'Firmageddon': Researchers find 1.1 million acres of dead trees in Oregon

I wonder why they continue to do aerial surveys. Other government agencies (e.g. National Park Service) do similar surveys by satellite. Seems like that would be cheaper, faster and more accurate. I guess that wouldn't put money in the pockets of observers and pilots.
 
Yeah.... It's really that bad and going to be much worse. I'm shitting my pants, and it feels like I am going crazy. So many here know, but fail to have any drive to change into action.
No one is talking about the 'heat dome' we had this year, it wasn't in the middle of summer, nor was it hot, but the departure from normal in the first half of October was on par if not a little higher than the June 2021 event.
Even out local weather Guru, Cliff Mass that denoucnes any specific event as climate change isn't ringing any alarm bells. Stating we are not experiencing drought, by reservoir measurements, stream flows, and snow packs on the macro scale. All of which I don't argue, but the failure is looking at our micro climates.
Without digging up all the numbers, the NW quadrant of Washington is projected to be 10 degrees warmer F, 20-30% drier in the summer months, winter months 15-20% WETTER, and 5 deg F warmer. By 2050, with a little * that notes the time range for this is actually 2030-2070! The only "micro" climate notation within the report states the NE corner of the olympic peninsula and Okanagan are expected to exceed these projections significantly.
We are already seeing the beginning of a HUGE die off of many species as the balance has shifted. Mass western red cedar die off due to drought stress and beetles that were once just a nuisance.
It's sad, but I am no longer recommending planting replacements that fall into our 'normal'.
I've spent MANY hours of research, and seed collection on 'relic' species that only occur in remote isolated pockets, as well as specie assisted migration from coastal areas as far south as San Fan...
 
Njdelaney said:
We've seen enough of this asshat. Let's allow him to recede into the swamp from whence he came. It's the worst punishment for an attention whore like him. Also, the trees deserve a somber and thoughtful consideration of this reality and he has no place in that.
Click to expand...
Well, Personally, I do not think the result of what he made that decisions on withdrawal from Paris agreement on Global Climate Change had resulted this Colorado Massive Firmaggedon
... But !?
I do agree He does not, did not have any sensitivities over this subject but tried to utilize that to boost U.S.economic instead of committed towards to recovery and of its improvements .

Let's face it....1.1 million acres of dead fir trees ain't normal . It is very very alarming....
and I feel very powerless as an single individual .
 
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www.oregonlive.com

Record number of firs dying in Oregon, Washington in what experts call ‘Firmageddon’

Oregon forests are hardest hit with dead firs on roughly 1.1 million acres. This year’s numbers are nearly double the acres recorded during previous die-offs in Oregon.
www.oregonlive.com www.oregonlive.com

Here is a different article. It is not 1.1 million or whatever acreage of purely dead trees. It is some percentage of mortality ON over a million acres. As someone who has witnessed mass mortality events in California and is seeing drastic change in the forest on the land where I live it is an interesting time. I used to freak out about it and now I sit back and just look at it as what it is. Change. Things are changing. What humanity has done to the forests in the western US is completely unnatural. From a historical standpoint most of our forests are completely overstocked with trees. So yes, hit them with slight deviations in fungal populations, insect pressure, or drought stress (or a combination of all three) and you will have mass mortality. What we think of as a forest isn’t natural. So when we cry for what we are losing, are we really losing? Or is it a cycle resetting itself? We have mentally latched onto an idea that is false but our ego based single generational mindset as humans only allows us to think of what we or those we have directly interacted with (parents, grandparents, friends, teachers, ect) tell us a forest should be. When all of those people and their generation were also latched on a false reality fed to them by industry and governement agencies that allowed overharvesting and stopped wildfires that led us to where we are today.

I live on 140+ acres of mostly conifer forest surrounded by county forest land. During 13 years of living there I have seen sections of what was dark forest become clearings through mortality. Those clearings now grow vine maple, dogwood, and bigleaf maple. If the laminated root rot, insects, and drought eliminate conifers from the land where I live in my lifetime I will not be too surprised. Don’t be alarmed or alarmist about change. Learn to accept it and welcome what comes next with the same enthusiasm and love as you gave what made way for the next iteration of carbon in that spot.
 
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Pinhead Squirrel said:
Well, Personally, I do not think the result of what he made that decisions of withdrawal from Paris agreement on Global Climate Change resulted this Colorado Massive Firmaggedon
... But !?
I do agree He does not, did not have any sensitivities over this subject but tried to utilize that to U.S.economic boost instead of committed towards to recovery and of its improvements .

Let's face it....1.1 million acres of dead fir trees aren't normal . It is very very alarming....
and I feel very powerless as an single individual .
Click to expand...
We all are powerless individually. I hit that wall the in a line I was ‘pruning’ on the top of a 250’ verticalish bluff, enhancing the view of the mountain that were more than fully obscured by wildfire smoke. It was dead silent but for a redtail hawk making a few cry’s off in the distance. Part of me wanted to unclip and meet the sea.
The shift in me was the decision to be able to look my kids in the eye, humbly say that I am more than aware of the change, and honestly say I tried to do the best I could with what I know how to do.
So now I have about 50 trees I’m raising in my garden of various species, some of which are obscure ‘relic’ natives and others are straight up specie assisted migration. All to be planted in our community (some on our land). I have other business shifts in the works, as I’m tired of taking care of pet trees. Shifting slowly to using the tools I’ve developed in Arboriculture to do as much preemptive mitigation as possible. It’s my generation that is the last which will have a understanding of what was normal, my eldest will have a fleeting childhood memory of what I experienced..
 
RyanCafferky said:
www.oregonlive.com

Record number of firs dying in Oregon, Washington in what experts call ‘Firmageddon’

Oregon forests are hardest hit with dead firs on roughly 1.1 million acres. This year’s numbers are nearly double the acres recorded during previous die-offs in Oregon.
www.oregonlive.com www.oregonlive.com

Here is a different article. It is not 1.1 million or whatever acreage of purely dead trees. It is some percentage of mortality ON over a million acres. As someone who has witnessed mass mortality events in California and is seeing drastic change in the forest on the land where I live it is an interesting time. I used to freak out about it and now I sit back and just look at it as what it is. Change. Things are changing. What humanity has done to the forests in the western US is completely unnatural. From a historical standpoint most of our forests are completely overstocked with trees. So yes, hit them with slight deviations in fungal populations, insect pressure, or drought stress (or a combination of all three) and you will have mass mortality. What we think of as a forest isn’t natural. So when we cry for what we are losing, are we really losing? Or is it a cycle resetting itself? We have mentally latched onto an idea that is false but our ego based single generational mindset as humans only allows us to think of what we or those we have directly interacted with (parents, grandparents, friends, teachers, ect) tell us a forest should be. When all of those people and their generation were also latched on a false reality fed to them by industry and governement agencies that allowed overharvesting and stopped wildfires that led us to where we are today.

I live on 140+ acres of mostly conifer forest surrounded by county forest land. During 13 years of living there I have seen sections of what was dark forest become clearings through mortality. Those clearings now grow vine maple, dogwood, and bigleaf maple. If the laminated root rot, insects, and drought eliminate conifers from the land where I live in my lifetime I will not be too surprised. Don’t be alamed or alamist about change. Learn to accept it and welcome what comes next with the same enthusiasm and love as you gave what made way for the next iteration of carbon in that spot.
Click to expand...
Good words my friend. What I morn the most is not the plantations but the last little stands of true old growth. The ones who have stood for centuries, and have been collapsing into oblivion since the turn of the last.
 
If you cut any living organism into slivers of itself and ask it to survive, will it? The great forests of the past were an organism too. Not just individual organisms, but an entity comprised of those parts. The tiny remnants of old growth today are like if someone showed you a fingernail and said it was a person. Mortality always occurred but when you had old growth forests that seemed to go on for eternities, it didn’t send the ripples that these modern pebbles dropped in the stream do. And the forests were more resilient because the cycles that fed them were intact. Millions of salmon spawning, dying, and then spread through the forests along every river system on the west coast. Imagine the amount of nitrogen that brings into an ecosystem. Dams and overfishing were not just genocide on the native humans but on the ecosystem as well.

I’m a dark cloud. Too many Derrick Jensen books pollute my mind and once it starts to come out it just doesn’t stop.

Goodnight.
 
Pinhead Squirrel said:
This is just in ...

We might've got an Holy grail of Energy productions ...
The Ultimate answer ...

Click to expand...
Hey, look fusion energy is only 30 years off (and always will be)!

Have been watching a discussion on another forum...one of the guys is a retired nuclear physicist (spent his career doing research on fission reactors - he wasn't a fusion researcher). Not a guy claiming to be that now...somebody I've know for well more than 10 years through the forum...retired a few years ago. Anyhow, he has no expectation of actually generating electricity from fusion anytime in our lifetimes. "Then there is the "net energy" sleight of hand in the reporting of this "breakthrough". While it is true that ignition was achieved and the fusion output was greater than the 2MJ or so of UV light energy pumped into the target, it took around 300MJ of actual electrical power to produce that 2MJ of UV light. So, in reality, the experiment produces something on the order of 2/3 of a percent of the total energy put into it. In reality, then, when all of the energy beans are counted, it was still around two orders of magnitude short of unity. The headlines don't tell you that."

Apparently, $15 Billion over budget, so far.

I'll quit there before going too far down this rabbit hole further off topic!
 
If you so choose. There is a lot of information on the Geoengineering and the effects it's having on the Forrest, soil, water, insect population, as well as other things. This site discusses referenced research concerning the how the heavy metals and elements effect snowfall, how they end up being an unintended accelerant, and how the ph of the forrest soil is being changed by things like elemental aluminum. It's quite interesting if you can look it objectively. Probably not for everyone though. There is a lot of science to it though.
 
Steve Connally said:
If you so choose. There is a lot of information on the Geoengineering and the effects it's having on the Forrest, soil, water, insect population, as well as other things. This site discusses referenced research concerning the how the heavy metals and elements effect snowfall, how they end up being an unintended accelerant, and how the ph of the forrest soil is being changed by things like elemental aluminum. It's quite interesting if you can look it objectively. Probably not for everyone though. There is a lot of science to it though.
Click to expand...
Nothing happens in a bubble... Solve one problem and you may create 2 worse problems. Or maybe not...maybe solve one problem and 7 others improve too????
 
ATH said:
Hey, look fusion energy is only 30 years off (and always will be)!

Have been watching a discussion on another forum...one of the guys is a retired nuclear physicist (spent his career doing research on fission reactors - he wasn't a fusion researcher). Not a guy claiming to be that now...somebody I've know for well more than 10 years through the forum...retired a few years ago. Anyhow, he has no expectation of actually generating electricity from fusion anytime in our lifetimes. "Then there is the "net energy" sleight of hand in the reporting of this "breakthrough". While it is true that ignition was achieved and the fusion output was greater than the 2MJ or so of UV light energy pumped into the target, it took around 300MJ of actual electrical power to produce that 2MJ of UV light. So, in reality, the experiment produces something on the order of 2/3 of a percent of the total energy put into it. In reality, then, when all of the energy beans are counted, it was still around two orders of magnitude short of unity. The headlines don't tell you that."

Apparently, $15 Billion over budget, so far.

I'll quit there before going too far down this rabbit hole further off topic!
Click to expand...
Nevertheless, This is a major major breakthrough for the U.S. and the World.
And we just can't stop here with this researches . So we can be able to look our kids , grand kid's streight to their eye, humbly say that we are more than aware of the changes , and honestly say we tried to do the best we could with what we know how to for the next generations to come. And that's what we are here for now and that's what we are as human being.
And Yes , while they are going at it so hard we do still needs to stick with renewable energy and actually practices with it to be away from fossil fuels, carbon emissions. This war might be a losing war... But at least we can say proudly to be able to say that we did best we can for the next generations. It's called Challenge. The challenge we must conquer ...
Someone sings....
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto - “In God is our trust,”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
 
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