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Old 10-11-2002, 04:40 PM
Donald L Ferrt
 
Posts: n/a
Default Logging for water - The New Republican agenda!

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,...1%257E,00.html

A clear-cut drought solution?
Logging urged to boost runoff, but eco-groups object
By Theo Stein
Denver Post Environment Writer

Sunday, November 10, 2002 - State officials intend to push a program
of aggressive logging that would change the face of Colorado's
high-country forests for decades in hopes of increasing the water
supply.



Up to half a million acre-feet of new water - enough to supply a
million families - could be created by sawing out clear-cuts in clumps
and thinning trees on broad swaths of federal and state land,
according to Kent Holsinger, the top water official in the Colorado
Department of Natural Resources.

Cutting mountain forests to produce water has been studied on small
plots since the Depression, but has never been applied as broadly as
officials of Gov. Bill Owens' administration now advocate. With
Republicans in control of the statehouse and in Washington, big
projects are now expected to get serious consideration from state and
federal officials.

"The idea of more actively managing forests to mitigate wildfire and
help restore water yields holds tremendous promise," Holsinger said.

Holsinger and other officials have been stumping across the state for
several months, promising drought-stricken communities that new water
will follow new logging projects.

"With scientific data showing active management can result in more
water for Coloradans, this is right near the top of the list of things
we need to look at," said U.S. Rep. Scott McInnis, R-Grand Junction,
who chairs the House Forest Health Subcommittee. "Heaven knows we can
use all the water we can get."

Mark Rey, an undersecretary with the U.S. Department of Agriculture
and a former timber lobbyist, said existing forest plans, which direct
logging on federal land, could be changed to help achieve state goals.

"We are eager to work with the state as we go through the forest plan
revision process to see under what circumstances we can agree to
increase water yield for aquatic species and downstream users," he
said.

Environmentalists cry foul

Environmentalists have universally panned the concept, which they say
doesn't work everywhere but is guaranteed to increase flooding and
degrade mountain streams.

"This is beyond harebrained," said Chris Wood, who was an adviser to
Forest Service chief Mike Dombeck during the Clinton administration.
"This will produce a tremendous backlash when people see what this
looks like on the ground."

The idea is simple: Removing trees allows more snow to fall to the
ground, where it runs off into streams and rivers during the spring.
Some forest researchers and many water users complain that Colorado's
high country has grown too many trees in the last few decades, trees
that intercept snow which would otherwise add to the snowpack that
melts and runs downhill to farmers and cities every spring.

Huge amounts of forest - between 25 percent and 40 percent of a
watershed - have to be cut to achieve this increased water yield,
according to the research being used to support the effort. And land
managers would have to maintain those clear-cuts or keep making new
ones to keep that extra water flowing.

But those same studies show that removing tree cover only produces
extra water during the spring runoff - when it's not needed. And the
largest increases are in wet years, not during drought. So logging for
water would require new and enlarged reservoirs, something that Owens
has already indicated is a top priority.

The Owens administration has been careful to cast this as a forest
health effort, saying that increased logging can serve the dual
benefit of reducing wildfire risk while providing more water as
forests are returned to a more "natural" state.

But the dry, over-dense pine forests that burned last summer never get
enough snow to be sources of water to begin with. And a major logging
effort in the high country will necessarily mean less money is
available to thin the Front Range red zone that burned so fiercely in
2002.

Generating water requires cutting the moist high snow forests that
only burn once every few centuries, when drought makes them so
flammable that no amount of thinning or firebreaks will help.

"The link between logging for fire mitigation and logging for water is
a false one," said environmental hydrologist Dan Luecke of Boulder.

Experiment tried in Fraser

Most of the research on how logging can increase runoff in the Rockies
has been done at the experimental forest in Fraser, where water yield
from the 714-acre Fool Creek watershed has been continuously monitored
for 60 years.

Foresters removed 40 percent of the watershed's trees with alternating
strips of clear-cuts in 1956, and documented a 40 percent increase in
water flowing through a gauge at the bottom of the valley when
compared with a nearby watershed that was not cut.

And the yield has been long-lived - four decades later, half of the
increase can still be measured at a stream gauge at the foot of the
valley, said retired Forest Service researcher Chuck Troendle, whose
work underpins much of the support for logging for water.

Flows increased the most during wet years, and almost not at all
during droughts, he said. That means the surplus water has to be
captured in reservoirs and stored - perhaps for many years - until
it's needed.

But Troendle also found that the number of high-flow days each spring
doubled, resulting in increased scouring of the stream channel.

The only large-scale demonstration of the concept was implemented on
the 4,100-acre Coon Creek watershed of the Encampment River in
southern Wyoming. Twenty-four percent of the watershed was removed in
patch cuts during the early 1990s, producing a 17 percent increase in
flow, said Troendle.

Two years ago, Troendle calculated that 185,000 acre-feet of water a
year could be created by a logging program that cut half of the 1.1
million acres of national forest land in the North Platte watershed
over a 120-year period.

But he also said any increase in streamflow downstream of the forest
would be so small that it would be undetectable.

Holsinger said the state intends to increase logging on the
70,000-acre Colorado State Forest in Jackson County immediately. And
he said the Owens administration wants all national forest plans to
identify increasing water yield as a primary goal.

Clear-cutting would be required on lodgepole pine stands, a practice
that would eat away at habitat favored by the federally threatened
lynx and other interior forest species. The result would be the
clusters of openings found at Coon Creek, which Troendle acknowledges
have a significant environmental impact.

"It's pure destruction," said Luecke, as he examined a photo of the
watershed. "It looks like it was carpet-bombed. This is an outrageous
idea. There's no way it can be economically viable."

Troendle said thinning could be used in the spruce-fir forests where
most of Colorado's water-bearing snowpack collects. But the proportion
of trees removed - 25 percent to 40 percent - would have to be the
same.

Success elsewhere doubted

Many scientists, however, doubt that logging for water would be as
successful in other parts of Colorado. In the 1970s, Richard Gaudagno
studied what happened to runoff after ski runs were cut at Eldora
Mountain.

He discovered that deep snow collected in the spruce-fir stands, while
the open runs were scoured almost bare by the winds - the exact
opposite of what Troendle found in the Fraser study just a few miles
away.

Troendle's studies also showed that cutting on the slopes with the
wrong exposure or too much wind would result in no new water.

And the environmental cost could be immense. Removing trees causes
erosion, which clogs streams with sediment that stifles habitat for
fish and aquatic insects, environmentalists said.

"You're completely altering the hydrology of these systems for a
short-term gain in water quantity," said Wood, now the vice president
for conservation programs at Trout Unlimited. "But the long-term
impacts on water quality and wildlife are immense."

Greg Aplet, a forest ecologist with the Wilderness Society, said that
the amount of water flowing off Colorado's middle-aged forests is
about to naturally increase as they mature into old-growth stands. The
uniform tops of today's forests may intercept snowfall, but gaps
caused by insects and storm damage in old-growth forests help capture
snowfall.

"These forests are just at the point where water yield should come
back on its own," Aplet said. "Why reset the clock now?"

Despite the official support, many environmentalists think economics
will be the idea's undoing.

"You have to ask two questions: How much will it cost and what else
could we be doing with the money?" said Luecke.

"The Forest Service has been losing money on logging projects in
Colorado for a long time," he said. "It's expensive to build roads and
log on steep slopes, and Colorado trees just don't get that big.
That's why the timber industry has largely abandoned the state."

"The fact you do need to virtually clear-cut an entire area to get
some measurable runoff - and then only in certain years - makes this
such a long shot it doesn't seem to be worth all that effort," said
former Colorado Natural Resources director David Getches, now a law
professor at the University of Colorado.

"We haven't done any planning for the state's water future, and we're
growing like crazy," Getches said. "Frankly, decision-makers have been
caught flat-footed, and they want to do something. I hope they don't
do something destructive."

"We're not going to solve water problems in the West by focusing on
the supply side," said Wood. "We need to find ways to be more
efficient with the water we have."
  #3   Report Post  
Old 22-11-2002, 11:52 PM
Brian Jones
 
Posts: n/a
Default Logging for water - The New Republican agenda!

Logging for water! well it worked in northern china! yes 10000 peope killed
by floods after the AMERICAN paper industry logged northern China! Dont
believe it? What do you think people are dropping airplanes on you for!
Forests shield the ground from the sun and keep it cool, rain does not fall
over hot ground, the logging has caused the droughts.
Its about time Americans destroyed thier parasitic paper industry and learnt
to grow thier own trees!
"Donald L Ferrt" wrote in message
om...

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,...01%257E,00.htm
l

A clear-cut drought solution?
Logging urged to boost runoff, but eco-groups object
By Theo Stein
Denver Post Environment Writer

Sunday, November 10, 2002 - State officials intend to push a program
of aggressive logging that would change the face of Colorado's
high-country forests for decades in hopes of increasing the water
supply.



Up to half a million acre-feet of new water - enough to supply a
million families - could be created by sawing out clear-cuts in clumps
and thinning trees on broad swaths of federal and state land,
according to Kent Holsinger, the top water official in the Colorado
Department of Natural Resources.

Cutting mountain forests to produce water has been studied on small
plots since the Depression, but has never been applied as broadly as
officials of Gov. Bill Owens' administration now advocate. With
Republicans in control of the statehouse and in Washington, big
projects are now expected to get serious consideration from state and
federal officials.

"The idea of more actively managing forests to mitigate wildfire and
help restore water yields holds tremendous promise," Holsinger said.

Holsinger and other officials have been stumping across the state for
several months, promising drought-stricken communities that new water
will follow new logging projects.

"With scientific data showing active management can result in more
water for Coloradans, this is right near the top of the list of things
we need to look at," said U.S. Rep. Scott McInnis, R-Grand Junction,
who chairs the House Forest Health Subcommittee. "Heaven knows we can
use all the water we can get."

Mark Rey, an undersecretary with the U.S. Department of Agriculture
and a former timber lobbyist, said existing forest plans, which direct
logging on federal land, could be changed to help achieve state goals.

"We are eager to work with the state as we go through the forest plan
revision process to see under what circumstances we can agree to
increase water yield for aquatic species and downstream users," he
said.

Environmentalists cry foul

Environmentalists have universally panned the concept, which they say
doesn't work everywhere but is guaranteed to increase flooding and
degrade mountain streams.

"This is beyond harebrained," said Chris Wood, who was an adviser to
Forest Service chief Mike Dombeck during the Clinton administration.
"This will produce a tremendous backlash when people see what this
looks like on the ground."

The idea is simple: Removing trees allows more snow to fall to the
ground, where it runs off into streams and rivers during the spring.
Some forest researchers and many water users complain that Colorado's
high country has grown too many trees in the last few decades, trees
that intercept snow which would otherwise add to the snowpack that
melts and runs downhill to farmers and cities every spring.

Huge amounts of forest - between 25 percent and 40 percent of a
watershed - have to be cut to achieve this increased water yield,
according to the research being used to support the effort. And land
managers would have to maintain those clear-cuts or keep making new
ones to keep that extra water flowing.

But those same studies show that removing tree cover only produces
extra water during the spring runoff - when it's not needed. And the
largest increases are in wet years, not during drought. So logging for
water would require new and enlarged reservoirs, something that Owens
has already indicated is a top priority.

The Owens administration has been careful to cast this as a forest
health effort, saying that increased logging can serve the dual
benefit of reducing wildfire risk while providing more water as
forests are returned to a more "natural" state.

But the dry, over-dense pine forests that burned last summer never get
enough snow to be sources of water to begin with. And a major logging
effort in the high country will necessarily mean less money is
available to thin the Front Range red zone that burned so fiercely in
2002.

Generating water requires cutting the moist high snow forests that
only burn once every few centuries, when drought makes them so
flammable that no amount of thinning or firebreaks will help.

"The link between logging for fire mitigation and logging for water is
a false one," said environmental hydrologist Dan Luecke of Boulder.

Experiment tried in Fraser

Most of the research on how logging can increase runoff in the Rockies
has been done at the experimental forest in Fraser, where water yield
from the 714-acre Fool Creek watershed has been continuously monitored
for 60 years.

Foresters removed 40 percent of the watershed's trees with alternating
strips of clear-cuts in 1956, and documented a 40 percent increase in
water flowing through a gauge at the bottom of the valley when
compared with a nearby watershed that was not cut.

And the yield has been long-lived - four decades later, half of the
increase can still be measured at a stream gauge at the foot of the
valley, said retired Forest Service researcher Chuck Troendle, whose
work underpins much of the support for logging for water.

Flows increased the most during wet years, and almost not at all
during droughts, he said. That means the surplus water has to be
captured in reservoirs and stored - perhaps for many years - until
it's needed.

But Troendle also found that the number of high-flow days each spring
doubled, resulting in increased scouring of the stream channel.

The only large-scale demonstration of the concept was implemented on
the 4,100-acre Coon Creek watershed of the Encampment River in
southern Wyoming. Twenty-four percent of the watershed was removed in
patch cuts during the early 1990s, producing a 17 percent increase in
flow, said Troendle.

Two years ago, Troendle calculated that 185,000 acre-feet of water a
year could be created by a logging program that cut half of the 1.1
million acres of national forest land in the North Platte watershed
over a 120-year period.

But he also said any increase in streamflow downstream of the forest
would be so small that it would be undetectable.

Holsinger said the state intends to increase logging on the
70,000-acre Colorado State Forest in Jackson County immediately. And
he said the Owens administration wants all national forest plans to
identify increasing water yield as a primary goal.

Clear-cutting would be required on lodgepole pine stands, a practice
that would eat away at habitat favored by the federally threatened
lynx and other interior forest species. The result would be the
clusters of openings found at Coon Creek, which Troendle acknowledges
have a significant environmental impact.

"It's pure destruction," said Luecke, as he examined a photo of the
watershed. "It looks like it was carpet-bombed. This is an outrageous
idea. There's no way it can be economically viable."

Troendle said thinning could be used in the spruce-fir forests where
most of Colorado's water-bearing snowpack collects. But the proportion
of trees removed - 25 percent to 40 percent - would have to be the
same.

Success elsewhere doubted

Many scientists, however, doubt that logging for water would be as
successful in other parts of Colorado. In the 1970s, Richard Gaudagno
studied what happened to runoff after ski runs were cut at Eldora
Mountain.

He discovered that deep snow collected in the spruce-fir stands, while
the open runs were scoured almost bare by the winds - the exact
opposite of what Troendle found in the Fraser study just a few miles
away.

Troendle's studies also showed that cutting on the slopes with the
wrong exposure or too much wind would result in no new water.

And the environmental cost could be immense. Removing trees causes
erosion, which clogs streams with sediment that stifles habitat for
fish and aquatic insects, environmentalists said.

"You're completely altering the hydrology of these systems for a
short-term gain in water quantity," said Wood, now the vice president
for conservation programs at Trout Unlimited. "But the long-term
impacts on water quality and wildlife are immense."

Greg Aplet, a forest ecologist with the Wilderness Society, said that
the amount of water flowing off Colorado's middle-aged forests is
about to naturally increase as they mature into old-growth stands. The
uniform tops of today's forests may intercept snowfall, but gaps
caused by insects and storm damage in old-growth forests help capture
snowfall.

"These forests are just at the point where water yield should come
back on its own," Aplet said. "Why reset the clock now?"

Despite the official support, many environmentalists think economics
will be the idea's undoing.

"You have to ask two questions: How much will it cost and what else
could we be doing with the money?" said Luecke.

"The Forest Service has been losing money on logging projects in
Colorado for a long time," he said. "It's expensive to build roads and
log on steep slopes, and Colorado trees just don't get that big.
That's why the timber industry has largely abandoned the state."

"The fact you do need to virtually clear-cut an entire area to get
some measurable runoff - and then only in certain years - makes this
such a long shot it doesn't seem to be worth all that effort," said
former Colorado Natural Resources director David Getches, now a law
professor at the University of Colorado.

"We haven't done any planning for the state's water future, and we're
growing like crazy," Getches said. "Frankly, decision-makers have been
caught flat-footed, and they want to do something. I hope they don't
do something destructive."

"We're not going to solve water problems in the West by focusing on
the supply side," said Wood. "We need to find ways to be more
efficient with the water we have."



 
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