Posted on 12/25/2003 7:13:11 PM PST by Dog Gone
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/TotalForecast/miscObs/raws/CA/LYTLE.CREEK.html
The heaviest rain occured between 4:20 p.m. and 5:20 p.m., when 1.3" fell.
But this erosion is OK because nobody is making a profit.
The mountains in that area are a part of the Angeles National Forest. The four Southern Californian forests are principally managed for recreation and watershed preservation. The last logging in Angeles was in WWII, on an emergency basis.
One hundred and twenty years ago the forests were being burned by ranchers trying to increase the grazing for their cattle and sheep. That led to increased erosion which flowed down into the cities and nearly destroyed them. Some local businessmen and property-owners, most prominently Abbot Kinney, lobbied to stop the practice and preserve the watershed that Los Angeles depended on for water. Their efforts led to the passage of the national Forest Preserve Act in 1893. Angeles was the second national preserve designated under the act.
The Angeles National Forest has been a model and a testing ground for modern forestry practices. Gifford Pinchot, America's first professionally trained forester, was an early superintendent. Theodore Lukens, a local who became an early superintendent, is known as the "father of forestry," for his experiments in reforestation. The San Dimas Experimental Forest, recently burned in the Curve-Williams Fire, is one of the National Forest Services prime laboratories. The San Gabriels mountains are among the fastest eroding in the world, shedding 7 tons per acre per year according to John McPhee. The entire Los Angeles basin is built up from the alluvium of the range to a depth of several thousand feet. Erosion control is an enormous issue.
You have to go to a period earlier than when your story starts to get the gist of how the system was altered. Tom Bonnicksen documented that pre-existing condition in his book: America's Ancient Forests, From the Ice-Age to the Age of Discovery.
Living in Santa Cruz County on timbered property, I'm well aware of erosion in the California Coast Ranges. The problems we face in land management are structural consequences of socialism. I've written a fair amount on the topic.
Nope. The 'tragedy of the commons' occured before the land came under federal control. Then ranchers used the land in their narrow private interest, destroying its greater good. For the past 110 years the land has been well-managed as a watershed, providing far greater benefit to the people of the surrounding area then the small value of the timber on the land.
Water aside, the economic value of the range as a recreation area for hiker, hunters, fisherman, and skiers is also much higher than it's timber is worth.
Over in the neighboring San Benardino Mtns, which are more heavily forested, arguments can certainly be made that thinning the forests through logging or controlled burns may be desirable. Unfortunately, logging is not economically viable, in part because there are no mills around and in part because the area is a patchwork of private and public ownership.
Erosion in the San Gabriels is an order of magnitude great then that of the mountains in Santa Cruz.
Have you ever been to the area? By and large it was brush that burned, not trees. If the brush had been cleared there would have been mudslides too. The nature of the local mountains is for heavy rains (7" in 24 hours) to cause heavy erosion.
Here is wisdom, near the San Bernardio Mtns/Big Bear ping.
The San Gabriels are young mountains and still growing. The have, in places, grades of 85 percent. Due to the history of earthquakes in the are, the rock is fractured and unstable. Shedding, spalling, self-destructing, they are disintegrating at a rate that is are disintegrating at a rate that is among the fastest in the world. Los Angeles and its surrounding communities have pushed hard up against these mountains. The mountain canyons suffer from debris flows. There are flows of water, mud and rock that come down the mountain canyons like black walls, carrying all before them.Strung out along the mountain front are some 120 bowl-shaped excavations resembling football stadiums and of about the same size. They are known as debris basins. re known as debris basins. Blocked at their downstream side with earthfill or concrecte, they stand ready to capture rivers of boulders. For 50 miles they mark the mountain boundary. They are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. All of this to keep the mountain from falling on Los Angelenos.
To stabilize mountain stream-beds and stop descending rocks even before they reach the debris basins, numerous crib structures, barriers made of concrete slats, are emplaced in the high canyons. The debris basins have caught as much as six hundred thousand cubic yards in a single storm. Over time they have trapped 20 million tons of mud and rock. The basins must be regularly cleaned but the mountains, still young, keep growing, and the rock keeps coming. It is the authorities of Los Angeles against the mountains. Time is on the side of the mountains.
Sorry, for the last 110 years it's been a democratized commons, restricted in use to a majority claim on the use of the land. What you call "greater good" is merely a matter of public opinion, a subjective interpretation at best. In recent years it's become a socialized commons, restricted in use to the agency claim on the use of the land in the interest of the politically dominant. In either case, you can't call 2,000 trees per acre well-managed.
I suppose any interpretation would be subjective. But it is clear that these mountains are a source of dangerous debris flows (as evidenced by this latest tragedy). It is also a fact that the surrounding communites depend on the water supplied by the streams and rivers coming out of these mountains. Those are the primary concerns of land managers. The only reason to thin the forest is for its long-term health and to fulfill those other missions. In less inhabited parts of the San Gabriel and San Bernardino forests they have been able to conduct controlled-burns. But the San Bernardinos in particular have many communities and inholdings that limit the ability to burn safely.
Those same communities also make it difficult to cut the logs down. Rather then economically efficient clear cutting, it is more like urban tree removal. The price per tree is around $2,000, for beyond the value of the lumber as firewood in the already saturated market. Rather than being the tragedy of the commons, this is the tragedy of the small-holdings.
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