Our Big Trees are Dying...but they Can be Saved!
You can gauge the size of this giant from my brown shirt lying at the base. The moss is killing this tree by attacking the bark and acidifying the soil. Note how sparse the leaf canopy is. A healthy tree tries to capture all the sunlight possible.
All over California our trees, especially the oaks, are under threat. An oak expert at a California Flora course at the Santa Rosa Community College , in the mid ‘80s said that researchers in his field were wondering if the oaks were dying out. In certain places it is being given a name, Sudden Oak Death (SOD), but the same process is underway throughout California . You can see the evidence of it in many of the oaks around the state – tip die-back, short annual shoot growth, moss, lichen & mistletoe infestations and dead branches. At a minimum they are not thriving. Conventional wisdom, at least for SOD, is that the cause is a specific pathogen. But that does not explain the death of trees that don’t have this pathogen or other species also affected that are not even subject to this pathogen. Thus SOD may actually be just one signal of the systemic death of an ecosystem.
Autopsy of a Tree
Moss likes damp acid conditions and creates a more acid environment. It attacks the bark. You can see what looks like soil forming from the disintegrated bark .
The moss spreads and eventually kills the layer of cambium under the bark that transports the nutrients.
The acid soil conditions cause the roots to die from the tips back. At the same time the important minerals like calcium are leached out of the soil. Eventually the root system cant sustain the tree.
Root die-back and demineralization also cause the branches to weaken. Insects and pathogens attack the tree more easily. Branches don't grow and begin to die back. The leaf canopy fractures and the tree cannot photosynthesize the energy that it should be able to.
In 2004 I met Dr. Lee Klinger (SuddenOakLife.org) who has been studying why forests die for 20 years. He has found the same process occurring all over the continent, indeed all over the world. He has determined that it is actually a normal, natural process. So-called “climax” forests are NOT the final stage of normal forest evolution. As they age an acidification process occurs in the soil. The cat-ions, like calcium, (that absorb acids) which are essential to the strength of the trees, get leached out of the soil and a layer of soil that is impermeable to water and roots starts to form. The mosses and lichens are encouraged by this dampness and acidification and they, in turn, cause further acidification leading to the downward spiral of the forest health. The acidic soils cause the tree root systems to die back and as they die, the branch tips get weaker and eventually die back. The tree grows weaker and more subject to mosses, lichens and other parasites since the bark is not as strong and vigorous. The trees eventually die. The ultimate result of this process, the real end stage, is a peat bog: an acid swamp of moss & lichen. Only alkalinization of the soil can reverse this process.
But why is this happening now? After all we have oaks that are many hundreds of years old and sequoias that are thousands of years old. Why should they suddenly be dying?
What Dr. Klinger discovered was evidence of how the forests have been tended to by the American Native peoples. In the case of the oaks, these were native peoples’ crops. You can see evidence in the form of growth patterns that are abnormal: trees that grow out instead of straight up. You can see it in the evidence of unusual fire damage that sculpts the growth pattern of the tree. We have known for a long time that the Native Americans used fire to manage the environment. Fire naturally alkalinizes the soil. We, on the other hand have been suppressing fire for 150 years with the additional result, besides soil acidification, that we have heavy undergrowth which is a fire hazard. When the Europeans first arrived, they reported that the forests were much more open and park-like than what we see now.
What Dr. Klinger also discovered is the evidence of sea shells (composed mostly of calcium carbonate) in soil layers around the base of the big old trees, even those nowhere near the ocean! Up in the Sequoia forests you will find the grinding holes that are typically associated with acorns. The Native peoples used them for grinding the shells. These trees have been tended to for hundreds and thousands of years. And this “technology” for tending for these trees is not limited to California . Dr. Klinger found evidence of it worldwide. In China it is still a living tradition. You will find trees fertilized with ground shells and whitewashed to prevent the mosses from growing. We are beneficiaries of the native peoples’ stewardship and we are depleting the “capital” that they have left for us. If we don’t act quickly we will lose our inheritance.
A common attitude of the environmentally aware among us is that we should just "leave the forest alone and let nature take care of it." The assumption is that man's interference is the cause of all problems in the environment. Unfortunately that is not a desirable solution. Man is in the environment and affecting it whether we like it or not and has been for millions of years. Even if we stay out of the forest we are having a certain effect. A 150 years of fire suppression has created a situation where forest fires threaten to devastate even the big trees. Even without any disturbance the acidification will continue to occur naturally and the end result is a peat bog. Native peoples manipulated the forests for thousands of years to provide themselves with the big trees and wide open spaces that provided them with the plant and animal food that sustained hunter-gatherers. Our only choice is to decide how we will manipulate the environment to attain the desired end result. Do we want peat bogs or tree farms or suburban subdivisions or wide open forests of big trees?
Dr. Klinger has developed and reintroduced the shell soil amendments and whitewash that will hinder the moss and lichen and re-alkalinize the soil. By applying these techniques he has seen dramatic resuscitation of oaks where shoot growth has quadrupled in a single season . With selective cutting, burning and spreading the ashes, we can reduce the fire hazard and reinvigorate our trees. With appropriate care, Dr. Klinger doesn’t think there is any natural age limit to our trees. But without any care, we could see their loss in our lifetimes.
If you would like the trees on your property that have lasted for generations, given the stewardship that they deserve so that they won't die during ours, you can contact me. You can also follow the instructions given in this do-it-yourself tree care instruction manual provided by Dr Lee Klinger.
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