DNR weekend reading: Economic value of urban trees, forests shifting northward and other stories

A snag like this one in Capitol State Forest can provide shelter and forage to birds, small mammals, and other wildlife. Photo: Jessica Payne/DNR.

Here are links to articles about natural resources, climate, energy and other topics published recently by universities, scientific journals, organizations, and other sources:

US Forest Service: US urban trees store carbon, provide billions in economic value
America’s urban forests store an estimated 708 million tons of carbon, an environmental service with an estimated value of $50 billion, according to a recent U.S. Forest Service study. The annual net carbon uptake by these trees is estimated at 21 million tons and their economic benefit at $1.5 billion.

NASA–Jet Propulsion Laboratory: NASA Opens New Era in Measuring Western U.S. Snowpack
A new NASA airborne mission has created the first maps of the entire snowpack of two major mountain watersheds in California and Colorado, producing the most accurate measurements to date of how much water they hold. The agency plans to exand the mapping to other mountain watersheds.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: New Study: As Climate Changes, Boreal Forests to Shift North and Relinquish More Carbon Than Expected
Boreal forests will likely shift north at a steady clip this century. Along the way, the vegetation will relinquish more trapped carbon than most current climate models predict.

University of Wisconsin: Decline in snow cover spells trouble for many plants, animals
In a warming world, winter and spring snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere is in decline, putting at risk many plants and animals that depend on the space beneath the snow to survive the blustery chill of winter.

University of Calgary: Human impacts on natural world underestimated
A comprehensive five-year study by University of Calgary ecologists indicates that conservation research may not giving enough consideration to the influence of human activity on natural ecosystems and food chains.

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Take Our Daughters and Sons To Work® at DNR

Kids had the chance to meet Smokey Bear at DNR’s Take Our Daughters and Sons To Work® Day event. Photo by: DNR/Jessica Payne

Yesterday the Washington State Department of Natural Resources (DNR) celebrated Take Our Daughters and Sons To Work® Day with the children of state employees.

This year, the Take Our Daughters and Sons To Work® Foundation partnered with the National Association of State Foresters to introduce children to careers in forestry. Almost a hundred kids came out to learn about the jobs we do at DNR, the Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the Washington Department of Agriculture.

For half a day, the Natural Resources Building here in Olympia was transformed into an education fair featuring trees, bugs, and geodes. Kids had an opportunity to learn how foresters work in the woods and try to stump the forester with their questions. They got up close with bugs while learning about forest health from one of DNR’s entomologists.

This little girl is proud to show off a sparkly geode at the Washington Geology Library exhibit for the event. Photo by: DNR/Jessica Payne

At the Washington Geology Library, children learned the life-cycle of a rock and identified special rocks, from geodes to the Washington state gem:petrified wood. Many kids put their directional skills to the test by learning to use a compass and trying to complete the orienteering course mapped out by DNR’s recreation staff. They were given a noble fir seedling from DNR’s Webster Nursery and practiced proper planting with the Washington Conservation Corps Urban Forestry team.

These little girls got to get an up close look at the bugs that affect the health of Washington’s trees. Photo by: DNR/Jessica Payne

Participants also learned how Geographic Information System (GIS) specialists make maps and use technology to help DNR teams fight wildland fires.

They also experienced what it’s like to be a DNR firefighter by meeting some of the team, trying on personal protective equipment, and meeting Smokey Bear, who paid a special visit. Even Commissioner of Public Lands Peter Goldmark came down to meet the children, thank the volunteers, and snap a quick photo with Smokey.

View photos from the event on our Flickr page here.

DNR is happy to have had the opportunity to recruit our future generations of state land managers. If you are interested in finding out about the several types of careers that DNR has to offer, visit our jobs page and apply to work with DNR today.

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Opportunities to learn about trees, forestry and forest health

Douglas fir killed as a result of beetle attack. Beetle populations increase following fire, blowdown, or harvest as a supply of inner bark becomes more available. Under such circumstances, beetle populations can increase to the point where otherwise healthy trees can be killed. Photo: Robert Van Pelt/DNR.

Do you own forestland? Hope to own a small parcel of it someday? Or just want to learn what goes into owning and caring for a wood lot of your own? DNR and the Washington State University Extension team up next month for a ‘Hands-On Forest Health Workshop’ in Glenwood. The Saturday, May 11, workshop will teach you the indicators of forest health and how to assess your forest’s health risks. You’ll even get out in the woods (rain or shine) for some learning in the field… or woods, to be precise. Course instructors will include entomologists from DNR and WSU, and a DNR forest health specialist. Hurry. These workshops fill up quickly. (Glenwood, Washington is 25 miles northwest of Goldendale, or 32 miles northeast of White Salmon)

Prefer to get your education online? WSU Extension’s ‘Forest Stewardship University’ offers online learning modules designed for forest owners in the Pacific Northwest. The courses are low-cost and you can try out a few free sample modules before purchasing to see if online learning is for you.

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DNR weekend reading: Trees that fight crime; better ways to measure wetland health, and other news

A lone Pacific smelt in the Columbia River near Longview takes a ‘break’ during its upstream migration to spawn in the Cowlitz, Kalama or Lewis rivers. Photo: James Huinker/DNR.

Here are links to articles about natural resources, climate, energy and other topics  published recently by universities, scientific journals, organizations, and other sources:

environment.yale.edu: Trees Shed Bad Rap as Accessories to Crime
Even when different research methodologies are used, studies find that violent crimes (assaults, robberies, and burglaries) occur less often in greener areas of cities (including Portland, Oregon; Philadelphia; and Baltimore), even when the education, poverty, and population levels of the neighborhoods studied are comparable.

University of Missouri: Measuring Microbes Makes Wetland Health Monitoring More Affordable, Says MU Researcher
Measuring the presence and health the tiny, unseen creatures in wetlands provides crucial indicators of an ecosystem’s microbiological health. The approach is cheaper and faster than the traditional assessment of larger wetland species, such as birds and mammals. It also could lead to improvements in harnessing natural processes of wetlands to filter wastewater.

NOAA: New study: A warming world will further intensify extreme precipitation events
A newly published National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration- (NOAA) led study suggests that as the globe warms from rising atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, the additional moisture held in a warmer atmosphere will lead to notable increases in extreme precipitation events in the Northern Hemisphere.

Science Daily: Carbon Dioxide Released from Burning Fuel Today Could Go Back Into New Fuels Tomorrow
At the recent National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, researchers discussed ways to find a use for the megatons of carbon dioxide that may be removed from industrial smokestacks during efforts to curb global warming. The goal is to create an efficient process for converting carbon dioxide back into the fuel that released it in the first place.

Stanford University: Biodiversity does not reduce transmission of disease from animals to humans, Stanford researchers find
A new meta-analysis of published studies pokes holes in widely accepted theory that connects biodiversity abundance with a reduced disease risk for humans. the researchers found that the links between biodiversity and disease prevalence are variable and dependent on the disease system, local ecology and probably human social context.

Study shows brain gains benefit from a walk in the park

Photo: International Society of Arboriculture/Bugwood.org

We’ve always felt that visiting green spaces like parks and forests reduces our stress and makes us feel more creative, but now an innovative study from Scotland indicates that you really can ease brain fatigue by strolling through a calming natural space. An experiment using volunteers hooked to lightweight, portable electroencephalograms—devices that measure brain wave patterns—confirms that even a short walk in the park lessens brain fatigue.

But what if you don’t live in soggy western Washington? That’s why we encourage well-planned and tended trees in urban spaces and other communities. And that’s also why we celebrate Arbor Day all month-long in April. Citizens, governments, educators, organizations and others are working to make greener spaces through trees.

For those of you who want to read about the scientific methods and conclusions of the researchers in Scotland, here’s a link to an abstract of their study (‘The urban brain: analysing outdoor physical activity with mobile EEG‘) published last month in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

For the rest of us, this New York Times blog about the study breaks it down into plan talk; namely, take a walk.

Find out if your city is one of the 83 in Washington designated as a Tree City USA–-a national recognition for the cities and towns that go the extra mile to manage and care for healthy urban forests.

DNR assists local governments that want to improve the health of their urban forests. This spring, our Urban and Community Forestry Program has provided crews from Washington Conservation Corps (WCC) and Puget SoundCorps to help several city and county governments restore urban forests.

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Hooray for Arbor Day in Washington: Are you living in a ‘Tree City USA’ community?

Photo: Guy Kramer.

Today is Arbor Day, a celebration of trees and all the great things they do for us in Washington State. We celebrate Arbor Day through a special program called Tree City USA® which recognizes cities and towns that go the extra mile to manage and care for healthy urban forests. That extra mile includes planning the maintenance of vigorous city trees, now and into the future.

Now is a great time to properly prune your trees. As you do, be sure to never top a tree. Topping—radical removal of a large part of the tree’s crown—may get rid of a few problem limbs, but in the long run you will end up doing more maintenance each year. After a tree is topped, it grows suckers (weakly attached limbs); you’ll have a mess on your hands and a potentially hazardous situation. Learn to property prune now to lessen the damage next time storms hit.

Find out if your city is a Tree City USA–there may be special programs to celebrate trees in your community this month.

If your city isn’t part of the Tree City USA Program, contact your city officials to help them plan Arbor Day celebrations next year. Sponsored by the Arbor Day Foundation in cooperation with the US Forest Service and the National Association of State Foresters, Tree City USA® provides technical assistance and national recognition for urban and community forestry programs in thousands of towns and cities.

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Finding sweetness among the trees: Cambium can provide a spring treat

A stand of lodgepole pine. Photo: Dave Powell/US Forest Service/Bugwood.org

Imagine a time in the Pacific Northwest before the fur traders first offered those dry, hard, brown cones of sugar as part of their trade goods. European honeybees had not yet made their way westward after introduction decades earlier in the colonies. Sweetness would have been available from dried berries and roasted roots, but by this time of year, supplies were probably carefully rationed. For a more concentrated shot of springtime sugars, the cambium of lodgepole pines was almost universally treasured throughout our area. It still makes a fun treat to try, especially if you have some lodgepole pine on your property in need of thinning where removing the bark from a few trees will speed the process along.

(Warning: Harvesting cambium will scar the trunk of your tree. Since cambium is a living layer just under the bark, taking large amounts exposes this living layer and may leave the tree vulnerable to weather and disease. And please don’t harvest from pine trees on tribal or public lands, such as state trust lands, or from trees on private property without permission.)

Here’s how to harvest cambium 

DNR weekend reading: Moderate amounts of slash favor Douglas-fir growth

The estuary where Stavis Creek flows into Hood Canal. DNR is restoring wetlands at Stavis Creek Natural Resources Conservation Area. Photo: DNR

Here are links to articles about natural resources, climate, energy and other topics  published recently by universities, scientific journals, organizations, and other sources:

US Forest Service–Pacific Northwest Research Station: Logging Debris Gives Newly Planted Douglas-Fir Forests a Leg-Up
A new study led by the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station found that retaining moderate levels of logging debris, also known as “slash,” helped to both directly and indirectly increase the growth rate of Douglas-fir seedlings replanted after harvest. The findings, which are among the first to speak to the benefits of second-growth logging debris, are published online in the journal Forest Ecology and Management.

University of California-Davis: UC Davis researchers uncover earliest tobacco use in the Pacific Northwest
Native American hunter-gatherers living more than a thousand years ago in what is now northwestern California ate salmon, acorns and other foods, and now we know they also smoked tobacco — the earliest known usage in the Pacific Northwest, according to a new University of California, Davis, study.

Science DailyAmplified Greenhouse Effect Shaping North Into South
A comprehensive analysis of ground and satellite-based data by a team of scientists found that vegetation is growing more vigorously and spreading north. The study, published in the journal <em)Nature Climate Change, said that since the early 1980s, tall shrubs , trees and other vegetation once found at 57 degrees north  is spreading into former regions of tundra as far as 64 degrees north. The paper suggests that by the end of this century rising temperatures could lead to northward shifts of vegetation of more than 20 degrees latitude compared with the period 1951 to 1980.

Rice UniversityGround-level ozone falling faster than model predicted; pollution controls may be working better than anticipated

There is good news and better news about ground-level ozone in American cities. While dangerous ozone levels have fallen in places that clamp down on emissions from vehicles and industry, a new study from Rice University suggests that a model widely used to predict the impact of remediation efforts has been too conservative.

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DNR weekend reading: Warmer waters, less snow may challenge Northwest shellfish and energy industries

A unnamed tributary to Deer Creek in the Upper Washougal Northern Spotted Owl Management Area managed by DNR in Skamania County. Photo: Florian Deisenhofer/DNR

Today’s DNR Weekend Reading post begins with three developments that could have a direct impact on the Pacific Northwest: reduced snowmelt for water and power supplies, how warming waters affect shellfish, and another approach to using pine resin to make ‘greener’ plastics.

Princeton Journal Watch: Forecast Is for More Snow in Polar Regions, Less for the Rest of Us
A new cli­mate model pre­dicts an increase in snow­fall for the Earth’s polar regions and its high­est alti­tudes, but an over­all drop in snow­fall for the globe, as car­bon diox­ide lev­els rise over the next century. The decline in snow­fall could spell trou­ble for regions such as the west­ern United States that rely on snowmelt as a source of fresh water.

Scientific American: Warmer Waters Make Weaker Mussels  (PODCAST)
The work of University of Washington research scientist Emily Carrington is discussed. Her findings indicate that mussels’ attachment fibers weaken in warm water. As climate change raises ocean temperatures, these shellfish may be forced to cooler waters.

University of South Carolina: Turning Pine Sap Into “Ever-Green” Plastics
Scientists the University of South Carolina are developing new plastics that are “green” from the cradle to the grave because they are derived from the natural resins found in trees, especially evergreens. The rosin and turpentine derived from conifer wood are rich in hydrocarbons and similar, but not identical, to some components of petroleum.

Stanford University: Going negative: Stanford scientists explore new ways to remove atmospheric CO2
Because reducing CO2 emissions may not be enough to curb the current global warming trend, Stanford scientists suggest developing carbon-negative technologies that remove large amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere. One approach they favor is converting plant wastes (that release CO2 into the air) into biochar – a charcoal-like substance that can be used as fertilizer to permanently lock the carbon underground.

Science Daily: Coldness Triggers Northward Flight in Monarch Butterflies: Migration Cycle May Be Vulnerable to Global Climate Change  A new study by scientists at the University of Massachusetts Medical School published in Current Biology, suggests that it is exposure to coldness in the microenvironment of the monarch butterfly’s  overwintering site that triggers its return north every spring. If a warming  climate reduces this cold exposure, the monarch butterfly might just continue flying south instead of returning to upper latitudes each spring.

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New study by U.S. Forest Service links beautiful, healthy trees to our own health

Mature trees enhance this urban street. Photo: Guy Kramer.

It should be no surprise that our natural environment gives us a sense of calmness, reducing stress, but now we have more solid evidence of a link, specifically between healthy people and healthy trees.

A new U.S. Forest Service report, “The Relationship between Trees and Human Health,” was recently printed in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine. According to Forest Service researcher Geoffrey Donovan, Americans living in areas of diseased trees had higher rates of cardiovascular disease and lower-respiratory disease when compared with areas that have uninfected trees.

Donovan said that it could have been tempting to conclude some other factor in the higher mortality rates, such as income or education. But, he said, the researchers saw the same patterns repeated over and over in counties with very different demographic make-ups. This finding adds to the growing evidence that the natural environment provides major public health benefits.

Currently, Washington State is facing serious forest health problems. As DNR addresses these issues with landowners and land managers, it’s important to know that having healthy trees isn’t just about reducing wildfire risks. It’s more inclusive of a holistic approach to our well being.

Drop by the DNR Facebook page to join in a discussion of the link between human health and healthy community forests.

Learn more about tree health in your community at DNR’s Forest Health and Urban and Community Forestry Programs.

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