There are a lot of other groups working on California forest issues like we are. Here's a growing list:
Alpine Biomass Committee. Unifying partners to promote forest and watershed health, and local economic development.
Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics. Our mission is to protect national forests and to reform the U.S. Forest Service by advocating environmental ethics, educating citizens, and defending whistleblowers.
North American Forest Partnership.
We are a diverse community of forest stewards responsible for shaping
the future of North America’s forests. We value the renewable products
and benefits they provide us and are committed to making choices that
keep forests as forests.
"Microfibrillated
cellulose (MFC) consists of plant fibres that are only 100 nanometres
in diameter, but can be extremely long, making them highly suitable as a
reinforcement material for biodegradable plastics.
MFC membranes have also been shown to be impermeable to gases such as oxygen and can therefore be used to protect foodstuffs.
Most of today’s plastics are petroleum-based, but scientists are now
trying to create a climate-friendly alternative to plastics from
renewable resources - bioplastic and (MFC)."
STRONG: "Some varieties of wood, such as oak and maple, are renowned for their strength. But scientists say a simple and inexpensive new process can transform any type of wood into a material stronger than steel, and even some high-tech titanium alloys."
CLEAR: "Because MMA’s index of refraction (a measure of how much it bends light) matches that of the lignin-free wood, rays of light pass right through the MMA-infused composite instead of getting bounced around inside empty cells. This renders the [treated wood] material remarkably clear."
Oakridge National Labs is working on reducing the cost and manufacturing time of carbon fiber, which is a magnificently strong and light material, but currently prohibitive for mass production. Their research includes a focus on less expensive precursors including wood lignin, a waste product of the paper industry.
"The new [paper-making] method involves breaking down wood pulp with enzymes and then fragmenting it using a mechanical beater. The shear forces produced cause the cellulose to gently disintegrate into its component fibres.
The end result is undamaged cellulose fibres suspended in water. When the water is drained away...the fibres join together into networks held by hydrogen bonds, forming flat sheets of 'nanopaper'.
Mechanical testing shows it has a tensile strength of 214 megapascals, making it stronger than cast iron (130 MPa) and almost as strong as structural steel (250 MPa).
Normal paper has a tensile strength less than 1 MPa.
The secret to the nanopaper’s performance is not only the strength of the undamaged cellulose fibres, but also they way they are arranged into networks. Although strongly bound together, they are still able to slip and slide over each other to dissipate strains and stresses."
It even conducts electricity, and can be made into strong insulting foam.
"Wood-powered vehicles have been around since the auto industry’s earliest days, but they didn’t rise to prominence until the end of the First World War. Alarmed by gas shortages during the war, many countries in Europe encouraged private companies to find a new type of fuel."
As Paul says in the video, Native Americans managed the landscape with fire for thousands of years--in fact, the forests wouldn't exist without this legacy of fire.
Native American Forest Management
In California
Kat Anderson's, Tending The Wild is the definitive text on Native American land management in California.
"Like people everywhere, Indians survived by cleverly exploiting their environment. Europeans tended to manage land by breaking it into fragments for farmers and herders. Indians often worked on such a grand scale that the scope of their ambition can be hard to grasp. They created small plots, as Europeans did...but they also reshaped entire landscapes to suit their purposes. A principal tool was fire, used to keep down underbrush and create the open, grassy conditions favorable for game. Rather than domesticating animals for meat, Indians retooled whole ecosystems to grow bumper crops of elk, deer, and bison."
..."what the eco-imagery would like to picture as a pristine, untouched Urwelt [primeval world] in fact has been managed by people for millennia...[forests] are among the finest works of art on the planet." "The Indians were the 'keystone species' of the American ecosystem...After disease killed off the Indians...buffalo vastly extended their range. Their numbers more than sextupled. The same occurred with elk and mule deer."
When
Europeans arrived in the Americas, they caused so much death and
disease that it changed the global climate, a new study finds.
European settlers killed 56 million indigenous people
over about 100 years in South, Central and North America, causing large
swaths of farmland to be abandoned and reforested, researchers at
University College London, or UCL, estimate. The increase in trees and
vegetation across an area the size of France resulted in a massive
decrease in carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, according to the
study.
Carbon levels changed enough to cool the Earth by 1610, researchers found. Columbus arrived in 1492. "CO2
and climate had been relatively stable until this point," said UCL
Geography Professor Mark Maslin, one of the study's co-authors. "So,
this is the first major change we see in the Earth's greenhouse gases."
Before
this study, some scientists had argued the temperature change in the
1600s, called the Little Ice Age, was caused only by natural forces.
But
by combining archaeological evidence, historical data and analysis of
carbon found in Antarctic ice, the UCL researchers showed how the
reforestation -- directly caused by the Europeans' arrival -- was a key
component of the global chill, they said.
"For
once, we've been able to balance all the boxes and realize that the
only way the Little Ice Age was so intense is ... because of the
genocide of millions of people," Maslin told CNN.
