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California trees 'smart response' to drought
89 Comments
October 20, 2014 4:19 am
I can’t even describe my disgust at people arrogant enough to think that “this” drought is something like the “worst ever”… have they completely stopped teaching History in California? Or maybe even teaching the meaning of the word history???
Last line… valuable “sneak peek”? At what, the uber mega-droughts coming from the dreaded “Climate Change”??? Just whacked.
It appears, that there were much worse droughts in western North America about a thousand years ago.
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/pub/cook/2009_Cook_IPCC_paleo-drought.pdf
Here we go again! If California NEVER got droughts lasting several years this century, THAT would be abnormal. Here is the IPCC stating that fact.
IPCC
IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007
Multiple proxies, including tree rings, sediments, historical documents and lake sediment records make it clear that the past 2 kyr included periods with more frequent, longer and/or geographically more extensive droughts in North America than during the 20th century (Stahle and Cleaveland, 1992; Stahle et al., 1998; Woodhouse and Overpeck, 1998; Forman et al., 2001; Cook et al., 2004b; Hodell et al., 2005; MacDonald and Case, 2005). Past droughts, including decadal-length ‘megadroughts’ (Woodhouse and Overpeck, 1998), are most likely due to extended periods of anomalous SST (Hoerling and Kumar, 2003; Schubert et al., 2004; MacDonald and Case, 2005; Seager et al., 2005), but remain difficult to simulate with coupled ocean-atmosphere models. Thus, the palaeoclimatic record suggests that multi-year, decadal and even centennial-scale drier periods are likely to remain a feature of future North American climate, particularly in the area west of the Mississippi River.
It gets even worse regarding the Giant Sequoia. They need fire for their reproductive cycles.
Abstract
Title Giant sequoia ecology. Fire and reproduction.
Authors Harvey, H. T.; Shellhammer, H. S.; Stecker, R. E.
Book Giant sequoia ecology. Fire and reproduction. 1980, recd. 1983 pp. xxii + 182 pp.
Record Number 19830685517
….The role of insects in giant sequoia reproduction; Birds and mammals, fire, and giant sequoia reproduction; Douglas squirrels [Tamiasciurus douglasi] and sequoia regeneration; and Conclusions and management implications. It is suggested that prescribed burning should be used carefully in giant sequoia management: hot, localized fires appeared to be the best for seedling development……..
http://www.cabdirect.org/abstracts/19830685517.html;jsessionid=2FEBFFB334139481E4F2B1F1131208CC
It’s worse than we thought!
California Department of Parks and Recreation
“Fire and the Giant Sequoia”
…..Fire helps giant sequoias in many ways. Small, green cones full of seeds awaiting germination grow near the crown of the trees, yet without fire or insects to crack open the cone, the seeds remain trapped inside. Green cones can live with viable seeds inside them for up to twenty years. Fire dries out the cones, enabling them to crack open and deposit their seeds on the forest floor……
http://www.150.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=27588
And if it does warm the Pacific ocean – there will be less drought in CA. The cool waters off the west coast of the USA are CA’s natural air conditioning, which makes it relatively dry. Dry air warms easier with less water vaporizing to soak up heat. When the Pacific ocean warms we get more moisture and more rain… Just sayin’
Those you collectively refer to as “they” are prepared to believe in whatever they think will make them appear “heroic” and to tell Reality and common sense to take a hike.
For the majority of the libcultists the environment, like any other victim class, is merely a prop in their own personal Grand Melodramas of faux heroism and courage and its true value is in giving them another opportunity to *prove* something grand, glorious – and false – about themselves.
Its about THEM. Its all about THEM. Its only about THEM.
Them! from 1954 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047573/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2
Tom,
Agree on the field trips (just like I did in elementary school when we wanted to learn something real world).
While I help design and build satellites and science instruments involved in some of the measurements we talk about here on WUWT, I am also a SCUBA instructor. I had a recent customer from NCAR here in Boulder who wanted to try scuba diving in our pool to see if he liked it. He is apparently in a group writing reports assessing coral reef health and impacts of global warming. When asked where he’s been snorkeling in the world, he listed two “tropical” locations relatively close to the US mainland. In trying to convince him how important getting scuba certified would be to his work, he seemed indifferent and never came back to get his certification as a diver. How can you possibly be an expert on coral reefs without going in the water?
Bruce
October 20, 2014 5:05 am
The Giant Sequoias have seen this before:
New York Times: July 19.1994: “Beginning about 1100 years ago (long before any human influence on CO2), what is now California baked in two droughts, the first lasting 220 years, and the second 140 years. Each was more intense than the mere six-year dry spells that afflict modern California from time to time, new studies of past climates show. The findings suggest, in fact, that relatively wet periods like the 20th century have been the exception rather than the rule in California for at least the last 3500 years, and that mega-droughts are likely to recur.” It may be politically convenient to blame the current drought on Catastrophic Anthropologic Global Warming, but it would not be honest.
re:antifragile and the Green Lumber Fallacy
================================
Researchers assume the trees are dropping their needles due to drought, because they only studies the trees during times of drought. They need to study the trees during times of no drought, to see if needle drop stops (it doesn’t).
October 20, 2014 5:25 am
I just hiked through the Freeman Creek grove, the eastern most Sequoia grove in the Sierra Nevada. I saw some foliage die back on a minor portion of the older trees, none on the younger trees. For the most part the trees seemed “happy”.
Up on the Kern Plateau the Red Cedars are not doing well in places- I assume it is drought related, The Junipers, which can be huge and magnificent, look stressed, but I think they will prevail. Further east the bark beetle is doing in the Pinyons on the dryer ridgetops and mountain slopes. I’m guessing the mountainscape will become a little less green as the Pinyons are more sparsely distributed to use the available water.
October 20, 2014 5:34 am
“Research ecologist Nathan Stephenson crawled around magnificent Giant Forest, checking young giant sequoias…”
How about: “… research ecologist crawled around an abutment of the Golden Gate Bridge checking out the affect of the drought on the structural integrity of the bridge…”
Is the guy a forester, botanist or what?
He’s an ecologist. Ecology is a discipline in and of itself. From Google, he works for the United States Geological Survey, Western Environmental Research Center. At its most general ecology studies the flows of energy and materials (nutrients) in living communities. At more detailed levels it may study the interactions of individual species with their environment or the interactions of local biological communities. Apparently he’s been contaminated by working around a bunch of geologists who shake their heads and mutter every time someone starts rambling about AGW and went outside and looked around.
Every geologist has had one or more courses in historical geology. Because of that, every geologist also knows that there is no evidence in the geological record of any climate sensitivity to CO2. Quite the reverse. You can, especially in academia, encounter geologists who word research results and grant applications to at least tip the hat toward CO2 and climate, but every one of them knows better.
October 20, 2014 5:37 am
Warmists are sick people. They have some kind of Nietsche-esque death-wish.
Looking at life they see only death.
Its a ghoulish necrophilia. They really do need help. They cant celebrate the wonder and beauty of nature. All they can think of is looking for signs of death from climate. If they dont find any they make some up.
I agree.
Just two weeks ago I was walking in a grove of old redwoods on the “Avenue of Giants.” There are not so many tourists there, and the magnitude of the grandeur made the few humans in the grove walk softly, in awe, as if afraid to disturb sleeping giants, or perhaps out of reverence for the sanctity of a sort of cathedral. It was quiet and cool in that shade, though around ninety out on the highway.
I was conversing quietly with a young man who told me engineers had long been in awe of the trees, because it apparently seemed physically impossible to pump water up over 250 feet, but the trees somehow managed to lift the water up over 300 feet. Only recently have engineers figured out how the trees do it, (and they are still arguing about whether the solution they have come with is valid.)
Considering the difficulties of lifting the water that high, it might make sense that taller trees have more signs of drought damage. It also explains why the trees soar up so high, and then taper so rapidly to blunt tops. However all this is merely facts and figures. There are no numbers that can measure the sheer grandeur of such trees, and it is a very great pity when people are not inspired to think higher thoughts, and instead cramp their brains, trying to think of ways to link redwoods and sequoias, in a single concluding paragraph, to the depressing, grant-grubbing subject of Global Warming.
” the magnitude of the grandeur made the few humans in the grove walk softly, in awe, as if afraid to disturb sleeping giants, or perhaps out of reverence for the sanctity of a sort of cathedral”
That’s an excellent point Caleb. As a hard-nosed agricultural scientist, I am always fighting against the emotional responses of people to “nature”, but when I walk through a grove of big trees I lower my voice. Awe? Respect? No idea, but big trees are certainly worthy of something.
The principle ecological limit in an old growth forest is access to light. The various species that compose the climax forest are likely to have reached very similar heights competing for sunlight. That is one reason that many trees don’t bother retaining branches near the ground as they mature, unless they are in savanna-like environments. Lower branches in dim environments do not pay off the metabolic investment. Since nearly all the parks were logged to some degree before becoming parks, they tend to be more open than the original forest. A ‘net search will show that the historical accounts of very large trees reports very similar sizes in the 19th and early twentieth centuries among Cedar, Douglas fir and Redwood in North America. In Australia the same size ranges are reported for 19th century Eucalyptus. An upper limit on tree height seems to fall between 400 and 500 feet, probably closer to 400.
The height of trees in modern forests is very likely more related to logging and lumber preferences than to something “natural” about the specific species. Redwood is a less desirable wood for many construction purposes since it tends to be brittle. It is very rot resistant though, and was used in California to foot brick foundations in foundation trenches (no longer permissible under UBC). It was also used as flooring, placed directly on leveled, compacted soil. Douglas fir has a higher specific gravity, is less brittle and has a higher elastic modulus. But it does rot more rapidly than redwood when not protected. It is a superior construction wood and was in demand for bridges, trestles and wall framing and still is.
If you research the political battles over the establishment of the big parks that preserve redwoods, the redwoods were a concession that allowed continued cutting of Douglas fir that were easily as magnificent as redwood. The main time of demand for redwood was passing, and the remaining old growth simply wasn’t going to last much longer if logging continued. Only a few corporate raiders were really pinched.
I had always heard that the moist air coming off of the Pacific was important to their health and ability to grow so large. There used to be extensive seasonal fog in areas along most of the coast all the way up until the mid 1970s. Then there was a decrease in the strength and duration of the fog belt for decades. At the beginning of this year my brother asked me if I remembered the old fog of the 1950/60s. I replied affirmative and he responded “well it’s back”. I remember fog where I couldn’t see the buildings across the street, and on occasion even heavier than that, in San Francisco.
October 20, 2014 6:09 am
not sure what the point of the article was-
They have already established the important part-
“They’ve done it before. Sequoias, the largest trees on the planet, have lived through a centuries-long dry spell in the last 1,200 years, according to the Tree Ring Laboratory at the University of Arizona”
October 20, 2014 6:49 am
” As Bekker and his co-authors report in the Journal of the American Water Resources Association, the west’s climate usually fluctuates far more than it did in the 1900s. The five previous centuries each saw more years of extremely dry and extremely wet climate conditions.”
http://phys.org/news/2014-05-tree-reveal-nightmare-droughts-west.html
Looks like the 1900s been a walk in the park in west US, climate change will fix that.
October 20, 2014 7:00 am
Here in the Pacific North West we have no shortage of rainfall, yet evergreens routinely shed their older needles in favor of new growth. The reason is clearly not drought, it is sunlight.
The older needles are shaded from the sunlight by new growth, such that it is more efficient for the trees to drop these needles as they are not producing any benefit to the tree.
Carried to the extreme, we find trees like the Douglas Fir that drop old branches because they are not receiving sunlight. It is not unusual to find a 200 foot high tree bare of branches for the lower 150 feet.
One of the logging hazards when felling trees is that the vibration of the chainsaw will shake lose a branch that is ready to drop. A 1000+ pound branch falling from 100+ feet can spoil your day.
October 20, 2014 7:12 am
Browning of Evergreens
Autumn Needle Shed
The loss of older interior needles in the fall is a natural process, which is often confused with injury, disease or insects. This process usually goes unnoticed since the needles on the inside of the conifer are concealed by the foliage on the exterior of the tree. Leaf drop on evergreens usually takes place gradually, but there are occasions when many leaves will discolour simultaneously, and the tree or shrub may appear to be dying.
http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/all/agdex4144
October 20, 2014 7:17 am
Climate science being what it is, finds it is more interesting to take one event from one species, in one region, in one selected time frame and come up with a plethora of generalized theories about anything or everything. In cognitive physcology, it is one of the ways we delude ourselves, the term for it I think is called over-generalization.
October 20, 2014 7:19 am
From the article:
he glanced upward and saw something startling.
“The foliage had died back on a much larger sequoia above me. It makes sense, but it surprised me a little.”
The brown needles on a 3,000-year-old tree are a smart response to drought, Stephenson said. The trees dump their old foliage when they get drought-stressed and focus on new growth.
*************************************
So which is it? If Stephenson knows that stressed trees dump old foliage, why was he “startled” and “surprised” when he saw it??
October 20, 2014 7:23 am
more: Autumn Needle Shed
“Any factors that increase stress on evergreens will intensify autumn needle drop. ”
http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/all/agdex4144
===
Apparently the Alberta Department of Agriculture knows a lot more about evergreens shedding leaves than does the U.S. Geological Survey.
“But at some point, he glanced upward and saw something startling.”
Something that the Alberta department of Agriculture already knows and has documented. Apparently a bunch of ex-cowboys living in a place where trees barely grow, that make a living cleaning up the oil that spilled out of the mountains when the Rockies were formed, apparently they know a lot more about trees than the Yanks living to the south.
That is what happens when you are spared the advantages of the “made in California” educational system.
October 20, 2014 7:46 am
Do you remember the German Waldsterben-hysteria in the 1980’s?. It was the same effect: The climate hat grown drier, the tree crowns thinned out. In 1994 it was all over. The climate became wetter again, the crowns becamer denser, the forests survived and the country had only lost some billion D-Marks. It was much cheaper than the war on CO2.
I do remember that. What amazes me is that we think trees, some with a lifespan of up to a millennium have evolved to handle droughts. Evolution in fruit flies, with a lifespan measured in days, or bacteria, which produce new generations in hours or minutes, is quite comprehensible. But to live for 1 000 years, have droughts of perhaps 20 years, have die-offs and natural selection make incremental changes leading to strategies of drought resistance, requires an almost unimaginable length of time. Yet, go to California or Germany to look for these trees, and there they are.
Instead of stressed-out plants, he found young trees that looked pretty happy, he said. But at some point, he glanced upward and saw something startling.
“The foliage had died back on a much larger sequoia above me,” said Stephenson, a sequoia authority who works for the U.S. Geological Survey. “It’s not happening to all of them, but there is a subset of bigger trees showing stress. It makes sense, but it surprised me a little.”
The brown needles on a 3,000-year-old tree are a smart response to drought, Stephenson said. The trees dump their old foliage when they get drought-stressed and focus on new growth.
But the bigger takeaway: Nature may hold a few surprises as the climate warms this century for giant sequoias and other plants and animals. California’s intense drought is giving scientists a valuable sneak peek.
Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2014/10/18/4184871_giant-sequoias-may-surprise-us.html?sp=/99/217/&rh=1#storylink=cpy