[HN Gopher] The regenerating power of Big Basin's redwoods ___________________________________________________________________ The regenerating power of Big Basin's redwoods Author : dnetesn Score : 120 points Date : 2023-05-17 14:41 UTC (8 hours ago) (HTM) web link (worldsensorium.com) (TXT) w3m dump (worldsensorium.com) | whalesalad wrote: | Big Basin is one of my favorite places on earth. If you have | never been there - park down at the beach where the kite surfers | like to hang out and walk up that way. It is a very long hike | with some exposed areas at the beginning but totally worth the | effort. You will feel like you are in Jurassic Park. | abathur wrote: | Have you been since it reopened after CZU? | arbitrary_name wrote: | The rancho del oso entrance at waddell beach is still closed. | I go there regularly and they have yet to open past the | little visitor center building half a mile in off the | highway. | whalesalad wrote: | Haven't been since like 2015 | billiam wrote: | Unfortunately the CZU Fire did a number on the densest parts of | the Skyline to Sea Trail. It is still beautiful but won't look | like Jurassic Park in our lifetime. | hirundo wrote: | For a few months at the turn of the century I lived in nearby | Bonny Doon and was training for a long distance hike. 3x/week | I'd drive to Big Basin HQ at dawn and run a loop trail through | the park. Those are some of the most blissful memories I have. | I'd been working in a Santa Clara cubical farm for years | leading up to that. The trail head is maybe an hour away? What | an amazing contrast between the corporate jungle and primeval | forest. Not all "forest baths" are equal, this one was quite | extraordinary. I hope it can recover in our life spans. | retrocryptid wrote: | You're talking about the "Skyline to Sea" trail. (Or the way | you're talking about it, it's more like "Sea to Skyline" | trail.) That _is_ a beautiful hike, but people should be | warned, it 's a 10 mile uphill trek. If you're healthy, it _is_ | a beautiful hike. I 'm old, so it takes me most of the day to | make that trek. | kurthr wrote: | The first part is pretty flat, but 5 miles in there is some | real steep climbs (>15%). The total length is almost a | marathon, if we're talking about the same route. | | https://www.treesandtents.com/blogpost/skyline-to-the-sea- | tr... | | AllTrails also reports that it's closed (as do others). | | https://www.alltrails.com/trail/us/california/skyline-to- | the... | TaylorAlexander wrote: | After the fire I uploaded some photos I took at the park and | visitor center in 2018 to a gallery here if anyone wants to | take a look! | | https://imgur.com/gallery/ukxqDBf | Nicholas_C wrote: | This makes me sad because I moved to the Bay Area in 2021 and | to me Big Basin is just a large burnt out piece of land. I | spend a lot of time down there surfing and I don't think the | park has even reopened. | winkeyless wrote: | The park is partially reopened last year and you can | definitely bike or hike in without reservation | (https://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=540). My friends and I | were able to ride a lot of trails but the shade is mostly | gone for sure. | stevenwoo wrote: | It is re-opened though not every trail is open. The burn | reached highway 1 near Pigeon Point/Ano Nuevo through Big | Basin. I rode my bicycle through Butano to China Grade last | week and went through 236 earlier this year to Boulder Creek. | m463 wrote: | You can't walk through berry creek falls anymore, it's all | closed. | | And I went to big basin when it was reopened, and it was a | little tragic. So many enormous, but black trunks. | | You can see a lot of the green growth starting around the | trunks (shown in the article pictures), but it might not look | lush and green again in your lifetime. | | That said, there is a lot of explosive growth of flowers in the | santa cruz mountains (watch out for the white poison oak | flowers) | giobox wrote: | I haven't been since the fire sadly, but even the drive through | the park and down to Santa Cruz was magnificent too - amazing | redwood lined curving backroad. | plussed_reader wrote: | I went to Sykes camp up the Pacific Ridge trail at the Big | Sur trail head in 2010, a year after the fires went through | in 2009. Everything was green, growing, and verdant but push | back the leaves and you'd find waxy ash everywhere. It will | take time. | sutro wrote: | Pine Ridge Trail | acchow wrote: | Protip: You can actually walk through Jurassic Park at Prairie | Creek Redwoods State Park about 5.5 hours' drive north of SF. | | Park at Fern Canyon and walk through Fern Canyon to Fern Canyon | Trail, James Irvine Trail, and Clintonia and Miner's Ridge | Trails. | | Fern Canyon was one of the filming locations of Jurassic Park | and the rest of the state park has stunning old growth redwood | groves. | taylorlapeyre wrote: | > A full regenerative process and outcome, along with reformed | canopies, will likely take 200 years according to the | Sempervirens Fund, an organization that helped create the park | and is exclusively dedicated to protecting to redwood forests of | the Santa Cruz Mountains. | | Ecological and geological time is always a reminder of how brief | the human lifespan truly is. 200 years is the blink of an eye for | an ecosystem, but lifetimes for us. It's inspiring to see people | work on restorations that they will never be able to appreciate | in their own lives. | stevesearer wrote: | Related: HN led me to learn about the UK Royal Forestry Society's | Redwood Grove at Leighton some time ago. | http://www.redwoodworld.co.uk/picturepages/leighton.htm | dang wrote: | _Redwood World - Pictures and Locations of Redwoods in the | British Isles_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28047458 | - Aug 2021 (60 comments) | thghtihadanacct wrote: | The ~4 feet of rain we had this season is helping quite a bit ... | I cant dig a hole in my back yard without hitting wet still. I | even doubt there are any of the smouldering roots left. Redwoods | are tough as long as we arent cutting them down. | tylerag wrote: | Redwoods are touch even when you do cut them down. The trunks | will put up water shoots immediately, and you'll have another | small tree in a couple of years. The problem is all the other | species that live in an old growth forest can't survive in a | brand new forest. | dylan604 wrote: | I like how this insinuates that you are digging holes in your | backyard with regularity to even notice this. Otherwise, it is | an odd way of saying it's wet =) | thghtihadanacct wrote: | Its still planting season on the central coast :) I dont even | put tomatoes in until late April/May anymore | retrocryptid wrote: | I think this page plays down the importance of fire to a healthy | redwood ecosystem. The trees seem to depend on a fire running | through every so often and burning out the scrub under the | canopy. | | Of course, this isn't how old-world forests work so when | European-Americans started building cabins en masse up in SLV in | the 1920's, they put them right next to large trees and we did | everything we could to limit fire. While there are a limited | number of structures in the park itself, almost 1500 structures | were destroyed during the CZU fire in the adjacent communities. | My old house was 10 miles away from the park and was across Big | Basin Way and Boulder Creek from neighborhoods that were | decimated. (TEN MILES from the park and they were still | decimated.) | | We can't have the same type of design, with houses right next to | trees. Once you have people living up there, the likelihood you | can convince people to do a "controlled" burn gets pretty low. | Then the fuel builds up for another 100 years and it destroys | EVERYTHING in its path. | | And what do you do for families whose homes were destroyed? Of | the nearly 1500 structures destroyed, only a handful of building | permits have been issued to rebuild. | | This is a great article about how the forest survives fire, but | the policy and politics behind how we got to the CZU fire are | complex and sometimes pretty subtle. | billiam wrote: | >And what do you do for families whose homes were destroyed? Of | the nearly 1500 structures destroyed, only a handful of | building permits have been issued to rebuild. | | You can't let them rebuild in place. Your points are spot on (a | new survey shows 1/3 of Californians live in the urban/wildland | interface where wildfires will destroy most dwellings) and it | requires new zoning, new fire legislation on fire insurance, | and of course the ability of people to live in higher density | through infill and careful planning. The cost of housing in the | Bay Area is a closely related problem, but the bottom line is | that we have to let fire move through the coastal redwoods | every few decades, and that means we cannot build tinderbox | houses right next to those groves. | retrocryptid wrote: | That would be extremely unpopular. | | Say you bought a house in the suburbs. Everything's fine. | Then someone comes in and says "Hey. We didn't know there was | a problem with the soil under your home, so we're just going | to come in one night and destroy it. And you don't get to | sell it or file an insurance claim. And we're not going to | compensate you for it. You just need to pay off your | mortgage, even though we destroyed the house." | | Changing zoning is a great idea, but alienating property | owners from the value of their purchase is not. | | The only solution I can think of is eminent domain, but it's | structurally a little more difficult in California than | authoritarian states like Texas that just come in and grab | your house to give it to the local baseball team. So you | would have to pass the legislation in Sacramento to authorize | the creation of a special district to manage the confiscation | of property. Then you would have to approve the funds, cause | this wouldn't be an improvement district and you wouldn't be | funding the district from the tax on the property. Then you | have do the confiscation, and sheesh, the San Lorenzo Valley | is sort of the definition of "weird deed restrictions." And | once the state (or maybe the open space trust???) has the | land, it has to pay for remediation so the soil doesn't wash | away and cause landslides that cover the road in three feet | of mud. And you have to do all this before the next big rain | event so the roads don't completely wash away. | | So... eminent domain isn't a bad idea, per se. But it's HARD. | | (queue Jethro Tull's "Farm on the Freeway") | lazide wrote: | Eh, the counties where this happened in likely couldn't | afford to eminent domain this problem away. It's their tax | base they'd be nuking! | | If it was a legitimate problem, you've described what | happens sometimes to folks buying homes. It's a risk of | ownership. | | Could be sinkholes. Could be subsidence. Could be a toxic | waste dump. | | Lawsuits fly, etc. | | However, long term it usually boils down to aligned | incentives. If the people at risk had to pay for the risk | (either by taxes or directly), they'd either move - or | cover the costs and reap the good or bad consequences | (including bankruptcy/loss of assets). | w7b7s7 wrote: | The very first paragraph of this article calls logging | 'exploitation' -- a very common view in Santa Cruz County, | and also a very hypocritical one depending on the | proponent, considering the fact that the very same early | 20th Century cabins everywhere present in San Lorenzo | Valley were themselves commonly framed and sheathed with | redwood logged from the SC Mountains. | | The damage from the CZU fires was certainly intensified by | man-made decisions, and most of these a result of the anti- | development turn Santa Cruz County took after the late | 1970s. | | Two very simple and straightforward solutions to mitigate | destructive wildfires in the SC Mountains are to 1) allow | logging, and 2) stop favoring existing homes over new homes | when it comes to fire resistant requirements. | | One of the reasons Santa Cruz County (or California) is in | the state it's in is people don't want to hear this. | | Logging: There are tens of thousands of acres of TP (Timber | Production) zoned land in the Santa Cruz Mountains -- very | much in areas that burned -- that have been blocked from | logging due to years and years of environmental reviews and | neighbor complaints. These lands could have just simply | been logged. There would have been healthy trees left | (clear-cutting is illegal) and overall the forest would | have been in a much better state to resist fires. Also, | Santa Cruz County unfortunately allows single family homes | on TP-zoned parcels. So there are lots of TP-zoned parcels | that will never be logged as they are really now | residential lots in disguise. This does not help forest | management at all. | | Fire resistant requirements: I'm one of the few people I | know that has actually built a new house on raw land in the | Santa Cruz Mountains in the last 10 years. It took me | nearly 3 years for permits alone for an 1100 sq ft single | story SFH built on flat ground near a public highway. This | type of timeframe dissuades most people from new | construction here. This is on purpose: it's what the county | and people in the county want. | | The actual Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) building codes | are very straightforward and increase the cost of | construction by only about 10 percent. Class A shingles, | Type X gypsum underlayment everywhere, approved fire | resistant siding, fire+ember/resistant vents, tempered fire | resistant windows/shutters, indoor sprinkler system, | vegetation clearance everywhere. It was all required (and | inspected) for me to legally move in. | | None of my neighbors in their 1930s/1940s homes are | remotely as fire ready. Remotely. Lots of the homes that | burned in the CZU fires were pretty distant from the fire | line. All it took was floating embers setting shrubs on | fire, and those shrubs burning and getting embers sucked | into a vent, and many a house became a tinderbox. | | Yet my neighbors can sell their homes -- and there is a | decent amount of home sales up here still -- and not have | to upgrade a single thing. | | Since wildfires don't care about whether a house has been | standing 1 year or 100 years, this is obviously driven by | politics and not fire safety. | | There was a state law passed in 2021 that mandated that any | home located in a State Responsibility Area Fire Severity | Zone of High or Very High get a fire safety inspection and | approval (for vegetation clearance) before an existing home | sale. Updated 2022 CalFire maps have classified a good | amount of homes in the Santa Cruz Mountains as High or Very | High, so the updated maps becoming legally binding will be | a good first start. | | But it's a small start. | abathur wrote: | > I'm one of the few people I know that has actually | built a new house on raw land in the Santa Cruz Mountains | in the last 10 years. It took me nearly 3 years for | permits alone for an 1100 sq ft single story SFH built on | flat ground near a public highway. | | How much did this set you back? I assume you're still | living there? How have the fire seasons affected your | insurance and sense of the area's longer-term viability? | (I'm not in CA, but the redwoods have been stuck in my | head for a while now. I've spent a lot of time | daydreaming about moving to a few places including SLV.) | thghtihadanacct wrote: | Come on ... virtually all of SC county is wildlife urban | interface. Almost the entire perimeter of city of Santa | Cruz is Wildlife interface. No reason to eminent domain (we | aint got that money) or refuse rebuilding. Just enforce | fire insurance and defensible space (difficult in a forest | but not impossible ... you take down the fuel not the | trees). | rcpt wrote: | This isn't the suburbs. This is exurban sprawl deep into | the redwoods. | whyenot wrote: | > The cost of housing in the Bay Area is a closely related | problem, but the bottom line is that we have to let fire move | through the coastal redwoods every few decades, and that | means we cannot build tinderbox houses right next to those | groves. | | There are very few people who actually live among the | redwoods. This is a problem that will take care of itself as | the insurance policies of those living in the most risky | places are canceled. This is already happening (it has | happened to me). A far greater risk is the number of people | who live in a WUI and are right next to coastal sage scrub, | oak woodland, and chaparral. A lot more people are affected | by this because these are the plant communities that ring | many of California's urban areas, and many of these | communities also regularly burn; for their health, they | actually need to burn. | rcpt wrote: | Right. LA Times has a good write up, Rebuild, Reburn | | https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-09-27/rebuild-. | .. | thghtihadanacct wrote: | Groves? If you look at a map all that green between | Watsonville and the city are Redwoods. Thats the grove. | m463 wrote: | I wonder about the area ecosystem - I think it got unbalanced | after the 1906 earthquake in san francisco that caused them to | (tragically) log all the redwoods. | | What has grown back is groups of ~ 7 redwoods clustered around | the former trunk of a felled old-growth redwood. They are more | numerous and denser. I suspect with several trees competing, | there will never be the thousand-year-old ecosystem again in | the area. | nomel wrote: | > The trees seem to depend on a fire | | This is more of a known fact [1]. But, it goes further than | that! In California, there are several pyrophytes [2] that | can't germinate without fire. [3] | | [1] https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/giant-sequoia-needs-fire- | gro... | | [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrophyte | | [3] https://tabletopwhale.com/img/posts/LivingWithFire.pdf | TinkersW wrote: | Coastal redwoods do not depend on fire. You are confusing them | with the giant sequoia. | javman wrote: | Maybe not "depend on", but "adapted to" ... | | "Coast redwood are adapted to fire and other disturbance. | Seeds germinate best on mineral soil as is exposed by | flooding, fire, or wind throw for seed germination and | establishment." | | "The fire return interval in coast redwood forests varies | drastically with latitude, microclimate and distance from the | coast. In general, forests that are further north, closer to | the coast, or located on mesic sites tend to burn less | frequently." | | From https://www.nps.gov/pore/learn/management/firemanagement | _fir... | retrocryptid wrote: | Sempervirens can reproduce without fire, but are healthier | with a good fire now and again. My guess is that's one of | the reasons the trees in big basin look sickly compared to | the ones up north. | | https://fireecology.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s4240 | 8... | thghtihadanacct wrote: | There are controlled burns around UCSC and towards Big Basin | every year. Also, not all of the 1500 structures that burned | were housing that needed rebuilt (think old sheds, etc)... and | there are few to no houses in Big Basin anyway. Those owners | that arent rebuilding from CZU fire have many reasons not to | but rarely is it because they arent allowed a permit. | sullivantrevor wrote: | i love this planet | QuadrupleA wrote: | Nice that it's growing back but still sad to see - I hiked just | about every mile of trail when I lived in the area. Some nice | memories. | 71a54xd wrote: | Big Basin is by far one of my favorite state parks in the entire | country. | | I spent what seemed like a "brief" gap year from college working | for a startup in the Bay Area and spent all of my weekends hiking | / camping. In 2016/2017 there was a huge rain season that caused | washouts but I was dumb enough to drive all the way over the | foothills to Big Basin. It was probably unwise but I'd never seen | a forest explode with life like that before. Everything from the | moss, to grasses and ferns all almost glowed with color. | Mushrooms erupted from the ground almost anywhere you looked. And | new waterways had recently cut through the forest. It was an | incredible sight to witness first-hand. | | I was into hiking before, but my time in Big Basin was a low-key | religious experience. It was the first time I truly looked at a | beautiful forest and thought to myself "why on earth would you | cut all of this down to build ugly tract homes?" | | I'm sad to hear about the CZU fires in 2020, however I'm of the | opinion that fires happen and no ecosystem is intended to exist | as we experience it forever. As I've gotten older, I've found | memories I can no longer physically revisit in the same condition | are some of my strongest and most cherished. That said, I hope | conservationist can help support the forest as it heals. | soperj wrote: | Redwoods are serotinous. They literally depend on fire to | propagate. Fire suppression is actually one of the main threats | to the species. | imagainstit wrote: | Coast redwoods (sequoia sempervirens) are not serotinous. | Giant sequoia (sequoiadendron giganteum) are, but that's not | what's in Big Basin. | | Coast redwoods propagate by stump sprouting and seeds which | don't require fire. Fire is important in their ecosystem for | clearing out fuel but is not at all required for | reproduction. | | https://ucanr.edu/sites/forestry/California_forests/http___u. | .. | jeron wrote: | I love riding my motorcycle through the mountains of Santa Cruz | through Big Basin. The way the Redwoods surround you is just | incredible, and the fresh air is just as regenerative as the | trees themselves ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-05-17 23:00 UTC)