[PLUG-TALK] [PLUG] Weather application for Xubuntu 18.04

Rich Shepard rshepard at appl-ecosys.com
Fri Sep 11 20:00:07 UTC 2020


On Fri, 11 Sep 2020, Tomas Kuchta wrote:

> I have friends, educated smart people, who are still saying that there
> have always been fires, and if only we had more firemen or let it burn
> more or chop down more trees or get more competent republican government
> .... Crazy world! ...

Tomas,

There are several factors at work here in addition to the overall issue of
climate change.

In the Intermountain West and Great Basin cheatgrass (Bromus tectorium) is
an invasive species that quickly occupies burned areas before the native
grasses and forbs can sprout. Cheatgrass out-competes the natives, grows
quickly in the spring and has died by the time summer fire season starts. It
burns easily and quickly and perpetuates the cycle. There are bacterial
treatments to kill cheatgrass and prevent seeds from germiating but the
costs to innoculate millions of acres is prohibitive. These fires are common
in the sagebrush grasslands of the west.

Western juniper (Juniperus occidentalis) has been taking over sagebrush
areas in the west for decades. Mule deer, sage grouse, and other herbivores
that feed on sagebrush, manzanita, and other shrubs lose habitat because the
food's not there. They don't eat Juniper leaves or branches. One reason
western juniper keep taking habitat away from wildlife and livestock is that
they put down deep roots and suck ground water up before it's available to
competing plants with shallower roots. Efforts have been underway for years
to kill off the juniper by cutting them down or chipping them where they
stand (very impressive to watch a 'dozer with a chipper attachment start at
the top of a tall juniper and create a pile of wood chips within a minute.)
Juniper also burns quite well for an evergreen with deep roots.

Land management in the semi-arid West, as well as the forested mountains and
western valleys, is subject to political pressure, much from both naive
public and natural resource industries. That's why it's been so ineffective
for so long.

Carpe weekend,

Rich





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