ON THE RANGE
See the Forest for the Trees
By George Wuerthner, 3-30-09
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| Dead Trees are reinvested back into the forest ecosystem. | |
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There’s an old cliché that one can’t see the forest for the trees. It is used to describe people who are so focused on some detail that they fail to see the big picture. Nowhere is this failure to see the forest for the trees more evident than the rush to utilize dead trees for biomass fuel s and/or the presumed need to “thin” forests to reduce so called “dangers” and/or “damage” from wildfire and beetle outbreaks.
Contrary to popular opinion, we probably do not have enough dead trees in our forest ecosystems. And this deficit is a serious problem since dead trees are critical to the long term productivity of forests, and perhaps more important to forest ecosystems than live trees. Dead trees are not a “wasted” resource. It is questionable whether we can we remove substantial quantities of live or dead wood from the forest without serious long term biological impoverishment to forest ecosystems.
An abundance of dead trees, rather than a sign of forest sickness as commonly portrayed, demonstrates that the forest ecosystem is functioning perfectly well. For far too long we have viewed the major agents responsible for creation of substantial qualities of dead trees--beetles and wildfire—as “enemies” of the forest, when in truth; they are the major processes that maintain healthy forest ecosystems.
Recent research points out the multiple ways that dead trees and down wood are critical to the forest. One estimates suggests that 2/3 of all species depend on dead trees/down wood at some point in their lives.
Dead trees are very important for functioning aquatic ecosystems as well. Trees create structure in streams that shapes stream channels, reduces water velocity and erosion, and provides both food and habitat for many aquatic invertebrates. In general the more wood you have in the stream, the more fish, insects, and other aquatic life. Aquatic ecologists generally believe that there is no upper limit for dead wood in streams.
Once a tree falls to the ground and gradually molders back into the soil, it provides home to many small insects and invertebrates that are the lifeblood of the forest, that help recycle and produce nutrients important for present and future forest growth. For instance, there are hundreds of species of ground nesting bees that utilize down trees for their home. These bees are major pollinators of flowers and flowering shrubs in the forest.
Ants are among the most abundant invertebrates in the forest and many live in down trees and snags. Ants play a critical role in the forest, helping to break down wood, aeration of soil with their burrows, and protection of trees against the onslaught of other insects. One study found that ants killed 85% of the tussock moths that attacked Douglas fir and there are many other examples of how ants protect trees from tree predators.
And it’s not just wildlife that depends on dead trees. A recent review of 1200 lichen species found that 10% were only found on dead trees, and many others prefer dead trees as their prime habitat. Lichens, among other things, are important convertors of atmospheric nitrogen into fixed nitrogen important for plant growth.
Even the charcoal that results from wildfires burning up trees is important for soil productivity, helping to increase soil nutrients, water-holding capacity, and as a long-term storage mechanism for carbon.
Most beetle and wildlife events do not kill all the trees. Instead, they create a mosaic of age classes that actually increases biodiversity. Contrary to the popular opinion that beetles “destroy the forest” and fires “sterilize” the soils or create biological deserts, several recent studies have concluded that both beetle killed forests and the burned forests that result remain after stand replacement wildfires have among the highest biodiversity of any habitat type.
Notwithstanding, the fact that much new research suggest that both thinning or biomass removal are often ineffective at slowing or stopping large fires or insect outbreaks because these events are primarily driven by climatic/weather factors rather than fuels, there is the issue of whether the cure is worse than the so-called disease.
Logging, thinning, biomass removal and other forest management introduce all kinds of negative impacts to the forest ecosystem from the spread of weeds to soil compaction to alteration of water flow, disturbance to wildlife, creation of new ORV trails, increases in sedimentation, that all lead to the degradation of the forest ecosystem itself. Most of these negative impacts are ignored or glossed over by proponents of thinning and biomass removal.
In short, current efforts to thwart, and stop beetle outbreaks and wildfires create “unhealthy forests”. In fact, nearly everything that foresters do from thinning forests to suppressing fires degrades and impoverishes the forest ecosystem. Forest “management” is so focused on trees and wood products, that it represents a critical failure to see the forest through the trees.
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Comments
What I am trying to do is is suggest there is no free lunch. There is a cost to everything. And if we don't consider all the costs, we can't make good decisions.
Unfortunately our society is used to ignoring the environmental costs of almost everything we do--from burning fossil fuels that is contributing to global climate change to the loss of top soils as a result of agricultural practices.
We can make better choices when we account for all the costs. As a society we might decide that the hell with it--let someone else pay for our excesses in the future--the attitude that usually prevails. Or in some cases, we actually try to capture the costs so that people can decide whether they want something bad enough to pay the real costs.
Just remember Nature doesn't give bail outs.
Let me try another analogy. Most teenagers when they get their first car think the only cost is the price of the car. But as all of know owning a car is much more expensive than merely the purchase price. There is insurance, cost of fuels, cost of repairs, buying new tires on occasion, cost of parking the car if you live in a city, and so forth. And of course, we could throw in the environmental costs associated with cars as well--air pollution, etc. But teenagers focus on the price tag on the car sitting on the lot and often neglect to think about the real costs of car ownership.
If someone is going to make a good decision about whether to buy a car or perhaps what car and how much you might drive it, etc. you need to know as many of the costs as possible. All I am trying to do is make people recognize there are a lot of "costs" to biomass removal from a forest that are currently ignored--society is like a teenager.
Johnny I suspect you are correct that people will never volunteer to consider these costs--but those costs are being forced on them involuntarily whether they like it or not.
For instance, when you remove too much biomass along streams so that streams are deficit in dead wood and the fishing declines--your quality of life declines and you are paying for the real costs.
And when you remove the dead wood and the predatory insects on trees increase even more than normal (and episodic insect outbreaks are normal) than you pay the consequences.
We operate under the assumption that we can significant manipulate of our ecosystems and removal of materials without serious consequences. That's an assumption I'm trying to show may be incorrect. Until you ask such questions, you find that you don't get answers.
Those kinds of compromises are exactly what politicians are elected and paid to do and ultimately they must respond to the public--at least that is what we hope.
The timber industry and ORVs argue their perspective, and wildlands supporters argue their reasons--and the politicians make the ultimate decisions--and hopefully they reflect the public's desires.
But again the public needs to know what we are giving up before we can weigh whether the compromises are worthwhile.
In the example of the Great Burn that you cite, what we give up in terms of specific roadless lands to other uses may in fact be worth it in the long run.
You are making arguments in favor of protecting a core area--and the reason you are making such an argument is based upon good biological information that suggests having corridors of roadless lands are important for the long term protection of species. This was information that didn't exist 20-30 years ago but we now understand is important for the long term integrity of some wildlife populations.
Much of what I talk about in this essay about logging impacts, and/or the value of dead wood is material that was not known years ago. I remember when I started in forestry school years ago going on field trips in the Bitterroot Mountains to look at logging operations. The major objection to clearcuts was the effect on scenery. There was some sense that the roads "might" be a problem, but not that much documentation at that time. There were not many other problems associated with logging--or so most people thought. In fact, I can recall the forest service people telling my classes how clearcutting was good for the forest because it got rid of the "slow growing" old trees (which we now call old growth) and created more "productive" young forests. So they blithely cut the slopes of the Bitterroot Mountains without much regret because most people, including most of the people in the Forest Service believed that they were actually "improving" the forest by clearcutting.
Now years later, we understand that clearcutting had many other impacts beyond just affects on scenery and counting board feet as the only indicator of forest productivity is misguided.
So all I am doing is trying to make people aware that there are trade offs in any decision. Whether the trade offs are acceptable can't be determined without information. I'm putting out information that most people do not even know exists except for the scientists who happen to study say forest bees and pollinators, ants or lichens.
One example of this is the push for large-scale, centralized biomass energy production from national forests. While I don't necessarily have an issue with small-scale, micro biomass energy production, the logging industry and their supporters are currently working just about every angle to see our public forests opened up for large-scale mega mega-watt production, which would have severe negative impacts. For example, a recently analysis found that a proposed 30 megawatt biomass plant in the dry forests New Mexico would result in the complete elimination of all of forest biomass in the plants reach within 10 years. How's that for "green" energy?
My favorite WTF example concerning biomass logging on national forests is the oft-repeated claim from biomass energy supporters and investors that "the result would be a park-like forest floor, compared to the Black Forest of Germany" (source: http://www.flatheadnewsgroup.com/articles/2009/03/20/whitefishpilot/news/news_8762598013_01.txt).
Hmmm...So now we want to turn the public forests in Montana and elsewhere throughout the western US into the Black Forest of Germany? So much for wildlife, biodiversity and healthy soils. So much for any public hunting season.
No car yet. But probably coming in a few years.
To answer your other question, I turn it around. Do you know how much dead wood is needed to maintain ecosystem productivity? Those proposing to remove significant amounts of biomass should be the ones that have to answer that question. I suspect there is some level of removal that could be done without significant impact--but we won't even be able to answer such a question--if no one is asking it. Glad you asked. Hope someone can answer it someday.
To give your ants question a response. Not all ants live in logs as you noticed (good observation). Many ants live in the decaying wood that is in the soil. The fragments that remain and depend indirectly on the nutrients that that dead wood provides to the soil. And/or they feed upon the numerous other invertebrates that live on decomposing wood in the soil, meanwhile the ants tunnels help to aerate the soil, increase water infiltration, etc. so their presence may be more important than you or I suspect.
18,000 years or even 10,000 years isn't that long in geological time, but what we have in terms of soil, etc. is the result of at least that time period of accumulation. And we may (I use the word may not are) be rapidly accelerate that loss.
Keep in mind that most of our forests have only been logged one or two times at most. The timber industry started in the East, moved to the mid West and then the Pacific Coast, and finally came to the Rockies. Why because at every step of the way they cut in non-sustainable fashion. We are only starting to see woodlands in some parts of the US cut for the third, fourth, and fifth time, and we are finding problems we didn't anticipate--losses in productivity, etc. not to mention, increasing numbers of endangered species (and only of the larger ones we know about--who knows what has happened to smaller species like inverts).
Just to take it to another topic you might appreciate, we know that the glaciers deposited soil feet thick in the mid west. Yet our farming practices have eroded away a good percentage of that accumulated soil in the past hundred years.
We may have to wait a long time before the next glaciation brings us more of the top soil from Canada, and I believe a prudent person would be concerned about the top soil and nutrient loss. A similar prudent approach to forestry is needed as well, and largely absent from most discussions.
Mickey, I know you are a prudent man, so I suspect you will now agree with my cautionary note and impeccable logic. Smile.
Here's where we disagree. I think it's up to those proposing to alter natural systems to answer such questions.
That's the problem in our society. We assume that industries are free to take, mine, pollute--whatever until someone can show that there activities are detrimental. I think we need to reverse the burden of proof and put it upon those who will profit from resource exploitation to prove that they are not harming things--especially when we have some evidence there may be problems.
As for other biomass--you're correct--there are many other things that add to the biomass on the forest floor and in the soil. Glad you thought about that.
Chad Hanson, Ph.D.
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