#forestry
Platismatia herrei
Herre’s ragged lichen, tattered rag lichen
Can you believe people have the gall to describe P. herrei as “ragged?” When it is probably the most stunning thing I have seen today? The nerve, honestly. This foliose lichen has long, thin lobes that grow straight-up or drooping over. The lobe edges are covered in a thick layer of isidia (clonal propagules containing both algal and fungal components). The upper surface is typically a pale gray or green, sometimes turning brown after prolonged sun exposure. The lower surface is patchy white, gray, and brown with few rhizines. P. herrei grows on conifers in the Pacific NW of North America. And is beautiful and perfect and not ragged even a little bit.
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Misty mornings, coffee brewed in the camper van.
#landscapephotography #wales #nature #mountains #mist #rsa_fog #coffee #follow_the_grey_sky #sombrescapes #walking #vanlife #forest #forester #forests #forestpark #forestry #forest #forestwalk #forestlife #foresthill #foresta #forestgreen #forestwalks #forestlove #forestfairy #forestfalls #forestlake #forestroad #forestrun #foresthome #forestlover #forestgrove (at Wales)
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Scenes from the trail - the sequel
Timber prices are through the roof just now so the harvesters have been busy. Yes, they make a mess. No, I can’t get upset about it. The trees they take are aliens. They drop needles that form a thick blanket creating utterly sterile forests. The carpet of needles doesn’t harbour insect life, which means there are no birds or small furry predators. These plantations are unnaturally quiet because there’s zero life in there.
The good news is that the Forest Trust replants with a mix of native hardwoods. Although they’re much slower growing and need protection from deer, the biodiversity has increased exponentially over two decades of sensitive and careful management.
The bonus from Bailey’s perspective is there’s a sea of mud full of exciting smells just begging to be explored.
We have a new horizon! The forest trust just harvested a plantation that’s blocked this view since the house was built.
Scenes from the trail, episode ‘n’.
I guess a little commentary is warranted. First up is Creag Ard, my favourite quiet place, with Meall Fuar-mhonaidh in the distance. The second pic is the view north from the same spot. Harvesting continues to the extent that you can almost see our house now. Speaking of which, that’s us in the third pic from the other side of the valley. The rest are random snaps of things that caught my eye as we walked. (The hole is yet another exit hole for one of our resident moles; we’ve been overrun with them this year.)
We’ve also been insanely busy, so I’ve been neglecting my tumblr. Sorry for the prolonged absence.
โหนดดิน Peliosanthes sp. #peliosanthes #plants #forestry #forest #fauna #botany #botanical #biodiversity #ecology #nature #natureofthailand #naturelover #naturephotography #asparagaceae
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Taking down a tree in 30 seconds | source
Now this is a real thing that would take out a medieval peasant
No its not. Y'all keep thinking they’re dumb. They’d be all “what a nifty machine.”
Pls I just want to live in my peasant killing fantasy in peace
Grab em with the machine
Genius !!!
“#this is terrifying in its efficiency#all I can think about while watching it how quickly that can obliterate a forest#there is no way we can replant as quickly as that can destroy” via @thischick25
good news, actually! see how small and sturdy the cab of that machine is? and how flexibly it can cut and trim the tree? machines like this are actually really good for logging because, when used responsibly, there’s no need for clear cutting or mass deforestation.
traditional logging practices that deforested hillsides were definitely due to a brutally extractive philosophy, and are still in use today, and should be condemned. but they were also pragmatic: you had to cut a road into the forest to get your machines in place, your trucks couldn’t haul things over uneven ground, and your men didn’t want to drag lumber any further than they had to. so, economically, clearcutting made the most sense. build a road, cut down everything close to the road, build the road a little further. you’re paying a ton of money out for all the manhours and equipment, the gas, the repairs, the injuries. so you clearcut as much as you can to get your money’s worth out of the operation and you don’t leave behind a stick.
more flexible machines like this let loggers mark individual trees quite far away from any access road, cut a single tree down without it hitting into any other tree or tearing up the ground by yanking the root ball out, and get it ready for hauling. in thirty seconds. no injuries, no accidents, no overtime. an entire tree harvested, as easy as that.
it’s now practically and economically feasible to send a guy out to cut down a hundred individualtrees in a forest, spread out over an area of miles, with an intact forest in place around each stump, instead of just having that guy cut down every single tree they can reach from the road until they get to a hundred, and leave behind a devastated mud wallow that won’t regrow for decades.
tree farm forests aren’t as good for the environment as forest preserves! this is certainly a thing– and not every tree planted ‘for the environment’ is actually useful. for instance, christmas tree forests are practically wastelands, nothing much can live in a place that’s just All The Same Fucking Pine Tree. and there’s a LOT of shitty, extractive logging still going on, and we DO still have to hold lumber companies accountable for chewing up old growth forest (IKEA) which in this day and age should not fucking be happening.
but these kind of logging machines should be applauded, and seen as ecologically wonderful,because they present our best alternative to clear-cut logging. with this kind of machine (and sustainable quotas! by a company that’s actually committed to responsible forestry!!!) not only are we not going to be cutting more quickly than we replant– we don’t even haveto replant.
Reblogging for the excellent explanation of the role of this technology in sustainable forestry, and also to point out that, while a medieval peasant would certainly be surprised and impressed by how fast this machine is, many of them would have experience with the concept of new technologies making familiar tasks more efficient.
There were a tonof technological improvements made during the medieval period. The horse-collar is one of the more well-known ones, and what it does is allow a horse to pull more weight by changing the way that the forces are distributed on the animal’s body. (In other words, it lets you get more horsepower out of your horse!)
There were also a number of incremental improvements to plowing technology, which allowed the work to be done faster, as well as a long series of developments in using wind- or water-mills to do various things–which is really huge, because you’re harnessing something other than muscle power (human or animal) to do various tasks, like grinding grain or processing other materials.
At the very end of the medieval period, a peasant might have even encountered a sawmill, which would use water power to process logs into lumber. A medieval peasant who had watched that development happen might look at this thing and go, “Oh, yes, I see, they found a way to bring the sawmill to the tree–what will they think of next?”
i will be the first in line to dunk on the british for a lot of things, notably how impressively bad they’ve been at farming–but one thing english peasants actually did really well, for centuries, was manage their forests.
they lived on a little island. they had little forests. they had a LOT of rain. deforesting basically anywhere that wasn’t actively being used for farmland or pasture was a very bad move! but they had to have a steady supply of firewood. so they turned coppicing into an art form.
as you can see above, this machine chops the tree neatly and quickly off as a stump, rather than ripping it all out of the ground, and it does this really really fast. it’s more like an amputation than a buchery. The tree’s roots are still alive, and even if the tree dies, the roots will hold the ground together for a while, then nourish the soil and promote mushroom growth as they decay.
but if the tree’s old enough, it has the resources to send runners up from the stump and get a bunch of leaves back in place to start photosynthesizing again…. and then it’ll just keep on being a tree. just a much shorter tree, for awhile. and it’s still got a headstart on any other saplings in the area–which themselves might be taking advantage of the sudden gap in the canopy to shoot up, though different species need different things. some trees need an extended period of time as shaded saplings to form dense inner layers, and if they grow up too fast they’re fragile and split during storms or frosts. but some trees are short-lived opportunists just waiting for a break in the canopy. and there’s always plenty of shrubs that can grow and reseed more dynamically.
a forest is like a really complicated conversation between all the plants and animals and fungi in it, and coppicing individual trees doesn’t alter that conversation as badly as mowing down big swathes of them. a return to coppicing as a standard logging practice would be reallyexciting.
Put my #Subaru through the ultimate test today… A haul road straight up the mountain. #forestry #logger #training @subaru_usa #subaruoutback
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