Treesearch

Coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens (D. Don) Endl.) seedlings were grown from seed in controlled environments with 16 hour photoperiods using three light patterns that mimicked full shade (constant light level), intermittent high light such as long duration sun flecks (low light with 15 minutes of intense light every 2 hours), and large openings (4 hours low light, 8 hours high light, 4 hours low light). Each light pattern contained three light intensity levels (33 percent, 66 percent, and 100 percent) with one intensity level in each pattern that provided 5.1 daily light integral (DLI)....

To better understand the distribution and current structure of coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens (D.Don) Endl.) forests throughout the range and how it varies by land ownerships, the Save the Redwoods League has conducted a redwood specific analysis of a high resolution forest structure database encompassing the entire natural coast redwood range. Using this analysis, we are able to identify those areas most likely to contain coast redwood and the probable stature of those forests. Previous League databases were built by expert evaluation of aerial photographs, requiring substantial time...

In 2013, redwood (Sequoia sempervirens (D.Don) Endl.) was listed as endangered under the International Union of Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List. While this listing has no political or legal consequences for the management of redwood, it could have economic consequences as land and mill owners of the redwood region have sought to link redwood to sustainable practices in the marketplace. This paper argues that the listing of redwood, however, is fundamentally flawed by the metrics of the Red List, and that the listing misses the chief conservation challenges related to redwood, which...

Cannabis (Cannabis sativa or C. indica) agriculture is a multi-billion dollar industry in the United States that is changing rapidly with policy liberalization. Anecdotal observations fuel speculation about associated environmental impacts, and there is an urgent need for systematic empirical research. An example from Humboldt County, California, a principal cannabis-producing region, involved digitizing 4,428 grow sites in 60 watersheds with Google Earth imagery. Grows were clustered, suggesting disproportionate impacts in ecologically important locales. Sixty-eight percent of grows were...

Amenity values, development potential, commodity prices and productive capacity largely determine rural land prices. For rural lands used in timber and agricultural production, capacity and expected future commodity prices play primary roles. For rural lands that are used as second homes or recreational properties, amenities— such as being near lakes or having scenic views—drive pricing. Here, we examine the impact of cannabis production on rural property values in Humboldt County, California, the largest cannabis producing county in the country and also home to both productive and...

California’s cap-and-trade carbon market has included forest offset projects, available to all private landowners across the United States. The redwood region has been at the forefront of the market, creating the earliest forest carbon projects. From carbon registries, we compiled a database of all forest carbon projects in the market, in order to determine where projects were located, what types of landowners (e.g. industrial, non-industrial, tribal, timber investment management organizations [TIMO]) were participating, and how projects were being developed. Notably, non-industrial...

During a period of unusually hot, dry weather in 1972, the Creighton Ridge fire burned 4,452 ha (11,000 ac) of forest and intermixed grasslands, as well as many residences on the recently-subdivided 16 ha (40 ac) ranch holdings in the Cazadero – Fort Ross area, north of San Francisco. In response to the fire, local work crews planted and thinned trees from 1981 to 2000 with State of California economic and technical assistance. Plantations of ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa Douglas ex C. Lawson) and Coulter pine (Pinus coulteri D. Don) were to serve as ‘nurse trees’ allowing ingrowth of...

Models predicting future climates and other kinds of information are being developed to anticipate where these two species may fail, where they may continue to thrive, and where they may colonize, given changes in climate and other elements of the environment. Important elements of such predictions, among others, are: photoperiod; site qualities; changes in levels and yearly patterns of temperature, wind, fog and precipitation; the effects of these on interactions with other biota at each site; the effects of changes in fire frequency and intensity; the availability of seeds and seed...

We describe the foundation, objectives, and initial results from a stand-level experiment focused on restoration of redwood (Sequoia sempervirens (D. Don) Endl.) forests impacted by sudden oak death (SOD), caused by Phytophthora ramorum. Our study stands were primed for heavy impacts by SOD. Extensive harvesting which ended circa 1910 on Mt Tamalpais (Marin County, California) resulted in high densities of tanoak trees with interspersed residual redwood. The arrival of P. ramorum and subsequent emergence of SOD transformed these stands into tanoak shrublands with interspersed redwood...