it. Combine with drought and beetles...
Smog and ozone have both been declining since the 1970s. Things are far better on that criteria than in the past.
Yes - agricultural water use accounts for about 75% of the water usage in Ca. However the trees aren't dying from rivers being sucked dry. They're dying from no rain.
..........FULL STOP.
God killed Antonin Scalia and Andrew Breitbart.
If that were true, it would almost be enough to make me believe in god.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Just wait until Trump's in the White House. Those trees will have so much water they'll get tired of it.
No, his solution will be to kill off more trees until there's enough water for the few remaining survivors. The rest of those trees were just losers!
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
We could sent the lowest decile (by IQ) of California's population to OK. This would increase the average IQ of both states!
Win! Win!
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Most people didn't "voted for hillary" or "voted for trump".
Was more or "voting to not get hillary in power vs voting to not get trump in power".
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
Proposing desalinization in California the definition of being brain dead: no matter how many nuclear plants you build, it would create vastly more expensive water than the market is willing to buy. Nobody seriously thinks there's any shortage of fresh water in California -- it's a shortage of sufficiently cheap water in the desired places. The shortage of cheap water in desired places is because of issues that come up whenever we attempt to store or move water from one place to another -- it's impossible to get a diversion tunnel or a dam build for the past 30 years or so because of environmental concerns. If you want a rabid republican complaint that's not brain dead, the rational complaint would be about California's courts insisting on protection of certain fish species being more important than giving the farmers all the cheap water they want.
Personally I think the court's priorities are correct for the moment, because the water issues are not severe enough to seriously impair the state's agriculture -- if they ever are, we'll let the fish die, but at the moment there's no need to ruin ecosystems.
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What ever technology you propose, this is the number you have to scale up to.
You mentioned LFTR which tells me you've seen something about them before. You should know that one big benefit of LFTR is that it can reach temperatures that are much higher than that of typical nuclear reactors, temperatures that make desalination much easier (and therefore cheaper) to do. Putting the LFTRs in the Midwest means that there is considerable distance between the reactors and the sea where we'd like to source the water, likely destroying the benefits of using LFTRs.
You should also know that LFTRs cannot melt down, at least not like solid fuel reactors. Putting them in an earthquake prone place like California should not be near the problem that it would be for solid fuel reactors. It should be considered in the design, for sure, but excluding nuclear reactors from California sounds to me to be beyond paranoia. I think we can figure out how to build LFTRs in California and gain the benefits that LFTRs can provide.
Also, I believe the security risks associated with nuclear power plants is overblown. Added to that LFTRs are useless for weapons even though it is a "breeder" style reactor. There are two kinds of breeders, fast spectrum uranium-plutonium cycle and thermal spectrum thorium-uranium cycle. The uranium used in the fast spectrum is U-235 and U-238, and the plutonium bred from it is Pu-239. U-235 and Pu-239 are potential fuels for weapons. LFTRs breed thorium into U-233. Thorium is useless for weapons, and a weapon from U-233 is only theoretical, people tried and failed to use U-233 in a weapon core. LFTRs are also problematic for weapon production because any uranium taken from it will be contaminated with U-232, U-234, and U-236, all of which are difficult to separate from U-235, are highly radioactive, and generally make the uranium undesirable for weapon use. LFTRs might contain some Pu-239 in the fuel but it will likewise be tainted with other Pu isotopes making it useless for weapons.
No doubt a LFTR power plant would be a target for sabotage or terrorism but no more than any other power plant. No need to require them to be placed only on military installations. They'd need security, that's for certain, just no more than a typical coal fired plant.
From what I've seen the biggest threat to nuclear power plants are the domestic eco-terrorist types. These people don't want to steal any nuclear weapon material, they just want to make a lot of noise to send some sort of message. The only message they are sending to me is that nuclear power would be much safer if they weren't trying to send a message about how unsafe they are.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
If droughts were a regular feature in that part of the world, then THE FUCKING TREES WOULDN'T BE DYING FROM IT. They would have already evolved to deal with it. But species that are NATIVE to the afflicted regions are dying off IN DROVES. That means they are NOT adapted, which implies that such events are rare at best, hence why they are DYING.
No, it's not a good thing.
~X~
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!
'The transit of an air mass containing radioactive gas released from the Three Mile Island reactor was recorded in Albany, New York, by measuring xenon-133. These measurements provide an evaluation of Three Mile Island effluents to distances greater than 100 kilometers. Two independent techniques identified xenon-133 in ambient air at concentrations as high as 3900 picocuries per cubic meter. The local gamma-ray whole-body dose from the passing radioactivity amounted to 0.004 millirem, or 0.004 percent of the annual dose from natural sources.'
There you go. Sorry for the actual fact check, but yes, the release Xenon could have had the massive net effect of increasing your normal background radiation exposure by an extra 21 minutes over a year..
Truly horrific!
Oh, and you need to look up the meaning of the word 'exploded' because your definition seems rather... odd.
Not to mention your use of 'wormwood'? which I can only assume means you are a religious nutcase, and using that to refer to the BS biblical 'end of the world' scenarios such nutjobs seem to like to claim every little thing that happens is? If so you need to be more clear..
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.'"
Look into ecology
He's demanding proof which already exists, he's not going to look into anything farther away than his own navel. And while he's there, he's going to think only about lint.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The invasive insect species have been devastating California forests since before the drought.
That, sir, is a lie told with weasel words. "Before the drought"? Only true if you take it to mean before this drought. But the pine borer really took off during the last drought. At best you are spectacularly ignorant of the fact that this problem was in fact brought about by drought.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Do you also love it when retarded right lies about their political opponents? Like when Trump spread a hoax news site's fake story about a protester was paid $3,500 as if it were fact and thousands upon thousands of Trump supporters repeated that story for the rest of the election?
Of course one bit difference is that the retard was Trump, not some semi-anonymous rando from the internet, which makes it just a little less lovable.
YOU LIVE IN A DESERT!! UNDERSTAND THAT? YOU LIVE IN A FUCKING DESERT!! NOTHING GROWS HERE! NOTHING'S GONNA GROW HERE! Come here, you see this? This is sand. You know what it's gonna be 100 years from now? IT'S GONNA BE SAND!! YOU LIVE IN A FUCKING DESERT!
Time to offend someone
Pretty certain most of the issues surrounding Nuclear Power in CA have to do with, you know, fault lines. Not 'hippies'.
I know that's now what you read about in the 'news', because rational thinkers hardly ever make it there.
Utterly ridiculous desalination by building nuclear plants along the coasts plan, and attempting to recreate the immense amount of water needed to restore Cali to semi arid status, complete ignorance of the byproducts - salt is the least of the problems there, is just beyond the pale. We're supposed to be smart people.
Let's pump seawater inland using solar thermal heat pipes, and use it to grow algae for biofuel. Harvest the salt for commercial purposes. Return as much water to aquifers in the process. The waste from the algae-to-biofuel process is compost, so it's benevolent.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If droughts were a regular feature in that part of the world, then THE FUCKING TREES WOULDN'T BE DYING FROM IT. They would have already evolved to deal with it. But species that are NATIVE to the afflicted regions are dying off IN DROVES. That means they are NOT adapted, which implies that such events are rare at best, hence why they are DYING.
No, it's not a good thing.
The problem with that theory is that the tree mix in California is not what it historically used to be. California used to be mostly Black Oaks and other deciduous trees intermixed with some conifers - douglas firs, etc. At least, that was the case in the Sierra Nevada foothills and lower elevations. If you go there now, you'll rarely see any oak trees - they were all cut down in the 1800s. The conifers were blocked out by the oaks and, since oaks take up more space, there were fewer trees in the same land area. Without the competition for space, the conifers really took over as they grow much more quickly than an oak.