Hazard Trees

[johnradford]

Yes, Boon, age does make time seem to speed up and gives one a false impression of things being different when maybe they aren't - e.g., the sense that more trees are falling than before. However, I think it is an objective fact that more tree ARE falling than ever before in the last 30 years, at least.

One example: I've been intensively using Cienega area for 25 years. In 1984 there were several large fallen Redwoods that were not killed by the 1977 fire but weakened or undermined somehow. But between 1984 and 2002 not a single other Redwood fell in that area that I could tell. One very large dead Pine fell 20 ft from my camp; that's all. Then in the past 7 years, a lot of Redwoods have been falling in that area. These are trees that, for the most part, have stood for hundreds of years, no problem. Now they are down.

SOD-killed Tan Oaks along the first 5 miles or so of PRT are another case in point. Up until around 2000 or so, one had only one good spot to see to the top of Ventana Double Cone due to thickness of forest cover. Now there are wide vistas opened up that were formerly dense with trees all the years before (1979-2000 or so). There have been reportedly hundreds of killed oaks around Pfeiffer-BS park and this kill zone, as it were, has rapidly extended inland in just a half dozen years.

A VERY obvious case is the top of Pine Ridge, which now has but 2 live standing semi-mature Pines to hang its "Pine Ridge" name on! I'm talking about the main saddle area the trail crosses (100yards outward of that area, there are clumps of living Pines). In 1979, that was a pleasant heavily forested ridge with just a few killed Pines. After 1999, maybe 30% of the Pines were left. Now maybe 2% are left (as in 2 trees). That's not my aging imagination. And the ridge has not had such a sweeping tree kill in at least 100-200 years, I think, because for that span of time the ridge was sufficiently left alone by fire such that a full, mature forest of Pines could develop. It will be another 100+ years before we see such, I hope.

Evidence of fallen giants does disappear, however. One fallen 8-ft diameter Redwood that I used for 8 years as a log bridge (150ft long access ramp right into my camp) was mostly burned up in 1999. I have not checked, but I expect that log is entirely gone now. Except for my memory of it, nobody will ever have known it existed and thus will perhaps not realize it fell. This, I think, is a rare example of large logs being burned up after falling, however. Usually, a large Redwood log will stay unrotted on the ground for decades if not centuries, is my bet. So if fall rates have always been roughly as at present, the evidence would remain for way past an human life span. This is only true of Redwoods, however. I know from personal experience in BS and in Santa Cruz Mtns. that fallen Tan Oaks can virtually evaporate in under 10 years. Softwoods decay even faster. But fallen Redwoods are there forever, relative to human lifespans. So some of the sense of recent activity is due to the disappearance of evidence of earlier tree falls but is rare and not observed by me over the past 30 years, wherein I am sure tree-fall rates are way up.

Anyway, human time frames are insignificant compared to the sweep of Nature's time. The Biosphere can and has been significantly destroyed time and again only to come back richer than ever. It's just the simple fact that humans my not be around to enjoy such a million or two years hence. Thus my unease about the rate of "degradation", relatively speaking.

But then again, chaparral and more open forest and young healthy Redwood stands have their own charm. In that vein, I guess I don't really miss the Dinosaurs or even the end of the mid-coast Grizzlies. I never knew them and don't know what I've missed, unlike many a feature in BS that I sorta do miss, now that they are changed or gone.

[Boon]

There have been a number of badass fires in the Ventana in the past few decades, which may explain the sensation of accelerating tree fall - 1977, 1985, 1999 and 2008. Or maybe it has something to do with the way time seems to compress the older we get . But the coast redwoods have an interesting aspect to their life cycle, in that one very rarely sees a dead standing redwood. Unlike pines or oaks or whatnot, they always seem to topple over live and die of their injuries when they hit the ground, rather than old age or disease while standing. It always hurts a little to see a big one fallen, but it's all part of the ongoing process.

Anyone interested in better understanding redwoods would really enjoy a book all about them by Richard Preston titled The Wild Trees. It's a fun, fascinating and informative read, with an indepth style along the lines of John McPhee. For the most part it deals with the redwood forests of northern California, but the Big Sur area does get passing mention now and then. Not surprisingly, the location of the southernmost stand of naturally occurring redwoods is misplaced as being on the slopes of Mount Mars.

http://www.richardpreston.net/books/wt.html

[johnradford]

I've camped in the Ventana since 1979. It's only been in the past 7 years that I've worried at all about falling trees. Now the hazard is, in places, so real, that I hesitate to camp in several of my favorite areas anymore. I think the forest has changed significantly since the 1999 fire and now the 2008 fire, maybe going back as much as 20 years.

Redwood Camp has threats to both the southernmost camp area (where most people camp) and the area adjacent to the creek crossing (where I always camp). There's a full grown Redwood, 80 feet from the upper camp, with a 20-ft tall/4ft wide slot burned clear through the bottom . The tree tilts towards the camp area and is plenty tall enough to hit it.

My frequent camp near Cienega Creek has had 10 big trees fall since 2002 within 50-100 yards of my usual camp, with one falling 4 feet from my tent site within less than 4 weeks of a trip in 2002.

A number of old (500-1000 years old) Redwoods fell across parts of Terrace Creek Camp and Barlow in the late '80s, I think it was. Anybody recall exactly when?

Anyway, I feel like tree falls are happening at a accelerated rate in the last 20 years or so.

It would be interesting to get some scientific verification of this.

[AdamW88]

That's a real tragedy and something we should look out for in the Ventana now.

This was a big problem and danger down in Pico Blanco Scout Camp over the summer, many parts of camp were closed off due to hazardous trees. I was amazed at even the damage to even the old growth redwoods which are fire resistant. One had a hole going down about 15 feet.
Even one tree was threatening the new fish ladder.

This spring, spending a night down there working on a project I heard two trees come down.

As I was instructing a class down there in July, a burnt redwood snag at about 25 feet long and 2ft diameter came crashing down on a nearby hillside. Ironically it was a Forestry merit badge class.

[dknapp1]

" A state park maintenance worker was killed this morning when a tree fell on him at a park in Monmouth County. The employee was one of two maintenance employees cutting down a tree at Monmouth Battlefield State Park in Manalapan when the accident occurred around 9:30 a.m., said New Jersey State Police spokesman Sgt. Stephen Jones."

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/1 ... lefie.html