Posted on 07/30/2005 10:10:12 AM PDT by sionnsar
Planting trees can create deserts, lower water tables and drain rivers, rather than filling them, claims a new report supported by the UK government.
The findings - which may come as heresy to tree-lovers and most environmentalists - is an emerging new consensus among forest and water professionals.
“Common but misguided views about water management,” says the report, are resulting in the waste of tens of millions of pounds every year across the world. Forests planted with the intention of trapping moisture are instead depleting reservoirs and drying out soils.
The report summarises studies commissioned over the past four years by the Forestry Research Programme, funded by the UK government’s Department for International Development.
It agrees that, in some places, the environmental nostrum works: trees trap moisture from the air and bind soils that prevent floods, store water and nourish the environment. But it says that in other places, trees suck up moisture from the soil, evaporate water from their leaves, lower water tables, empty rivers and create deserts.
This matters especially when trees are planted specifically to protect water supplies, says chief author John Palmer of the Natural Resources Institute at the University of Greenwich, London, UK. Often, he says, “projects intended to improve water conditions in developing countries may be wasting massive amounts of money”.
Panama is currently seeking hundreds of millions of dollars from the World Bank to plant trees to increase water flow into the reservoirs that feed the Panama Canal. There is, Palmer says, no scientific justification for this plan.
But not everyone agrees. Robert Stallard, a hydrologist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama backs reforesting the canal’s watershed. He says forested watersheds may deliver less water, but they deliver it in a steadier flow.
Forests are not always bad, the authors concede. “We’re not saying they never produce water benefits or that they don’t have an important role in the ecosystem,” says Ian Calder from the University of Newcastle. “But if we are trying to manage water resources effectively, the simple view that more trees are always better is bad policy.”
The studies found that in the Indian states of Himachal Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, when fields were converted to forests to provide more water for reservoirs, they actually reduced water yields from the land, by 16% and 26% respectively.
In South Africa, the spread of foreign pine and eucalyptus trees across the country has cut river flow by an estimated 3%. The country is currently employing some 40,000 people to uproot many foreign trees. And it taxes plantation owners for their hydrological damage.
High in the mountains of Costa Rica, researchers found that forests do not harvest moisture from the clouds, as previously supposed. Chopping them down in many places barely alters rainfall, according to Sampurno Bruijnzeel from the Free University of Amsterdam, who contributed to the project.
PING
Chaos Theory
A scientific theory for dealing with systems that are complex, unpredictable, and/or have random events, or, in other words, most of the real world. Natural systems are so complicated that no matter how carefully we measure them, we can't know everything about them. Although measurements can be extremely accurate, they can't be accurate to infinity, and tiny differences/errors in the beginning can lead to gigantic ones later. This is known as the Butterfly Effect, because under the right circumstances, the effect of the fluttering of a butterfly's wings can make the difference between whether or not there will be a tornado.(So much for ever getting accurate weather predictions.)This shows how even the actions of the smallest creature can have a large effect on the whole.
A water professional?
Why that's the guy who determined that the Denver acquifer was as big as Lake Erie.
The only problem is, he's never been to Lake Erie.
He doesn't know that it goes from Toledo to Buffalo and is 250 feet deep.
The Denver acquifer isn't a fraction of that but the developers are acting as though it is.
So a water professional is just another puppet of the developers, one who will rubber stamp what they want to do.
Science by consensus is not science at all, it's politics. No self respecting scientist should care about consensus, only what is provable and re-provable by experiment.
face it, the environmental wack jobs dont have a clue what they are talking about.
they say man has destroyed all the wet lands...
when the fact is that theirs only one natural lake in texas.
they say were destroying the ozone layer...
while fighting to reduce ozone emissions from cars and powerplants.
They force complanies to plant trees to help with water conservation...
Even though trees are the biggest producers of ozone and actually deplete the water table.
They claimed the Alaska oil pipeline would negatively affect the carabo herds...
When in reality the pipeline lead to a dramatic increase in the size of the herds, because they liked to shelter up next to the warm pipe in the harsh winters, which helped them survive.
They claim man has exterminated many species...
When the fact is, man doesn't have to power to destroy a single species if it is well adapted to it's environment. Case in point, fire ants or killer bees.
They claim that global warming is mans fault...
Completely ignoring the fact that we are still warming up from the last mini ice age and still haven't reached the average temperatures experienced in the middle ages.
They claim that global warming will cause the oceans to rise...
When anybody that ever had a glass of ice water knows that's crap. If that were true, every time someones ice melted in their glass it would overflow.
Oooohhh....less but dependably less is now better.
Best summary description of the greenies I've heard to date. Thanks!
..as a (Evil) Boy Scout (35+ years ago) so did we, in TX....little did we know, how Evil it was. :D
ping
I think they're called Plumbers :-)
>A hydrologist: a scientist who studies the distribution, circulation, and physical properties of underground and surface waters as well as the form and intensity of precipitation, its rate of infiltration into the soil, its movement through the earth, and its return to the ocean and atmosphere.
So then a reporter could describe a geologist as a "dirt professional"?
Is this surprising considering that a tree is genetically programmed to pump water from the ground and evaporate it?
The ice age ended about 12,000 years ago. When it did the glaciers, which had moved down into the middle of the US and into Africa, started to melt. They supplied large quantities of water to the regions that are now desert. Some trees grew, because trees will grow where there is water.
Large lakes were formed and of course there was more rainfall because there was more ground water available to evaporate and cause rain.
After thousands of years had passed these glaciers receded and the water stopped coming, gradually, which caused the lakes(think great salt lake for one) to dry up and the trees to die, because without the ground water to keep the rainfall coming the trees were denied the moisture they need to grow.
This is how the Sahara and the mojave and the "great American Desert"(look it up) were formed. They were not formed by people cutting down the trees, they were formed because the glaciers were gone and they reverted to what they were before the glaciers came, low rainfall areas that can't produce much vegetation.
Flame suit on!
You mean to tell me that it took a study to determine that the oxygen given off by trees comes from the water drawn in by the roots?
Maybe what nonplussed them was the fact that the oxygen in the CO2 is what remains bound in the carbohydrates attached to the hydrogen that is also provided by the water taken in by the roots.
In other words, all trees are natural water theives.
What counts, on balance, is to what degree do trees provide shade and mitigate runoff on steep slopes.
I Self Me
I Sponsor Myself
I Self Medicate
I like your tag line, I should employ that more often
A person who augments the idea of the statement "Place your trust in God, question all others".
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