The California Drought Is So Bad, It Might Be Killing The Giant Sequoia

[Fearless]

A full-grown giant sequoia is a thirsty tree. In the height of summer, the millenia-old behemoths, some of which grow upwards of 30 stories tall, can guzzle 500 to 800 gallons of water per day. They can also survive a variety of scourges that would fell an inferior conifer -- beetles, wildfires, storms. But scientists are worried the species may have met its match in the ongoing California drought.

Nate Stephenson, a research ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, was walking through the woods last year when he noticed some of the trees he'd been studying for decades had dropped most of their leaves. He joined forces with other researchers from the USGS, as well as from the National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, Stanford University, UC Berkeley and the Carnegie Airborne Observatory, to launch a comprehensive health study on the sequoia.

Anthony Ambrose, a tree ecologist at University of California, Berkeley, led a recent bout of fieldwork to monitor how stressed the sequoia have been, and if, in fact, we should be worried about their longevity. A few weeks from now, his team plans to collect a slew of samples from more than 50 trees that have dropped up to 75 percent of their leaves. He hopes the research can provide real-time data to forest managers who can prioritize care for threatened trees...

Koren Nydick, a lead author of the study, spoke with Ezra David Romero of NPR affiliate Valley Public Radio about the prospect of a drought felling the giants. Nothing's been corroborated by science yet, but it's clear something unusual is bothering the trees.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/california-drought-giant-sequoia_55d1edcfe4b0ab468d9db8e7?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000013&section=politics

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[silverweb]

1. California has lost over a million trees to the drought already.

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]Losing more is a very real and immediate threat. In Sacramento, we've been on twice-a-week watering restrictions for some time, but have now been told, "Forget the grass, save the trees."

Loss of many more trees, including the giant sequoia, is a very real threat. Despite the danger of floods and mudslides, I have to hope that the El Nino comes through this year. The whole state desperately needs the water.

[Fearless]

5. Agreed wholeheartedly!

It's a terrible thing to see trees that have stood on the same ground since the start of the Iron Age in such a condition. Absolutely terrible.

[silverweb]

16. Trees are essential in so many ways.

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]The destruction can only be undone by Mother Nature in her own good time.

It is terrible, especially considering that we are the cause of that destruction. So many people just don't get it.

[shanti]

10. hi neighbor!

two of the houses nearby cut down their 50 ft trees this year, and it's really made a (negative) difference. the one directly next door used to provide shade for my home as well as his, but it's made my house unbearably hot. also, the homeowner forgot that trees that large have massive roots, which aren't so easily disposed of, despite grinding the stump. it looks terrible too....the law of unintended consequences.

[silverweb]

15. Hi, neighbor!

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]Do you live in the city, too?

I'm very sorry to hear about your neighbors cutting their trees. Were the trees dying, or did they just want them out of the way? Many people seem to have forgotten all that trees do for us, and that's upsetting.

We have three very large old trees fronting the apartment complex property, and I take special care of them by rotating a soaker hose among them at the drip line. I just hope it's enough to keep them healthy.

A couple of tenants complain about how the big trees drop pollen, seeds, and leaves on their cars at different times of the year, like that's all that matters. I've tried to gently educate them, but I'm not sure I got through. Keeping their cars pretty seems to concern them more, and the bother of parking someplace else and walking a little bit is too much for them. People. *smh*

Nice to meetcha, Shanti!

[shanti]

19. No, the trees were quite healthy

as far as I could see. I think my neighbor just got tired of raking leaves in the fall. They are small leaves too, not the huge oak leaves that are easy to rake, chinese mulberry, maybe? I thought maybe he was going to do some xeriscaping, but no, not even that. The ironic thing about it is that the roots that are left are all sprouting baby trees, about 5 of them now. They look like a line of little shrubs zigzagging across the yellowed grass. Looks like crap....

I'm in the suburbs, but I love those huge old oaks downtown!

[silverweb]

22. Oh, that's awful about the trees!

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]People like that make me want to !!

I love downtown Sac! I'm only a couple of light rail stops away and go there all the time, lived on the grid for two years when I first moved here.

[LeftyMom]

24. If we get any decent storms this year there will be limbs in the roads and worse.

I have to get one of my trees out before then, but it's an ornamental tree that was at the end of it's lifespan and even without the drought it's days were numbered.

[silverweb]

26. That's a wise decision for you, then.

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]I'm so sorry you have to lose a lovely ornamental tree.

Are you in Sacramento, too?

Limbs in the roads and even on houses during storms are always a risk. Proper tree maintenance is so labor intensive and expensive that not enough of it gets done, compounding the risks - but being without trees would be far worse.

Despite worsened allergies, I living in the "City of Trees"!

[AtomicKitten]

2. That would be truly tragic.

Nothing more beautiful than old growth redwoods by the ocean in NoCal.

[Uncle Joe]

3. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Fearless.

[Brother Buzz]

4. This is the Sequoia gigantea in the Sierra, not the coastal Sequoia sempervirens

The coastal redwoods trees are being impacted by the drought, but the scientists are observing they just aren't growing, and while some trees are weakened and susceptible to disease, the population, on the whole, is just biding time.

[HFRN]

7. water from ag should be prioritized to saving them

there's enough water to do it

part of a year's profits can be impaired, to spare a millennia of beauty

[silverweb]

8. Won't happen.

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]Nestlé needs that water for bottling, you know.

[Art_from_Ark]

27. And it's not just Nestle

http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Crystal-Geyser-to-tap-Siskiyou-County-groundwater-6253314.php

[silverweb]

28. Yes, but Nestle is the biggest.

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]And it's the greediest. The CEO said he'd take even more water from California if he could, despite the drought.

I wish the legislature would ban them all!

[Art_from_Ark]

30. No doubt that Nestle is the greediest

Crystal Geyser is what immediately came to my mind, though, as I see a lot of that California water being sold here in Japan, which has plenty of spring water of its own.

[silverweb]

31. That's an understandable connection!

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]It's absolutely insane and shameful that companies are allowed to export our water for their profit, while entire regions of our own country are being sucked bone dry!

[Art_from_Ark]

32. Here are some ads for Crystal Geyser water in Japan

https://www.google.co.jp/search?q=Crystal+Geyser&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&hl=ja#q=Crystal+Geyser&hl=ja&tbm=shop

Here's a translation of one of the ads

クリスタルガイザーとはアメリカで最も美しい山の1つに数えられるカリフォルニア州の山々を水源とするアメリカ生まれの天然水ミネラルウォーターです
"Crystal Geyser is natural American mineral water born in the mountains of California, which has some of the most beautiful mountains in America".

[silverweb]

33. That's true about our mountains.

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]I'd rather have people read this about our exported water, though, if they care at all:
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/08/bottled-water-california-drought

[Xithras]

20. Doesn't really work that way.

Most of the Giant Sequoia groves are located in the Sierra's ABOVE the dams that capture water for ag (there are a handful of reservoirs above them, but they are small and generally hold water for electricity generation and not ag). Moving water from the reservoirs to the groves would require the construction of some kind of system to pump the water uphill and back into the forests it originally ran out from. While it's theoretically possible, it would take years to build the infrastructure to pull it off.

And trucking the water back uphill to water them by hand doesn't really work either. There are tens of thousands of Giant Sequoia's spread out over around 70 groves, and the vast majority don't have trails or roads anywhere near them. Cutting new trails and roads would not only permanently destroy the wildland areas where the trees are located, but would encourage more visitors to the groves which would cause even more damage,

It's a nice idea, but it's unworkable.

[HFRN]

23. what about DC-10 watertankers then?

probably not realistic

[awoke_in_2003]

9. Oh no. They are so beautiful. nt

[taught_me_patience]

11. They'll be fine

This year's El Nino will end the drought this winter. I'm pretty sure these trees have lived through droughts worse than this one.

[DesMoinesDem]

12. They survived droughts far, far longer and worse than the current drought. They'll be fine.

[Brother Buzz]

13. Here's an interesting read that provides more evidence documenting the megadroughts

An underwater forest reveals the story of a historic megadrought

Brendon Bosworth Dec. 25, 2012

A curved tree saw in his gloved hand, a scuba tank on his back, Phil Caterino worked quickly to slice through a pine branch 100 feet below the surface of a small tarn south of Lake Tahoe. Bubbles streamed from the regulator in his mouth, rising through the blue alpine water and green flecks of algae in Fallen Leaf Lake. That autumn day in 1997, Caterino briefly considered what would happen if he accidentally nicked the air hose running to his mouthpiece, or cut his orange dry suit, letting the 39-degree water rush in. "I'd be at the bottom of the lake, dead in about five minutes," he mused.

Having dived some 400 high-altitude lakes over the course of 30 years -- often reciting a protective Washoe prayer beforehand -- Caterino, director of the Lake Tahoe-based environmental nonprofit Alpengroup, doesn't shy away from occupational hazards. He surfaced a few minutes later, branch in hand. Even though the tree it came from had been stewing underwater for 800 years, it still smelled pungently of sap.

This botanic relic is one of several medieval trees, ranging from 68 to 100 feet tall, standing upright at the bottom of the lake. They grew during a 200-year megadrought in the Sierra Nevada between the 9th and 12th centuries, when precipitation in the area fell to less than 60 percent of the average between 1969 and 1992. Fallen Leaf Lake dropped about 150 to 200 feet below its current level, allowing the trees to grow above the lower shoreline. In the wetter years that followed, the lake quickly refilled, drowning the trees and sealing them in a liquid catacomb, safe from insects and fungi in the deep, low-oxygen water. There are also three older trees, which drowned between 18 and 35 centuries ago, standing upright on the lake floor, which suggests that severe droughts struck even further back in time.

The medieval trees' existence adds to the body of research documenting the Sierra Nevada's past megadroughts. Researchers have found stumps of long-dead trees in rivers, lakes and marshes in the region, indicating not one, but two medieval megadroughts -- the other lasting about 140 years in the 13th and 14th centuries, dwarfing the 20th century's Dust Bowl. Such megadroughts are a frightening prospect, and it's possible they could strike again.

<more>


https://www.hcn.org/issues/44.22/underwater-forest-reveals-the-story-of-a-historic-megadrought

[Gormy Cuss]

14. It is at the very least a rare opportunity to see how the sequoias react to this stress.

Many trees are suffering in this drought, no doubt about it. I see it everywhere.

[LWolf]

17. I'm worrying about the stress on

my local forests, looking at all of those bare mountain peaks without their snow pack, and we're not in as bad shape, yet, as our neighbors to the south.

The idea that the Sequoia, one of the largest and oldest species of tree on earth, with such a limited natural range, could be threatened? That is devastating to me.

[KamaAina]

18. Xposted to California group

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=forum&id=1040

[Xithras]

21. It's wreaking havoc on my redwoods.

The only landscape watering I do, at this point, is for my redwoods. My four redwoods dropped half their needles from drought stress, and an arborist recommended that I cut them down. I've since taken to hand watering them twice a week, and they seem to be recovering well. They still aren't as healthy as they used to be, but they should hold until winter (assuming we get rain this winter).

The rest of my yard is dead. The lawns, the rose bushes, the Japanese Maples, my Dogwood tree and six Aspens. All gone. But I'm going to keep those redwoods alive, even if they restrict our watering even further and I can only water them by pissing on their trunks. I will keep them alive!

[marlakay]

25. Thats really sad about your yard

Are you in CA?

I hope we have a big winter too no matter how tough. I am moving back to CA next month but above Eureka so the only problem there is things aren't as cool as they are suppose to be and some plants are dying.

[Xithras]

29. Yes

I'm in central California, east of SF, which is pretty much ground zero for this thing.

I'm generally OK with the losses so far. The roses, grass, and aspens aren't native and can be replanted when the water returns. The dogwood actually surprised me when it died, because we're in the native range for the Pacific Dogwood and the species is usually drought resistant once it's established. Unfortunately, ours was too near the aspens, which sucked its soil drier than it could handle. By the time we realized what was happening, the tree was too far gone to save.

The real loss for us were our Japanese maples. The trees were planted by a previous owner over 20 years ago and have been meticulously maintained ever since. The original owner did the bonsai thing on the trunks when they were little, so they were very cool looking trees and were worth many thousands of dollars each (I've had landscapers offer to buy them from me several times so they could transplant them elsewhere). Unfortunately, the drought caused most of the soil in my yard to harden and compact as it dried out, which made it fairly impermeable to water. Even though the trees were getting watered, the soil conditions killed them off.