# How quickly are we re-growing timber?



## Plasmech (Mar 3, 2009)

_First, a disclaimer: I am NOT a liberal, not an environmentalist **********...I'm pro gun, anti big city, anti welfare...you get the idea._

So how fast are we re-growing the timber that Paul Nosak is dropping on people's cars and the Ax Men are trucking out to the mills? I've always wondered this. Are the logging companies regulated in some way so that growth equals or excedes cutting? When they bulldoze those roads in there, do they clean them up when they are done and plant saplings?

How many years does it take to grow a fir for example that is ripe for logging?

Again, please don't flame me for being a tree hugger or a whale saver, I am not!


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## ATH (Mar 4, 2009)

Nationally, we are growing MUCH more than we are harvesting.

If you want to read more, the US Forest Service has a program called Forest Inventory Analysis (or FIA).

Your specific questions:
In general, logging companies are not regulated as to how much they can harvest unless they are working on public land.

Generally, when a road is put in, the road is intended to offer permanent access so it is not replanted. Otherwise, it depends on the forest owner's goals. For short rotation softwood clearcuts, yes, they are replanted.

Growth cycle depends on where you are and what is being grown. In the Southeast, there are pine plantations that are being harvested for pulp at 7 years with final harvest (clearcut) at 20-25 years of age.


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## joesawer (Mar 4, 2009)

Right now we are regrowing much more timber than we are harvesting. The current harvest levels are probably as low as they have been since the very earliest pioneers started harvesting timber.
The Sustainable Harvest Plans in this country came about over 100 years ago. Believe it or not loggers, and saw millers don't want the timber to go away. Just like a rancher does not want all of his cows gone. Google sustainable harvest and Biltmore.
Many states have a severance tax on every log that is cut to help fund reforestation.
I took a forestry history course at Auburn and according to it the forests of the western hemisphere have changed drasticly in recorded history. 
Most of the "virgin rain forest" in the Amazon Basin was cleared and under aggriculture when the first European explorers saw it. 
The first to record the Eastern N. America said that a wagon could be drivin from the coast to the Ohio river without ever having to get off to cut a tree or move a log. 
There where American Bison in Florida at one time, but by the time Andrew Jackson made it to the SE for the Indian wars, the under growth and vegitation was so thick as to be almost impassable. 
Many sources claim that there is more standing timber now than when Colombus landed. I know that there is way more now than before WWll.


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## moss (Mar 4, 2009)

If you look at current old-growth vs. historical old-growth distribution in North America it is a fraction of what it was. More so east of the Great Plains it is a miniscule fraction of what it was pre-colonial. 

The reason you could drive a wagon from the Ohio River to the east coast in early colonial times is because the forest floor is quite open under hardwood old-growth. Native Americans did quite a bit of forestry/land management thru intentional burns. This was primarily to open garden space, create better feed habitat for deer and other game, and to create better habitat for fruit bearing shrubs and small trees, like blueberries etc. Pre-colonial populations were not large enough to create large areas of "permanent" deforestation or to put old-growth into a small subset of the overall forest.

Pre-colonial eastern bison were adapted to the existing habitat. They did not range in large herds like the prairie bison. It's similar to forest and savannah African Elephants, same animal adapted to different topography and habitat. Colonial era changes to eastern habitat and over-hunting wiped them out much more quickly then the larger prairie herds.

Loblolly Pine harvested in the South for pulp at 7 years shouldn't be considered as coming from a regrown "forest". I'd call it a farm crop. I was just in South Carolina and saw a truck going by loaded up with that stuff, calling that harvest trees is a stretch.

Recreating a diverse mature forest can't be done simply by planting zillions of single species seedlings following a large clearcut. Just go look around Washington or Oregon at secondary (or third) growth in former clearcuts, it ain't pretty. It may be someday, not in our lifetimes.

There is way more standing timber in the east then there was in the late 1800's by which time most of the eastern forest that could be cut using the "technology" of the time had been harvested and the land converted to farming. The question is what is the quality of current standing second and third growth timber compared to pre-colonial old-growth stands.

It is true that plenty of the Amazon forest was probably cut before Europeans got there. It was done in a rotating patchwork manner, likely that in ten thousand years of human occupation there was never more than a very small percentage of the total forest cleared at any one time. There is no comparison to the current rate of deforestation going on there in the last 25 years.
-moss


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## joesawer (Mar 4, 2009)

Moss slow your roll and check your facts.
First the OP did not mention old growth. Read his question one more time.
The Amazon population was huge and there where sustained long term agg in large sections of it.
The eastern North American population was devastated and reduced to about 10% of its numbers in the 14th century. At one time they cleared and maintained large sections of land for agg. The biggest reason for the change in forest types was that after the population collapse the forest was not regularly burned in order to remove the undergrowth.
An African Elephant is an African elephant no matter where he lives. The Southeast was much different 400 years before Jackson.
I have no argument that pine plantations are not natural old growth forest. But they are sustainable and they are beautiful, and they take a lot of pressure off of natural forest.
The normal rotation on loblolly pine is not 7 years. First cuttings usually start around seventeen years. The only reason for cutting it at 7 years would be to cull it and restart a new crop. Many acres are clear cut and replanted at around 25 years because the growth rate starts to slow down and producers are looking for volume per year returns.


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## windthrown (Mar 4, 2009)

In the context of the OP, regarding the PNW logging on the show AxMen...

From my conversations with the forestry planner that prescribed our 85 acre forest plan, the PNW is growing far more trees now than were here when David Douglas was stomping around here in the 19th century (before the first lumber cutting). Modern planting and clear cutting is intensive, and it puts a huge amount of biomass on the soil, and it grows far faster than it would under normal 'old growth' circumstances, or compared to continually thinning or 'select cut' harvesting. Clear cutting is the main type of harvesting, and what they are doing on the show. 

The first year that the show was filmed mainly around the area of the Tillimook State Forests. That area completely burned up through the 1940s and 1950s. No one wanted it. So the state took it over and planned a clear-cut harvesting methodology that is being used there today. One or two of the first year epsodes showed one of the logging company owners cruising a stand that was planted in wrong-type doug firs after the Tillimook fires. They found that seeds planted from doug firs from other areas were not nearly as fast growing or as healthy as trees planted from seeds harvested from cones growing in the same area and at the same elevation that they are planted in. The coast range and west slope of the Cascades are planted in far more trees now than they had any time before, and with the fastest growing local types. 

Now, for the great plains forests or the north east forests, I cannot say. Overall though the forester said that the current US tree stands growing is way more now nationally than it was about 100 years ago, comparing 2000 to 1900. So along with urban and suburban sprawl, we have added forest sprawl.


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## chevytaHOE5674 (Mar 4, 2009)

In Michigan we grow roughly twice what we harvest. 

This is the trend all across the US, because more intensive forest management scenarios have made the forests more productive. Toss in market conditions, recycling, forest conservation and new building materials and its easy to see how we are growing more than we are cutting.


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## moss (Mar 5, 2009)

joesawer said:


> Moss slow your roll and check your facts.
> First the OP did not mention old growth.



I understand the thread is about timber growth rates. I mentioned old-growth in response to your comment about rolling a wagon through the eastern forest, an open understory is a typical characteristic of old-growth hardwood forest. I think you're over-selling the effects of Native American fire management on the eastern forest, it was just part of the picture. Same for the Amazon, you're talking theory not proven for massive simultaneous development of the Amazon in pre-colonial times. The timber growth rates are so rapid in the Amazon that it's not very useful for discussing temperate zone forest regeneration. 
-moss


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## S Mc (Mar 5, 2009)

This is a subject I have been trying to research for a class I am taking. The problem I keep running into is where the "facts" are coming from. All the forestry information has us "looking good" and others may have a different opinion.

There is a book Wild Foresting in which is illustrated a managed forest in Canada which has been in existance for 168 years. Some interesting facts: The annual growth increment is approximately 80,000 bd ft; it has been logged 168 times, once a year since 1840; approximately 7.5 million board ft of timber have been harvested; the standing merchantable timber volume is about two million board feet. They state that if this 100-acre lot had been clear-cut in 1840 and again in 1890, 1940 and 1990, the total harvest would have been, at most 5.5 mil board ft, and the quality of the second, third and fourth harvests would have been much lower than the wood harvested by the annual selection methods. Of course, there would be no standing merchantable timber today. They then state "You can do the math."

It has been said by more knowledgeable folk than I that clearing cutting here in the Bitterroot (Montana) does not work. We simply do not have the precipitation for regrowth. This certainly seems to be the case in that years after these methods, hillsides are still struggling to reforest and visible.

I always try to remember when someone makes a comment about what it was like "back then"...our frame of reference is simply not up to the task of translating a comment like that accurately. I believe Moss has a definite point in the old growth appearance allowing a wagon to go from the east coast to the Ohio river without "ever having to get off to cut a tree or move a log". The east coast was a dense forest precolonial times, at least according to what I have read. The prairies of the midwest, did not have many trees at all and so of course, the shelter belts that people have planted have made a significant impact in "forested acreage". 

One of the statistics that I have wondered about is are they reporting "forested land" being on the increase when all you need for an acre to be classified as "forest" is 10% treed. Therefore, 100 acres of minimal qualification could sound better than 20 acres of maximum; whereas the tree count with 20 acres would be far greater. (Have I lost everyone yet?)

A tree plantation may be a good manner in which to produce a product; but has a price all its own. Trees harvested prior to maturity never reach their full potential as carbon sequesters; and their management and harvesting methods are more closely related to agriculture than forest ecosystems. Therefore, even though they would classify as "forested" land and sound "ecologically friendly", are they truly? 

Sustainability is more than are we producing as much or more than we are consuming. You have to look at the whole picture, not just part of it; cost of production and long term consequences are integral to the equation.

Sylvia


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## HS Climber (Mar 18, 2009)

Well everything depends on whos land your on. is it state, private or federal there all going to be different.


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## Plasmech (Mar 18, 2009)

S Mc said:


> This is a subject I have been trying to research for a class I am taking. The problem I keep running into is where the "facts" are coming from. All the forestry information has us "looking good" and others may have a different opinion.
> 
> There is a book Wild Foresting in which is illustrated a managed forest in Canada which has been in existance for 168 years. Some interesting facts: The annual growth increment is approximately 80,000 bd ft; it has been logged 168 times, once a year since 1840; approximately 7.5 million board ft of timber have been harvested; the standing merchantable timber volume is about two million board feet. They state that if this 100-acre lot had been clear-cut in 1840 and again in 1890, 1940 and 1990, the total harvest would have been, at most 5.5 mil board ft, and the quality of the second, third and fourth harvests would have been much lower than the wood harvested by the annual selection methods. Of course, there would be no standing merchantable timber today. They then state "You can do the math."
> 
> ...



Good post man. You know the REAL "solution" (if we in fact need a solution, perhaps I pose the 'ol answer in search of a question yada yada yada) is to not build houses out of wood but to use composite material such as Trex. Of course that means oil...so what we need is a corn based composite wood.

Personally I like cutting the damn trees down, it's much more fun


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## smokechase II (Mar 18, 2009)

*Stand replacement fires and Stand replacement clear-cuts*

*"If you look at current old-growth vs. historical old-growth distribution in North America it is a fraction of what it was. More so east of the Great Plains it is a miniscule fraction of what it was pre-colonial."
........................
"Recreating a diverse mature forest can't be done simply by planting zillions of single species seedlings following a large clear-cut. Just go look around Washington or Oregon at secondary (or third) growth in former clear-cut’s, it ain't pretty. It may be someday, not in our lifetimes."*

================

A couple thoughts.

Stand replacement fires aren't pretty either. 
(Trivia: Western Washington and Western Oregon are one state - Eastern Oregon and Eastern Washington are a second state with regard to forests.)
I live in the forests of Eastern Oregon and Eastern Washington where we very seldom clear-cut but our forests look like hecck because of insect, disease and fire. Our best looking stands are ones that were thinned from below about 15 years ago and underburned deliberately about 5 years back.

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In the state of Western Washington and Western Oregon, where they clear cut some - not as much as 20 years ago. There is the argument that there is more old growth there now than several hundred years ago.
Reason: Fire suppression has saved more than logging has taken. The tree ring data shows huge stand replacement fires that wiped out stands on a regular basis. These large fires didn't happen every year. There might be 50 years between big fire seasons, but if those bad years took out enough that could be a larger rotation than we see today. 

{Think of a climax forest as not one where the largest trees provide habitat for all gentle creatures, but a CROWN FIRE environment where everything living above ground is killed. We use the term moonscape.}

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Life is too complex for just one thread.

Let's look at the Bull Run watershed that provides water for Portland.
It is West side (Wet side). Big trees and pretty.
That is just an illusion.
It will burn fabulously. I can say that without hesitation. I cannot provide a date.
Our current management there is to do nothing and hope for the best.

We could harvest in horizontal rows there by helicopter - across slopes to break up crown fires. The rows could be replanted with hardwoods that don't support said crown fires - as we have learned over and over. Helicopter logging would be too expensive for right now but would avoid the evil of roads in a watershed.

Simply. Our failure to log and replant there in an intelligent manner is going to destroy that watershed for somebodies lifetime. Portlanders are going to be drinking black ash and I'll get to say I told you so.

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I didn't say going in there and clear cutting would be a good idea. Too much increased fire risk among other things.
(The Tillamook Burns mentioned earlier were all started by loggers.)

***************

Does anyone want to start and finish the what is old growth thing?


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## BC WetCoast (Mar 18, 2009)

The term old growth requires an arbirtray definition. In BC, it varies by species. Most coastal species are 250 years.

The saying goes, forest management isn't rocket science, it's a lot more complicated. There are many demands on a forest some of which are mutually exclusive in the same patch of trees. Then you have to manage over the 'landscape'. Here are some things that foresters try to account for in developing a management plan:
- timber production - maximizing vs sustainable vs value
- recreation
- wildlife - those species that utilize a forest edge and those species that require a certain timber stand size or distance from an edge
- fish
- water quality
- jobs, mill requirements, market demands
- old growth

You have to find the tradeoffs and that's the challenge.


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## Frank Boyer (Mar 19, 2009)

Replacement of 200-1000 year old trees takes a while. We have many redwood stumps that are 10-15' across. Much of the Santa Cruz mountains was clear cut around 100 years ago. The trees that grow up from the stumps form a round group often referred to as a Cathedral. There is a big difference between a managed pulp wood forest/farm and an old growth forest.


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## Cedarkerf (Mar 19, 2009)

moss said:


> Recreating a diverse mature forest can't be done simply by planting zillions of single species seedlings following a large clearcut. Just go look around Washington or Oregon at secondary (or third) growth in former clearcuts, it ain't pretty. It may be someday, not in our lifetimes.
> -moss


Actually the opposite is true a lot of the time. alders maples, and others will fill in areas of a replanted clear cut but as the forest matures the conifers will take over and crowd everything else out. Go walk thru some of the big old growth on the Olympic peninsula and all you will see under the canopy are some scraggly rhododendrons here and there some ferns and a lot of moss.


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## windthrown (Mar 19, 2009)

I do not know about the Bull Run area burning. Or the Bull of the Woods. The snow pack is really heavy up there right now. So it is not likely to happen this year. If they do burn, there are examples of larger areas that had massive fire destruction and they have recovered completely. The Tillimook area had a series of huge fires from the late 40's though the early 60's. When I was a kid that area was a moon-scape fire-burned area that was easy to see from Highway 26. I go up there a lot to off-road, and I cannot see any evidence of the fires any more. That area has been transformed into a logging and recreation use area by the state. The lowly state. In my view, Oregon manages that area better than the national forest system does in the Cascades, or the BLM in places like Coos County where they allow massive scale clear cutting. They did a lot of clear cutting in the Tillimook area, as well as in the Trask and Smith River areas, and Elk Creek areas or the Sisters areas in the Umpqua and Rogue River areas up until last year. Oregon requires smaller area limits to slicking off trees though, and they require replanting shortly after cutting. In a lot of the more heavilly cut areas of the Coast Range, I cannot see how a major fire could sweep through any of those logged areas. There is too much variation in tree size and age. It is a patchwork of tree farms, and too many natural fire breaks. Not that fires will not stop happening there, quite the contrary. If we get a drought here in the PNW any time soon, a lot of areas will indeed go up in a lot of flames. 

Lately though I have been reading about all the damage of the pine beetles, and all the stands of dead pines in the western states. Seems like thay are going to be ready to go up in smoke pretty fast. That seems to be a major fire hazard to me. Are they going to log those areas, or let the dead pines stand in place, like they did down around San Diego?


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## HS Climber (Mar 19, 2009)

I live just east of 26. the tillamook fire was beacuse of alot of logging and drought. i think that now it just is to wet to have a big fire in the PNW. i am a firefight at a volunteer fire dept and we have had a few fires in the mountains but they dont burn hot enough to acutally take off we seem to always catch it. 
In school we have been doing some research about the pine bark beetle. the pine bark beetle is so bad now because all our pine forest are all the same age which is not a good thing to have. you want your forest to be spread out all aged different. You cant really log it beacuse there is no market over there for it. and if you have the money you can take out the older trees because thats what the beetle likes older trees. and with a absence of fire there its even harder to control some of the forests you get alot of under brush and juniper trees invading. so its kinda a bad situation.


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## BC WetCoast (Mar 19, 2009)

windthrown said:


> Lately though I have been reading about all the damage of the pine beetles, and all the stands of dead pines in the western states. Seems like thay are going to be ready to go up in smoke pretty fast. That seems to be a major fire hazard to me. Are they going to log those areas, or let the dead pines stand in place, like they did down around San Diego?


Lodgepole and jack pine requires fire to regerminate naturally. There is a a pitch on the cones that leaves them closed for years and require the heat from a fire to soften the pitch allowing the cone to open and the seeds to pop out. 

So how did we end up with thousands of hectares of reasonably even-aged pine. By fires that happened 120- 160 years ago. What caused those fires? Probably lightening strikes in areas where there was some beetle killed wood.

In beetle killed stands, there are 3 stages, green attacked, red attacked and grey attacked. In the green and red attacked, the fire hazard is the greatest as there are still large amounts of fine material (needles) in the canopy. Once the tree reaches grey attacked, the amount of needles in the canopy is almost nil, and as the branches fall off the fire hazard reduces more. Tough to get a crown fire going in a stand of telephone poles.


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## HS Climber (Mar 20, 2009)

Great point. but the only thing is, is that the cones need heat not fire. when a fire crowns it burns the branches, cones everything. so instead of the fire helping the pine trees reproduce and reseed itself it burns the seeds up. so when the fire is over with and years to come all it is brush and you have to replant your forests.
I was reading a little about the beetle and about 100 years ago there was an outbreak in pine bark beetles killing millions and millions of trees. just like what is going on now. so that is something that contributed to the even aged trees and by logging.


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## BC WetCoast (Mar 20, 2009)

HS Climber said:


> Great point. but the only thing is, is that the cones need heat not fire. when a fire crowns it burns the branches, cones everything. so instead of the fire helping the pine trees reproduce and reseed itself it burns the seeds up. so when the fire is over with and years to come all it is brush and you have to replant your forests.
> I was reading a little about the beetle and about 100 years ago there was an outbreak in pine bark beetles killing millions and millions of trees. just like what is going on now. so that is something that contributed to the even aged trees and by logging.



You're right the cones need heat to melt the pitch, but there are often cones on the ground that wouldn't get burned in a fire. Also you have lower temperature ground fires.


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## clearance (Mar 20, 2009)

Cut down thousands of them, the only good thing about dead pine is its light. I do not like climbing them, when you blow off a top it hits the ground, even a green lawn, and smashes into a thousand pieces. Falling them is sketchy, they are hard to wedge and the holding wood is no good.

Be carefull when you are cutting them down. 

Its pretty bad, the scale of devastation is unreal. You can drive down the roads at high speed for hours and hours in this province and you will see endless red and grey trees.


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## windthrown (Mar 20, 2009)

So, say in 2-4 years time, we will have a situation where the ENTIRE western north American continent is on fire? Like the San Diego fires, only 1,000 times bigger? :monkey:

Holy :censored:!


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## smokechase II (Mar 20, 2009)

*Snow as a fire predictor*

*"I do not know about the Bull Run area burning. Or the Bull of the Woods. The snow pack is really heavy up there right now. So it is not likely to happen this year."*

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The 1910 Big Blow-up in Northern Idaho and Montana was following a *heavy* snow pack winter. (Bull Run snow is actually closer to normal than heavy snow right now. Isn't it?)
The 1910 fires were over 3 million acres in just over two days and they killed over 80 fire fighters. This was the big event that started the US Forest Service down the road to 'all fires are evil'.
They were weather sponsored, of course. Dry late spring and summer. Lightning starts with Cold Front dry and windy weather. Ranger Pulaski standing at the mine entrance keeping his men inside thereby saving most of their lives. The usual.

------------

Snow Pack is a notoriously poor predictor of fire seasons.
{There is even reason to believe that a heavier snow pack can support worse fire seasons from a moisture introduction/more thunderstorm/more lightning ignitions perspective. How dry the late spring and summer are is the important condition. If those are achieved and there was a heavier snow pack that still has substantial remnants in higher elevations we can get the moisture needed for thunderstorm build-ups. Not only does the forest need to be dry but we need the ignitions too.}

===========

Having said that.
Nobody can predict fire seasons. Until they are over.

**************

What matters with the ecosystems of Western Oregon/Washington is that huge stand replacement fires have occurred there. Prior to Anglo forestry and after. They can be regarded as worse than clear-cuts in some respects. One is their size. 

Bull Run is going to burn.
History repeats.
How intensely it burns is a choice we have made.


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## smokechase II (Mar 20, 2009)

*Good point by Cedarkerf*

*Recreating a diverse mature forest can't be done simply by planting zillions of single species seedlings following a large clearcut. Just go look around Washington or Oregon at secondary (or third) growth in former clearcuts, it ain't pretty. It may be someday, not in our lifetimes.
-moss* 

----------------

*Actually the opposite is true a lot of the time. alders maples, and others will fill in areas of a replanted clear cut but as the forest matures the conifers will take over and crowd everything else out. Go walk thru some of the big old growth on the Olympic peninsula and all you will see under the canopy are some scraggly rhododendrons here and there some ferns and a lot of moss. 
- Cedarkerf*

This isn't true in the forest of SW Oregon so much. They tend to be far more diverse even with older stands.


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## Plasmech (Mar 20, 2009)

Disregarding cost/feasibility and just asking this for fun, is it possible to grow gigantic "old growth" type trees in a very short amount of time with serious irrigation and fertilization?


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## smokechase II (Mar 20, 2009)

*Yeah not really*

My wife's folks planted some coast redwoods in their front lawn.

Lots of water year round.

At age 60 they have stumps close to 4.25 foot dbh.

But:
They are not that tall. Maybe almost a 100 foot.
The wood is not strong like old growth. Tight rings mean strength. Fast growth means weak.

Their roots have been hecck on the driveway and lawn.
They need to be cut down and sold as decking to some environmentalist building a 'green' home.

=============

Old growth is like ####ography - hard to define but you know it when you see it. A large diameter doesn't necessarily mean old growth.


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## windthrown (Mar 21, 2009)

smokechase II said:


> ------------
> Bull Run is going to burn.
> History repeats.
> How intensely it burns is a choice we have made.



Well, everything will burn eventually. The sun will engulf the earth when it becomes a red giant. In 4 billion more years. Logging now is in the tank though, so even if we did have a good logging forest plan, I do not think that there would be anything to pay for the logging with this year, nor any use for it, market-wise. Not that they are going to log the Bull Run area anyway. As for the snowpack, it has been snowing about 3 feet per week up at the 4,000 foot level on Hood in the past three weeks, and the snow levels are all well above average now. The trees up there at the lower elevations have really long leaders this year, meaning there is a lot of water available and the trees are happy. Bull Run is also on the north slope of Mt Hood, and remains a lot cooler than the south slope. Hood is also a water catch basin for the pacific storm track and it rains there even when it does not here. I am not loosing any sleep over the fate of Bull Run to a wildfire myself. Not that it matters, the water we get here is from the Tualatin wells. And if I had my way we would be logging a lot more than we are. 

I would be far more worried about the dead stands of pines in the west. That area is massive. Bull Run is tiny in comparison. Dead trees in the great basin burning in a massive swath will be interesting. I cannot see how we will be able to stop that from happening. Never mind putting it out. That will be impossible.


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## BC WetCoast (Mar 21, 2009)

Plasmech said:


> Disregarding cost/feasibility and just asking this for fun, is it possible to grow gigantic "old growth" type trees in a very short amount of time with serious irrigation and fertilization?



Old growth usually is a term that describes not just the trees but the other characteristices of the stand (mosses, lichens, shrubs, animal usage etc). Yes, we can grow big trees with fertilizer and irrigation, but won't have the same stand characteristics.


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## windthrown (Mar 21, 2009)

smokechase II said:


> *Actually the opposite is true a lot of the time. alders maples, and others will fill in areas of a replanted clear cut but as the forest matures the conifers will take over and crowd everything else out. Go walk thru some of the big old growth on the Olympic peninsula and all you will see under the canopy are some scraggly rhododendrons here and there some ferns and a lot of moss.
> - Cedarkerf*
> 
> This isn't true in the forest of SW Oregon so much. They tend to be far more diverse even with older stands.



I have to chime in with Cedarkerf in this one. At least in the entire coast range, and even the west slopes of the Cascades and Sierras all the way to California and even into the Cuyamuca Mountains above San Diego. My observations of tree stands is that the conifers will indeed crowd out the faster groing alders, bigleaf maples, chinkapins, and other trees over time if the habitat is right for them. They are invasive as all hell, and they will even crowd out older established stands of trees like oaks and madrones. I spent a good part of 2 years clearing grand and Doug firs from the understory below a stand of 400+ year old California white oaks and younger maples and madrones where I lived just east of Elkton. The oaks were up to 120 feet tall with a DBH up to 5 feet. The conifers were gaining 6 feet a year on them. Several of the oldest oaks and maples had been engulfed, and they are dead now. We had to decide which stands of oaks to save and which to let the conifers take over. 

In researching the area, I found that the reason that the ancient oaks were there at all was becasue the Indians burned that area every fall for centuries. Then when they were forced out, the area was logged, and that 200 or so acre old farmstead was logged 4 times from 1875 through last year. They took the conifers, and left all the rest. That left a unique stand of mixed tree species for me to manage. The property is under invasion from two major forces; one was a growing stand of Doug fir to the west side, and the other was an even faster advancing stand of grand firs on the south. Where water is scarcer, like into the hotter areas of the Umpqua, Rogue and Klamath basins, as well as the central valley of California, Ponderosa pines are more common, along with oaks. Those areas are resistant to conifer invasions, and attempts to plant fir trees there have commonly failed. But my point is here that wherever there is good habitat for conifers, they will invade and crown out all the other species of trees, except other tall conifers. 

Here are some photos of some examples of what I am yaking about here. They are a mixed oak stand of mostly California black oaks, some Oregon white oaks and a few madrones. The invading trees here are a mix of grand and Doug firs. The oaks here in these photos are about 100 feet tall. The firs are anywhere from zero to about 60 feet tall. These are natural invading trees, self sown. This area was never replanted after any of the previous cuts. Rainfall that I measured there from 2004 to 2008 was between 60-120 inches of rain a year. Elevation is about 600 feet.


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## smokechase II (Mar 21, 2009)

*That's my story and I'm sticking to it*

*"This isn't true in the forest of SW Oregon so much. They tend to be far more diverse even with older stands."*

Cedarkerfs point on much of the wet side being mono species has merit.

My point is that not all of it is. SW Oregon in particular.

A key side issue here is that the diverse stands, where present, do have a far greater resistence to devastating events like insect, disease and fire. One thing that was re-learned from the SW Oregon large fires is that it is hard to sustain a crown fire when hardwoods are mixed in. The hillsides full of fir not so. They turn to toast pretty easy. Scatter tree species throughout that do not have the energy release and just pockets torch or crown. 

It is common for most of these large fires to have less to well less than 50% of their burned acreage be lower intensity. Pockets of five and thirty acres killed but not the massive stand replacement events in 500 - 1000 acre areas.

When looking over the aftermath of a large fire on TV note that homogenous stands are the ones most likely to be removed by fire.

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Difference between the Tillamook burns was they were stand replacement and at very high percentage. A reason for that was there ignitions timing and locations. All of the Tillamook burns were started by loggers in areas being salvaged by a prior burn. 

One needs to look at these burns as really 2-3 events per cycle.

In the case of all the Tillamook burns it was two events.
1) the first fire,
2) the second fire. (East-side in this era adds the insect/disease event at #1)

First fire kills lots.
Snags from the first fall over onto new growth,
Second fire has a great fuel bed.
Second fire roars along in a reburn area then takes out a newer unburned area too.
Loggers salvage that and start another fire.
There were five Tillamook burns - six years apart - and yes humans are prone to not learn from their mistakes.

==================

Here is just part of the history of that Tillamook burns prior to the logging fires:
"In 1918 the Cedar Butte fire burned about 40,000 acres all within the perimeter of the future Tillamook Burn (Figure 8 shows the extent and
location of the 1918 Cedar Butte Fire with respect to the 1933 Tillamook Fire). In 1931 a 40 square mile area of trees near the Tillamook-
Washington county line was destroyed, and in October of 1932 near the origin point of the Tillamook fire about 200 acres was burned. (Bunting, 1997. Morris, 1935). Thus it can be seen that fire was no stranger to this area
prior to 1933."
So assuming that making loggers be safer or shut down isn't the answer. These areas will burn over and over.


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## smokechase II (Mar 21, 2009)

*Obervations*

*"My observations of tree stands is that the conifers will indeed crowd out the faster groing alders, bigleaf maples, chinkapins, and other trees over time if the habitat is right for them."*

===========

My thoughts would be that the important component of habitat that allows for this is the removal of fire.

When we make changes to an ecosystem there are repercussions.

Look above at the fir comin in under the oak.
Picture the regular introduction of fire (the Native American thing as stated) by any source being the control. There very probably was enough fire by nature prior to Native Americans to do the same stand thinning.
(We don't know - understood - just a reasonable guess - thanks for the lee-way)


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## smokechase II (Mar 21, 2009)

*No need to wait for a supernova*

*"Well, everything will burn eventually."*

The key point here is that large stand replacement fires in Western Oregon occur in much faster timeframes.

They don't have to be as fast as Eastern Oregon to be of importance.

Also, again.
The snowpack and early spring moisture are notoriously poor predictors of fire seasons. Late spring and particularly summer moisture can allow for ignitions to do their thing.

Bull Run doesn't have to burn every year to be a concern.
(In fact if it did, it would be better off.)
All it has to do is stand replacement burn every 100 - 300 years (and be overdue currently - plenty of fuel) to be worth paying attention to.


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## Plasmech (Mar 21, 2009)

We should go into other countries under the protection of the military and take THEIR trees. God knows most of them take enough stuff from us...


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## windthrown (Mar 22, 2009)

Well the area I lived in (and the photos are from) is considered SW Oregon. And the firs there are by far the most aggressive/invasive of tree species. Alders are by far the fastest to re-establish themselves, but they are rapidly overgrown by the firs and cedars. After a road clearing, alders came in by the thousands. Lots of invasive species as well; blackberry, brooms, and hawthorne were the biggest headache to remove. 

It was impossible for us to discern what was 'natural' diversity. It was one of the few 100+ acre places around there with a mixed stand of trees. The mixed stand on that property was deliberately planted, created by logging, or by fires by the Indians. The topography varied, and there were hot areas that favored madrones, draws that favored red cedars, flat flood plain creek areas that favored ash and alders and oaks, and meadows that had oaks but were reverting to firs. The rest was fir, mainly Dougs and grands. There are some huge first growth stumps and logs that are still there. Mostly Doug fir. My own survey of several 80-160 acre old growth BLM tracts near there were mainly a mix of conifers, mostly Doug fir, some cedars and grand fir, and a few alders, madrones, and bigleaf maples. No hemlocks or pines are in that area now. 

Going back in time, the area was logged and replanted or farmed from about 1880 on. Before that the Indians burned almost every fall and lived in the area for several hundreds of years, or more. David Douglas made a good survey of that area in about 1860, and noted a thickly forested area that was near impossible to travel though due to the tangle of vine maples and steep terrain. However, that was after the Indians had been there for many centruies previous. Looking farther back requires fossil records. Coastal redwoods and other trees now extinct were common there in fossil records, and Ponderosa pines were far far more common toward the coast. 

In the end, we decided to clear out the firs under the large oaks to preserve the anceint Indian burning features of the property. That area is about as far north as Califirnia black oaks grow, and they are critical trees for habitat of several species of wildlife. We also cleared the firs to make the oaks more fire-proof. A fire through there with the firs as shown in the photos would have killed the oaks. We set aside about 10 acers of those oaks and meadows in the forest Rx plan. The locals thought that we were nuts; everyone said that we should plant Doug firs, or let the firs crown out those old 'trash trees'. It would be very interesting to see if the area were left alone for 500 years what would happen over time. Random fires, and invasive species, and all the rest. At best it is a war zone between plant species. I think that in the end, the firs would win hands down though.


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