Introduction

The purpose of my blog is to share with you what I have learned based on my experience as a practicing forester in California and Washington and as the general contractor in our former homestead in Mendocino County, California and our current homestead in Kittitas County, WA. As a forester, for more than a decade, I have practiced forestry within the context of a strong land ethic that endeavors to balance economic return with the beauty, clean water, clean air, wildlife habitat, recreation and carbon storage offered by well managed forests. As home and property owners, my family and I challenge ourselves to make our footprint smaller, through conservation, sourcing quality materials from well managed sources as close to home as possible and use of alternative technologies within a budget. Thank you for visiting my blog and I hope that the information provided will help you as a steward of the forest and in the place that you call home.

July 30, 2006

Where there's Smoke, there's Fire

By Thembi Borras

Smoke is often the only tangible reminder that wildland fires are burning and lately in some areas of the County, the smoke has been palpable. Two new fires preceded my return trip from Sacramento on Monday, July 31st. I witnessed smoke billowing above Mount Konocti from a fire burning near Kelseyville. More impressive were the visible flames and the heat felt in the cab of my pickup as I drove past the human caused Walker fire, which burnt 104 acres just south of Willits. Much larger fires continue to burn in California, one of which in Mendocino County is the lightening caused Hunter fire located 19 miles southeast of Covelo in the Black Butte River watershed. The Hunter fire has burnt 4,931 acres and has been 15% contained by 554 personnel.

I was able to glean from data provided by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection for 2006 that the sector starting the highest numbers of fires in California was equipment use such as mowers, but it was unclear to me which fire causing sector resulted in the greatest number of acres burnt. However, it is clear that humans can play a significant role is causing or preventing the ignition of wildfires. Go to www.nifc.gov/fireinfo/prevention for tips on how to prevent wildfires. Most human caused wildfires can be prevented by using common sense.

The cost of fire suppression per acre varies widely depending on several factors including type and amount of vegetation, terrain, accessibility, home density and weather conditions but a rule of thumb is that for every $1 spent on prevention $10 is saved in suppression, which does not include lives, animals, homes and natural resources.

If you live in an urban wildland interface where your home and nature intersect, chances are, there are steps that you have not yet taken to reduce fire hazard. Fortunately, there are numerous resources at your disposal. They include the Mendocino County Fire Safe Council whose mission is to educate and motivate our county’s residents about wildfire preparedness. The Mendocino Fire Safe Council encourages you to contact them. They will provide fire safety educational materials, including delivering to groups presentations about wildfire issues. They can be contacted at firesafe@pacific.net or 462-3662. For additional guidance about how to make your home and immediate area more fire safe, go to www.firewise.org and click on resources. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, the Headquarters of which can be contacted at 459-7414, and your local fire departments are also excellent resources, both of whom were instrumental in informing a more fire safe driveway, turnaround, fire hydrant and water system design on our property in Navarro. To keep up to date on the fires burning on federal lands in the State go to the Incident website at www.inciweb.org.

July 23, 2006

What's in a soil name?

By Thembi Borras

You may be familiar with local forest soil names such as Bearwallow, Kibesillah, Ornbaun and/or Zeni. Soil names, also referred to as series names, are commonly used to connect to useful information such as soil descriptions that include potential annual production, permeability, erodability, depth and color, which may inform management decisions. Series names are easy to remember, pronounce and recognize. However, dig a little deeper and you learn behind each series name is a soil order, suborder, great group, subgroup and family, which when combined form a long and complex taxonomic classification that is brimming with information, such as particle size, temperature regime, moisture regime, characteristic soil horizons and origin.

For example, the Zeni series is a fine-loamy, mixed, isomesic Ultic Haplustalf. From this, I can glean that it is in the Alfisol order, an order that in part may be characterized by clay from upper horizons leaching to lower horizons where the clay accumulates in films. The moisture regime is ustic, which means moisture is limited, but is present at a time when conditions are suitable for plant growth. The temperature regime, is isomesic, which means the annual soil temperature is between 46 degrees F and 59 degrees F, measured at approximately 20" below the surface. Finally, I can glean something about the particle size; fine-loamy may be translated to clay loam. A loam is a mixture of sand, silt and clay that exhibits the properties of each in approximately equal proportions.

There are twelve orders of soils, Entisols are young soils with little or no morphological development. Inceptisols, Alfisols, and Ultisols are in ascending order in the development continuum, all of which locally can support timber. Mollisols are soils with a dark horizon rich in organic matter and can often be found supporting grasslands. Aridisols are desert soils. Vertisols are truly amazing as they invert themselves through the shrinking and swelling of the clays contained within them in response to soil moisture. Oxisols are highly weathered soils in subtropical or tropical environments; you can experience Oxisols in Florida. Andisols are soils formed in volcanic ash and are prevalent in the Andes. Spodosols are acid forest soils with a subsurface accumulation of metal-humus complexes. In our area, the pygmy forest grows from a Spodosol. Histosols are organic soils, peats are an example. Finally Gelisols are soils with a permafrost within 2 meters of the surface.

A portion of this production was gleaned from Keys to Soil Taxonomy published by the USDA and the Natural Resources Conservation Service, The Nature and Properties of Soils by Nyle Brady, the University of Idaho Soil Science Division website at http://soils.ag.uidaho.edu/soilorders/orders.htm and The Soil Survey Report for the western part of Mendocino County, available at http://www.ca.nrcs.usda.gov/mlra02/wmendo.html.

July 9, 2006

Mycorrhiza

By Thembi Borras

When we walk in the forest we see the trees, the plants and perhaps mushrooms, mammals, reptiles, amphibians and birds, but beneath our feet is an ecosystem just as active and vibrant as the one we see above ground. Within this ecosystem, is a vast network of mycorrhiza, which literally means "fungus root". Mycorrhiza is the naturally occurring, non-pathogenic prolonged symbiotic association between fungi and the roots of vascular plants, in particular trees.

Mycorrhizae are separated into two groups, those that penetrate the cells of the root cortex, called endomycorrhizae and those that don't, called ectomycorrhizae. Douglas-fir can be a host to 2,000 different species of ectomycorrhizal fungi over the course of its life. Individual species of mycorrhizal fungi exist and behave as a function of a number of variables including soil fertility, aeration, soil temperature, pH, the presence of certain micro organisms, the presence of a specific host and the presence of specific mycorrhizal fungi mycelia or spores.

Mycorrhizae obtain simple carbohydrates from the host tree. In return, mycorrhizae improve nutrient availability and uptake by, in part, increasing the surface area placing more of the root in contact with soil nutrients. Carbonic acid, the result of fungal respiration and the solvent properties of fungal metabolic byproducts assist in the biochemical degradation of primary minerals in infertile soils. Pine seedlings, inoculated with mycorrhizal fungi, grown in prairie soil, aside from showing an increase in nitrogen concentration, demonstrated a two-fold increase in potassium and a three-fold increase in phosphorus. In addition, the exudates of the mycorrhizal fungus can stimulate growth. Moreover, mycorrhizae can serve as a biologic deterrent to pathogenic root infection by, in part, utilizing carbohydrates and other chemicals attractive to pathogens, by the fungal sheath acting as a physical barrier and by secreting antibodies which can inhibit or destroy pathogens.

Most healthy forest trees, conifers and broad-leaved trees alike, appear to have mycorrhizae. Moreover, their importance is greater felt in certain ecosystems. For example, the poor soils in the Amazon rain forest characterized by thin layers of litter and humus, below which are poor water logged clays, are able to support such a lush environment because the mycorrhizae efficiently recycle nutrients in the fallen leaf litter which would otherwise be leached away in heavy rains.

July 2, 2006

Management Practices as they relate to Soil Productivity

By Thembi Borras

The proverb, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, is worth repeating in reference to soil conservation. Preventing soil loss, organic matter loss and soil compaction is far more cost effective than building soil. That being said, minimizing rather than preventing these impacts is more realistic in the industries that supply the goods, which occupy a soil medium, which society demands, including oil, water, food and forest products. In the context of forestry, minimizing soil impacts is a function of the type of silviculture, harvesting, site preparation, slash management and road management implemented.

Paul Zinke, Professor of Forestry at UC Berkeley ranked silvicultural systems and harvesting methods by their degree of soil disturbance. Of the six silvicultural systems, which include single tree selection, group selection, shelterwood, seed tree, clearcutting and biomass harvesting, single tree selection, with 10% of the area affected and 5% of the trees removed, was ranked lowest. Clearcutting, with 90+% of the area affected, was ranked highest and clearcutting where the crowns as well as the logs were removed had a greater impact on soil fertility because the foliage, twigs and branches contain the highest above ground nutrients of the tree. Of the harvesting methods evaluated, feller-bunching and tractor or skidder logging produced a higher degree of soil disturbance than cable and horse logging which produced a higher degree of soil disturbance than helicopter logging.

The type of silviculture, harvesting, site preparation, slash management and road management interact with each other, the topography, e.g. steepness of slope and aspect, and the characteristics of the soil, e.g. shallow, bare, infertile and/ or saturated, to further minimize or maximize soil impacts. For instance, implementing single tree selection will not generate as much slash as a clearcut and therefore may not require the practices typically used to prepare a site after a clearcut. To facilitate planting the next generation of trees after a clearcut piling and burning, broadcast burning, terracing and ripping may be employed, which can lead to topsoil loss, erosion and volatilization of nutrients.

No matter the silvicultural system or the harvesting method, the creation of slash is inevitable. Slash management includes leaving slash in place, burning, lopping and scattering, chipping, packing slash on skid roads or removing slash from the site altogether. Generally, leaving slash in place is best because the nutrient cycle and soil fertility is impacted less.

Roads can significantly contribute to soil loss, organic matter loss and compaction. Minimizing roads, using roads in the season for which they were designed, draining roads well and frequently onto stable surfaces, diversion proofing crossings, and designing crossings for the large episodic event are road management practices to minimize impacts on soil. Moreover, in tractor yarding, restricting equipment to well-located portions of the existing skid road network and prescribing equipment operators to move no more soil than is necessary minimizes soil impacts.

A portion of this production was gleaned from Sustaining Site Productivity on Forestlands; A User's Guide to Good Soil Management published by the University of California.