This morning I finished reading Trees in Trouble by Daniel Mathews. This is another book concerning the causes of the serious degradation of the forests in the western United States, discussing how we managed to go wrong with our forest management practices as well as offering suggestions about how to improve them before vast areas of the forests are lost to grasslands. I discussed another book on this topic (Smoke Screen by Dr. Chad Hansen) in a blog that I titled “California Forest Management.” These two books presented positions that while generally in agreement about the “big picture” seem to take very divergent views on how to solve (or at least improve) the situation. I appreciate both of their efforts in bringing the discussion to the forefront, but wish they could get together toward a more consistent solution.

The broad view is that the forests (particularly the large evergreen forests (mostly the pine, fir and Douglas fir forests) are in serious danger from beetle infestations and forest fires. They are also in general agreement that much of the problem came about because of long term fire suppression efforts in combination with environmental changes from global warming. Both take the position that our most effective tool for solving this problem is fire. In our “smoky the bear” efforts to save the forests we managed instead put them at serious risk. Forests in these areas have evolved to withstand, and depend upon, frequent fires with started intentionally by man, as has been the case for thousands or years, or natural causes such as lightning.

In “Trees in Trouble” Mathews makes the point that we need to manage the forests to reduce fuel loads caused by too much flammable understory brush and too high a density of young flammable trees. He recommends mechanical thinning in conjunction to frequent controlled burning – both reasonable sounding solutions needed to get back to sustainable forest practices. However, his story also includes many recommendations concerning replanting of burned out areas, with very little consideration toward restoring, or maintaining, the entire forest ecosystem. His book reads like a prescription for the lumber industry to increase their practices of planting single species plantations in the hopes of achieving forest health paid for through logging profits. I don’t believe that is his intended position, but it is what I got from the book.

Part of “the problem” that I had with Mathews’ book has to do with blatant errors in the science of his thesis. For example, in the chapter called “The Bleeding Edge” he discusses how water is transported from the roots of a tree to the leaves where it is needed for photosynthesis. He describes this process thusly; “The force that draws water up into the leaves for photosynthesis is suction, starting with evaporation from the leaf pores, each of which is at the top of one of the vessels running all the way to the roots. ‘Where water transpires out, it pulls one molecule out of the leaf surface, which pulls the next one in line, all the way down to the rootlets, that have to pull it from the soil.'” This explanation is obviously wrong because, as every farmer knows, it is impossible to pull water up a pipe more than about 32 feet. If you want deeper wells than that, you have to put the pump at the bottom and push the water up the pipe. I am not positive about the details of how water moves from the roots of a tall tree to the leaves, but I am POSITIVE that it is not “sucked up.” (Actually, it isn’t even sucked up in the case of a short straw – it is pushed up by the weight of the air column above the water. As a good friend of mine used to say, “nature doesn’t suck” – it pushes. Low pressures don’t pull things to them, high pressures push toward the low pressure.) While this error in understanding basic physics might seem small enough to overlook, it raises a red flag for me that the author’s basic understanding of the supporting science for his discussion is less than stellar –

Mathews repeats his mantra of “thin and burn” throughout the book, with a good dollop of “plant new trees” to fill in the gaps. He generally fails to discuss the need for achieving a balanced ecosystem, in fact almost never including anything but trees (and beetles) in his discussions. To me, this means “forest health” is the same as “forest logging” – the goal is to create sustainable forests to support the timber industry, not so much to support a healthy, sustainable ecosystem. This leaves the discussion very thin, and frankly scary. He finally gets around to the point that I think is of paramount importance in the fourth from the last paragraph of the last chapter titled “Afterword” by stating that; “In planting trees, aim to perpetuate an ecosystem, not a plantation.” However, even then he offers no advice or discussion about how to deal with the parts of an ecosystem that are not trees. Throughout the book it is as if the ground is a featureless and uninhabited area with trees. Any mention of brush is that it is dangerous because it can burn trees, any mention of insects is that they are dangerous because they can kill trees – birds get a bit of a better story because they can transport tree seeds into burned out areas.

While I appreciate that this book continues to open the discussion about our needing to rapidly change our forest management processes, I wish that a much broader view had been presented – one that considers forests as an ecological resource (in the broad sense), rather than merely as a means of wood production and carbon sequestration. I am pretty sure that Mr. Mathews would adamantly deny my characterization. While I think that his heart is in the right place, in my opinion his discussions leave out, or under state the importance of considering the entire picture – what is actually in the forests such as gullies, brush patches, meadows, creeks, fish, birds, insects, animals and all the rest. It is not just a bunch of evergreen trees.