From the NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION and the “tree huggers nightmare” department
Billions of gallons of water saved by thinning forests
Too many trees in Sierra Nevada forests stress water supplies, scientists say
There are too many trees in Sierra Nevada forests, say scientists affiliated with the National Science Foundation (NSF) Southern Sierra Critical Zone Observatory (CZO).
That may come as a surprise to those who see dense, verdant forests as signs of a healthy environment. After all, green is good, right? Not necessarily. When it comes to the number of trees in California forests, bigger isn’t always better.
That’s in part because trees use lots of water to carry out basic biological tasks. In addition, they act as forest steam stacks, raking up water stored in the ground and expelling it as vapor into the atmosphere, where it’s accessible to humans and forest ecosystems only when it falls back to Earth as rain and snow.
Eric Knapp, USFS
That process — by which plants emit water through tiny pores in their leaves — is known as evapotranspiration. And according to researchers, excessive evapotranspiration may harm a fragile California water system, especially during prolonged, warm droughts.
New research published this week in the journal Ecohydrology shows that water loss from evapotranspiration has decreased significantly over the past three decades. That’s due in large part to wildfire-driven forest thinning — a finding with important implications for forest and water management.
A century of forest management had kept wildfires to a minimum. But without fire, Sierra forests grew very dense. In recent decades, new policies have allowed nature to take its course, with wildfires helping to thin out overgrown forests.
“Forest wildfires are often considered disasters,” said Richard Yuretich, director of NSF’s CZO program, which funded the research. “But fire is part of healthy forest ecosystems. By thinning out trees, fires can reduce water stress in forests and ease water shortages during droughts. And by reducing the water used by plants, more rainfall flows into rivers and accumulates in groundwater.”
Using data from CZO measurement towers and U.S. Geological Survey satellites, researchers found that over the period 1990 to 2008, fire-thinned forests saved 3.7 billion gallons of water annually in California’s Kings River Basin and a whopping 17 billion gallons of water annually in the American River Basin — water that would otherwise have been lost through evapotranspiration.
Forest thinning has increased in recent decades in an effort to stave off disastrous wildfires fueled by dense forests. This study shows that restoring forests through mechanical thinning or wildfire can also save California billions of gallons of water each year.
Roger Bales, UC Merced
“The need for forest restoration is being driven largely by the need to lower the risk of high-intensity wildfires and restore forest health,” said University of California Merced scientist Roger Bales, director of the Southern Sierra CZO and study co-author. “Downstream users who benefit from the increased water yield are an important potential revenue stream that can help offset some of the costs of restoration.”
Forested areas needing restoration are large, Bales said, but potential changes in water availability are significant. The total effect of wildfires over a 20-year period suggests that forest thinning could increase water flow from Sierra Nevada watersheds by as much as 10 percent.
The U.S. Forest Service says that 6 to 8 of the 21-million acres it manages in California need immediate restoration. Another 58 million acres nationally also require restoration. For California alone, restoration costs are estimated at $5 to $10 billion. But, according to the study authors, the restoration might help pay for itself.
“We’ve known for some time that managed forest fires are the only way to restore the majority of overstocked western forests and reduce the risk of catastrophic fires,” said James Roche, a National Park Service hydrologist and lead author of the new study. “We can now add the potential benefit of increased water yield from these watersheds.”
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This ‘result’ is so ludicrous that you just know it is nonsense.
Too many trees are at least partly caused by too many years of aggressively fighting all forest fires.
It is amazing that Nature was able to survive all those millions, billions of years without constant advice and intervention from well-meaning but deluded scientists and tree-huggers.
Oh the billions. Everybody think of the billions of gallons.
Right then. I’ll think of the billions of gallons.
While on my little patch of Cumbria, which extended to 255 acres (call it 100 Hectares), every rear typically, 225 million gallons of water fell onto that little patch.
Call it one quarter of a billion.
On 100 hectares.
And the Sierra is how big….
Somebody buy these muppets a One Big Phat Dlido and help them with their problem.
gotta laff havent ya
sigh
To read something like this that has support from within the U.S. Forest Service and the National Park Service is absolutely astounding. Are there now rational thinking emanating from within the
Department of interior? What has happened?
Are the likes of Maureen Hyzer and associates within the US Forest Service being caged? Where are their shrill cries? They were certain that the National Forest system belongs to them and them only and everyone else should be restricted or forced retirement. Anyway, Hyzer got a big promotion to go back to Washington state from Virginia. She did all the damage she could do in VA with regards to the reputation of the Forest Service. Her appointments and policies in VA still linger, so her legacy continues but only viewed as positive by those appointed within her reign. My sympathies to WA but she spawned there and migrated back.
Transpiration cools the planet. That is what cooling towers are there to do.
A further point: Trees do it more efficiently than cooling towers.
So wild fires are good for California. It is far cheaper to start more fires than it is to fight them. California’s water supply would also increase if so much of it was no longer used by agriculture. So maybe California would be better off if all forms of agriculture were banned by law. Arson should be legalized in California and it should be illegal to fight fires. Such laws would also help to rid California of excess population. Drastically reducing population in California would serve to further reduce water usage and also very significantly reduce California’s carbon footprint. So in California instead of being prosecuted, arsonists should be paid for their services to humanity.
What this article told me is that some people in California finally figured out that forests and the ecosystem are healthier when they don’t exclude fire in a fire driven system. They are also saying that they so screwed up for such a long time by excluding fire that it is going to cost a lot of taxpayers money to bring back the natural cycle. Of course they will not admit that selective harvest would speed up the process and offset cost. Still I am not sure about their billions of dollars required.
A true Earth lover would say that trees were there first, and so it is TREES that have first rights to the water, NOT the HUMAN populations of surrounding (invading) cities that drink it.
So, … tough cookies, California humans! You’ll just have to suffer, because trees are a more important part of this region of Mother Earth. Parasitic humans sucking down the trees’ water are the true problem, and, surely, California enviromaniacs can comprehend this and accept the consequences.
Let the trees live and thrive, and force cities to thin their human numbers, either by foregoing child birth, dying of thirst, or systematic “harvesting” of the excess. It’s the only right way to handle things.
I’m from the government and I’m here to help.
Thanks for nothing.
10% more water means 10% more water used means right back to water shortages and the same mess we have now. I have nothing against forest management—I think thinning and clearing are good—but it won’t fix the problem, just temporarily delay it.
Responsible logging is a great way to manage forests. Maybe we will see a return of a logging industry in California.
For some reason … this always pops into my mind when I hear that … “every TREE is sacred”
https://youtu.be/fUspLVStPbk
Mass balance in flows in processes are paramount in quantitative evaluation issues in climate, chemical engineering, metallurgy, medicine…and it is a metric that climate scientists seem to be totally unaware of. They talk in qualitative, compartmented ways one hears from a pupil presenting a highschool study project.
Heck when you burn down a forest you likely release 3.5 billion gallons contained in the trees, shrubs and soil. How many gallons of water does a tree hold? And another bunch of gallons hosing the fires. And then new growth grows rampant to replace the cut forest. Also cutting will reduce the transpiration but exposure of the ground to the hot sun will increase direct evapo. Note, horrors of horrors, that elevated CO2 reduces a plant’s water demand so it has been mitigating itself.
What about that 10% added flow in streams. It is also a change in a process ‘stream’. Since enviros are loathe to allow water control structures, a good part of it just goes to add itself to the ocean! In their mindset the increase is simply an unspecified benefit of it’s own.
In their compartmented study of water conservation (for nothing in particular), they forgot to think about what happens in a heavy rainy season that’s certain to happen? NOW it would be handy to have all that vegetation to protect the soil and mitigate other common forms of preventable California disaster, mudslides and and floods. The Sierra Nevada rivers would be running not 10% more but 300% more, flooding communities, taking out infrastructure etc., killing people.
Calfornia needlessly suffers all this because of the lock that Democrat, mentally bankrupt minds have on political office there. I’d love to manage a project that would make California a Garden of Eden state. I’d start with a water mass balance network averaged over a couple of decades or two with its variances . It would include repurposing the city rain water diversion channel flows.
Or they could start charging almond farms for excessive water use. Natu forests don’t import water from other areas.
“…A century of forest management had kept wildfires to a minimum. But without fire, Sierra forests grew very dense. In recent decades, new policies have allowed nature to take its course, with wildfires helping to thin out overgrown forests….”
New policies? I thought climate change was causing those wildfires.
Cue: More wailing and gnashing of teeth about so-called global warming.
Wonder if this opens the door for CA to be sued by NV for reducing downstream water vapor.