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UK: How 8 million trees toppled in 1 winter (field day for tree-planting ergonomics)

#1
C C Offline
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-60348947

EXCERPTS: It is the untold story of the winter storms. More than eight million trees have been brought down and many are now threatened by another two named storms bearing down on Britain.

Forest managers warn that already "catastrophic" damage will be made worse by Storms Dudley and Eunice. There are warnings that the heating climate is making our weather more severe and unpredictable, and that management and planting strategies must adapt more quickly.

Forest ranger Richard Tanner says that he's never seen a real battlefield, but the west shore of Lake Windermere now reminds him of photographs he has seen.

"It looks like someone's set off a bomb." [...] All around are the giant root plates of fallen trees, some the size of caravans, studded with rocks torn from the earth.

"There's three tonnes of tree and then five or six tonnes of earth maybe. And that's all got to be dealt with. We've lost thousands and thousands of trees just on this one property."

[...] The storms are savaging Scotland with the greatest force. After Storm Arwen in November, 4,000 hectares of woodland were blown down...

[...] Mr Archer says that it's vital to keep planting trees - even though they can blow down.

"We've got to sink carbon, we've got to have places for people to enjoy, we need timber and we also need habitats for the wildlife that's around us. We will tidy this up and try to recover this wood for the next generation. It will take 40 to 50 years before anything is back here, but we are dedicated to doing it." (MORE - missing details)
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#2
Zinjanthropos Offline
Not a forest expert but to me it appears the downed trees are rather large. Did they outgrow the ability of their roots to hold them upright in that wet, rocky soil? I’m also thinking that when a big tree tumbles that it takes out several more smaller trees. It would be good to know if the majority of trees destroyed are a result of a large falling tree crushing them rather than wind.

Should this be the case then could there have been some poor forest management taking place here? Probably going to trample even more trees if they go in to remove the fallen. Seems like this catastrophe could have been prevented or reduced to simple storm damage by trimming or culling some of the more teetering trees. I wonder if they tried and were roadblocked by naturalists and tree hugging environmentalists.
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#3
stryder Online
It's dependent on if a forest is managed. In a managed wood/forest, the trees are planted in rows, and they are tightly packed together. This is in part because not all the trees will reach full maturity and part to creating a homeostasis for the trees to exist within so they aren't overwhelmed like a darwinistic river bed or suffer from the full force of weather conditions. (As a group they break up the wind better than a single tree)

If they are tightly packed together over time forestry management is suppose to thin out the trees once in a while, this means removing ever other tree from ever other row so as to make space. This is both space so the trees can gain a larger canopy but also to reduce the competitive nature of their root systems and pulling nutrients from the soil.

There is the occurance where some trees that are genetic clones of one another can infact merge their root systems into a supersystem, in those instance the trees no longer compete in the same way since they are apart of the same organism. (This can be seen in Gum trees in Georgia, US as they tend to spread out from feeler roots and pop up new stems)

Entwining root systems however can also cause problems. There are instances where fungus can be transmitted between trees through root contact, this can mean that a wood or forest can actually transmit a fungal disease across it's root network, which in some cases trees can be resistant too where others suffer from. Again it's a bit Darwinistic since the fungus can aid one species by allowing it dominate over another.

There is usually a number of thinnings (tree removals) before the forest is either left to grow, or the trees are felled (and sometimes the stumps pulled and leftovers burnt) beforce the cycle of growing more is started again.

In a natural wood/forest, the trees grow where they naturally seeded, they compete with other shrub species and they aren't felled before they grow to the point of suffering from hollows or infected limbs. In those instance the trees will suffer from weather.

There is a consideration that rather than just global warming, various types of manmade radiation can effect how trees develop and has been effecting how they store water (make better kindling?) and when they bloom.

In the UK, some woods/forests have been left to rack and ruin while those run by various trusts tend to be managed correctly. There is then woods/trees on private land that's really just "set-aside" for farmers (lessening their taxes I presume) who *might* be more interested in shooting pheasants than managing woods.
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#4
Zinjanthropos Offline
Good info there Stryder.  As usual there’s more than meets the eye. With that in mind I wonder what is planned for this devastated area. Checked it out on Google Maps and it seems like a low population density area and probably some sort of national treasure that’s worth restoring, so maybe a plea for govt attention and/or funding is hidden in the article message, idk. 

Don’t know how locals would feel about it but there’s always this….

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_farming

Why not turn it into a commercial enterprise? Nature has already done some of the hard work. Or would that not apply here?
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#5
stryder Online
(Feb 17, 2022 04:59 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: Good info there Stryder.  As usual there’s more than meets the eye. With that in mind I wonder what is planned for this devastated area. Checked it out on Google Maps and it seems like a low population density area and probably some sort of national treasure that’s worth restoring, so maybe a plea for govt attention and/or funding is hidden in the article message, idk. 

Don’t know how locals would feel about it but there’s always this….

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_farming

Why not turn it into a commercial enterprise? Nature has already done some of the hard work. Or would that not apply here?

One of the main problems in the UK is space, there isn't much of it compared to elsewhere. The government over here currently actually demands that local councils build more houses to suit the growing population needs. (It's being handled somewhat differently to the Babyboomer rebuilding of the country after the second world war where a number of council properties were initially produced with the intention of housing people as well as increasing economic growth.)

Currently what happens is sways of land is bought by companies with the intension of developing it into housing estates, they then have to go through a planning stage that has to be passed by the council which is also public so people can have their say and make their complaints when necessary at which point it's suppose to be told yes or no as to whether the development should go ahead. Occasionally the yes or no can be overturned by the government (and has done in certain local instances where building has been given the go ahead even after local public rejection)

The main problem is the houses aren't destined to be populated by people of the area or their offspring, it appears that the sale of such properties targets advertisement elsewhere in the country with the intension of placing a price hike. (locals will not pay as much as someone willing to move from elsewhere in the country) and this causes continued tension within the communities as to them it's likened to being invaded by outsiders, along with bumping house prices beyond the local means.

I mention all this because out my way we have a lot of villages that are set apart by farmers fields which have recently been getting sold (farmers have got older, their offspring not necessarily interested in continuing to run farms causes those fields to end up in the hands of developers) If it was down to just housing figures, those fields would be coated in cul-de-sacs and housing estates, turning our once "Green and pleasant land" into a suburban sprawl.

Ideally finding alternative ways to use the land and keep it from such developments is most definitely something that should be tabled.
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#6
Zinjanthropos Offline
Have seen the same rocky soil here in Canada. I would imagine most of damage is not caused by trees who's trunk snapped but were totally bowled over. Trees only get so large before roots can't support them very well. Big wind and over they go, roots and all. One can see the rocks distributed within the soil the roots expose when tree falls. Surely to scientists in Britain, the Lake Windermere trees toppling can't be a surprise. Maybe the scope of a severe storm's aftermath wasn't quite expected. My feeling is that authorities in this area have heard the warnings of the potential damage a strong wind could cause. Maybe to not upset the tourism industry it was decided to not heed the advice of scientists telling them to begin culling some trees before a main event happened?

So what do residents of the area want now? Government to pay for cleanup? Will developers now move in, perhaps with the promise of cleaning things up provided they get a few concessions in return? Probably will be an election issue for that area and maybe someone is going to be named the scapegoat for the tree loss. It looks like a beautiful area, reminds me of places in Northern Ontario and along the coast of British Columbia south of the glacial fields. Very pristine looking and you just hope those areas can stay that way.
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