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neebee
Social climber
calif/texas
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Aug 30, 2016 - 11:02pm PT
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hey there say, jose...
say, THANK you so much for sharing, with this thread...
very interesting, too, to see the stuff that ed shared, and
the memories from others...
and the notes on:
how and why, or what, yosemite does to our hearts...
or, did in the past, too...
and the photos as well...
sad to see trees die... as we wonder, too,
how things are going to be...
love the land... all the land, around us...
love yosemite, too, so very much, :)
edit:
thanks for all the links, too...
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SC seagoat
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, Moab, A sailboat, or some time zone
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Aug 30, 2016 - 11:49pm PT
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the NYTimes had an article on this today
Interesting article.
It has been "jaw dropping" to drive around the Yosemite environs and see the brown forested hills. Very unsettling.
Susan
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aspendougy
Trad climber
Los Angeles, CA
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Aug 31, 2016 - 12:02am PT
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Various areas of Yosemite have fascinating tree histories. Our family owns property at Aspen Valley, elevation about 6,400, comparable to Crane Flat only a bit wetter, historically.
Back when I was a kid (I am 65) there were huge groves of sugar pines in the area. Then someone found out that the breeding cycle of a certain beetle that killed sugar pines was connected with gooseberry bushes. So the Park Service (maybe it was some other agency) sent guys up to up to pull out all the gooseberry bushes they could find. We called them "the gooseberry grubbers". My Grandmother was upset, as she made jelly from the berries. At the same time we laughed, thinking, "Those damn gooseberry bushes are everywhere, they'll never find them all." After a few years, they discontinued the "grubbing". Not sure if it ever helped the sugar pines or not.
My observation in that area is that common Douglas firs have progressively replaced the pine trees, as they reproduce easier and are less susceptible to diseases.
After the massive fire a few years back near Ackerson Meadows (there have actually been two huge fires there), I found massive slopes with no trees at all, just huge amounts of manzanita.
They did a controlled burn one year up closer to White Wolf, but some local spots morphed into crown fires that killed everything. In some areas you see the trees coming back, but very, very slowly. The way forests change, it's on a different time scale than human life.
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jose gutierrez
Trad climber
sacramento,ca
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 31, 2016 - 12:50am PT
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Thank you everyone for your thoughtful replies, and for sharing information and memories about this phenomenon. It is true that the only constant in this world is change.
Ed thank you for sharing the Watkins image, it is amazing how different the Valley looks only 150 years later, and thank you for sharing that interesting (and timely) article. A lot of scientific evidence other than tree death in California points to the fact that we are going to be in for a bumpy ride in the near future. To aspen's point the forests change on a very different timescale than human life, which is why this rapid change has been so alarming to me. It has been the first real visceral evidence that the world we live in is rapidly changing, a satellite image of icebergs retreating is scary but when a place I have been coming to since I was a child changes in such an accelerated manner it really hits home.
I really appreciate everyone pitching in with your memories and knowledge of the natural history and how its changed in the Valley, since I realize my sample size is very small.
Sierra Club Bulletin did a study and good article on this
Peter do you have link or a copy of the Sierra Clubs Bulletin, I would be very interested to read it.
Some of the photos (areas near El Cap Meadow and near Foresta)
show trees killed by controlled and uncontrolled fires.... Clint thanks for clarifying I was wondering if this was due to the controlled burns or mostly the drought/beetles. I had thought that most healthy pine trees could survive controlled burns so I was not sure what the exact root cause was.
Thanks everyone chiming in and please keep the memories and the articles coming. At the end of the day I think DMT is right that Yosemite has always and will continue to be a magical and inspiring place.
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Radish
Trad climber
SeKi, California
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Sep 17, 2016 - 10:30am PT
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While Clint is right about the trees dead from controlled and uncontrolled burns, that's a really minor thing compared to ALL the dead and dying trees that are changing the landscape now. This is something that's just appeared in its massiveness at the end of last year. If you who speak haven't been up in the Central or Southern Sierra in the last 8 months then your in for the biggest surprise of your outdoor lives!!
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pud
climber
Sportbikeville & Yucca brevifolia
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Sep 17, 2016 - 10:49am PT
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Evolution has little concern with what humans deem appropriate.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Sep 17, 2016 - 11:45am PT
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You know, the magic kids feel in a place comes from their parents, not the place, generally speaking.
Talk of dead trees and how it used to be glorious? They may be bummed.
But if you still feel the magic yourself, and allow that magic to surface in how you talk, look and act there, I bet they will catch the vibe and maybe the (climber) virus too!
:) its not the trees
DMT
Dingus is correct. Let the kids 'find' Yosemite as it is. It's glorious for many reasons other than it's trees. Only adults look at at landscapes, kids at the immediate surroundings. They don't care.
As for Bark Beetles, can't we get scientists to investigate how to elimate them specifically without dropping a nuke on the Valley?
Science should focus on sh#t like this instead of sending scientists to the Arctic to study 'global warming'.
A russian team is currently pinned-down by polar bears up there. Somebody tell Al Gore the polar bears are okay, they're feeding on Russian dogs and scientists.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-scientists-trapped-polar-bears-arctic-weather-station-troynoy-island/
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Sep 17, 2016 - 01:25pm PT
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As for Bark Beetles, can't we get scientists to investigate how to elimate them specifically without dropping a nuke on the Valley? They're working on it. However it's already too late for the approx 66million dead trees. This is CDF's count.
http://www.readyforwildfire.org/Bark-Beetles-Dead-Trees/
The percentage of bark beetle killed trees is less the further north you go and greater the further south.
A note on the Lodgepole die off in Tuolumne in the '70s.
I was in the die off area this July and had a good look. The overall forest looks very healthy. There are plenty of Lodgepoles that appear to be about 30 years old. There is a scattering of still standing dead Lodgepoles in the forest showing that where I was had been infected.
There was a big discussion at the time. "old timers" wanted infested trees removed and the forest sprayed. Remember this is in Tuolumne Meadows.
Some "modern" foresters and scientists argued to let Nature take her course. This is what the Park Service did.
If you didn't know about the die off you probably wouldn't notice it now.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Sep 17, 2016 - 01:49pm PT
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So let's think about the 66million already infested and dead trees.
Here's CalFire's "drought related" tree mortality map.
http://www.readyforwildfire.org/Tree-Mortality-Maps/
Yellow is background mortality. The area where trees are dying of non drought related causes. Like Old Age.
Note the very large area of 15-40+ dead trees per acre. This is the red and dark brown areas. Many of these are old and very large trees.
The other interesting thing is most of the Sierra Nevada die off is along the 6000' or so elevation on the western slope. Running from the Tehachapi pass area all the way to the Oregon border.
Below the map there's a viewer.
This may be an artifact as It appears the Yosemite high country has not been mapped. One might assume it's not a region of high interest.
However starting at the south rim of The Valley there as a wide band of high mortality. There is a scary amount of 40+ dead trees/acre.
Note that these maps don't separate drought vs bark beetle mortality. Also this is data from the spring of 2015. The current amount is surely greater.
I was in the middle of this area over Labor Day weekend. This image was take prior to the devastating Brush Fire of Aug/Sept last year.
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August West
Trad climber
Where the wind blows strange
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Sep 17, 2016 - 02:54pm PT
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I had thought that most healthy pine trees could survive controlled burns so I was not sure what the exact root cause was.
If a forest hasn't burned in a long time and there is a huge build up of dead trees and other fuel load on the ground, it is hard to keep a controlled burn controlled.
There are also a lot of trees that aren't in the best of health.
My understanding: just a really deep build up of pine needles can cause a fire to smolder for a long time and can kill larger trees than would have happen back when the fires happened far more often.
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lcote
climber
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Sep 17, 2016 - 03:32pm PT
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The notion of wildfire suppression as the main cause of the increased amount of vegetation since the 1800s is overblown. As Ed points out in his "before and after" photo comparison, "The talus slopes on the North side up around the "Old Big Oak Flat Rd. are much more vegetated now then they were, as well as the slopes up to El Cap." It seems unlikely that the El Cap talus slopes were subjected to Indian or natural fires. There is an excellent book "Fire in the Sierra Nevada Forests" by G. Gruell that compares forest photos from the 1800s to today. In many of the photos there are "islands" of vegetation in talus slopes where it is unlikely that wildfires would reach that are now much more heavily vegetated. It seems to me that the major cause of the increased vegetation is the fact that the first half of the twentieth century was a period of unusually heavy rainfall relative to now or the 1800s.
I lived through an equally bad bark beetle infestation in Idyllwild about 10 years ago. Now one can hardly tell that the infestation occurred and the forest is healthier now due to the surviving trees having less competition for water and sunlight.
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Sep 17, 2016 - 03:37pm PT
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You raise a good point about historic bark beetle infestations.
The difference now is the huge area and number of trees affected at one time.
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TahoeHangDogger
climber
Olympic Valley, CA
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Sep 17, 2016 - 06:48pm PT
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Were there a smaller percentage of trees infected from previous bark beetle infestations?
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Clint Cummins
Trad climber
SF Bay area, CA
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Sep 20, 2016 - 05:18am PT
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Jose,
I was wondering if this was due to the controlled burns or mostly the drought/beetles. I was up on the Apron last weekend, looking down on the trees in the east end of the Valley.
There were several localized "clumps" of recently dead trees with the orange needles still on them.
For these clumps, this suggests localized contagion, so bark beetles would be a likely cause.
If this is true, there would still be the question of what fraction of recent deaths is caused by beetles, vs. (say) drought.
It could also be a combination - weakened by drought or something,
then finished off by beetles.
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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A snippet of recent history some may never have heard...
excellent book, overall.
But should wilderness be picture perfect? And were not Hutchings's elms themselves exotic? Finally, were not insect infestations just another form of predation, one whose short-term esthetic effects would nonetheless be erased by the new plant growth sure to follow? The point again was that those kinds of questions were just beginning to be asked. In the meantime, by June 1949 infestations of needle-miner moths in the lodgepole pine forests surrounding Tenaya Lake and Cathedral Creek reached epidemic proportions. Spraying was begun shortly afterward using a combination of airplane, helicopter, and hand applications. Again most prophetically, the chemical used was DDT. [45]
Predictably, doubts that spraying was either advisable or effective surfaced most often among trained biologists, especially those associated with preservation groups. The Sierra Club was most vocal; so too, faculty members of the University of California at Berkeley still frequently advised Park Service officials. Generally that role, like Joseph Grinnell's in the past, remained strictly unofficial. Stepped-up spraying for needle-miners in the late 1950s nevertheless provoked more widespread and even more outspoken comments. If only indirectly, scientists obviously still served as a most important conscience for government managers, who were not always as deeply committed to natural resources. [46]
By 1959 Yosemite's needle-miner infestation covered tens of thousands of acres surrounding Tuolumne Meadows and Tenaya Lake. The damage was most visible in the browned and dying trees seen from everywhere along the Tioga Road. "It may appear foolish to let a tree die, or to let part of a forest die," wrote David Brower, of the Sierra Club, summing up the consensus among Park Service leaders. "But," he added, immediately interjecting the opinion of knowledgeable scientists and preservationists, it appeared foolish "only in the short view." He next turned philosophical. "God made the lodgepole pine. God also made the needle miner. To oversimplify badly, He may have made both to prevent either from overrunning too much of the earth." Whatever God's reasoning, Yosemite during the past sixty years had been through three such epidemics. "The lodgepoles... are still there," Brower observed, "needle miners or no." Indeed one would need "an expert" to determine precisely "where the first epidemic of this century ran its course." Likewise people "might very easily pass the second one without seeing it." Brower continued, "Because of both of them, and similar epidemics in the previous century, you may have seen more meadow than you would otherwise see, and more mountain hemlocks." The lesson was "unmistakeable," he concluded. Nothing had been lost to Yosemite National Park; rather, the resources and their relationships were simply in constant change. [47]
From Yosemite: The Embattled Wilderness by Alfred Runte - ch. 11
http://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/runte2/chap11.htm
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monolith
climber
state of being
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Jan 16, 2017 - 02:12pm PT
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One good start to a season in 5 or 6 years does not end a drought.
60 Million trees have died in California and that's alarming.
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