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Index of Subjects --089e01184e62fc672a0527d57410 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Steve, Bill Freedman had these data and Garbary and I referred to his paper w Morash as well as to a paper on a fractional analysis from New England. .conn..The take home message was that while biomass removal removed 13% of the soil calcium in new England, a similar harvest removed 27% of soil calcium in Nova Scotia. This story has another Dal connection: Barry Goldsmith, forest ecologist who worked at Dal before Bill Freedman. Barry (FB Goldsmith, we have lost touch) figured that on average NS forests had been cut over 3 times. This figure is about right if we take a harvest once every 80 years rate and we might increase this estimate (made in 1980) to 3.5 times cut taking into account we are 36 years past his time and that times between harvests have diminished. So with 27% loss of calcium per harvest and forests being cut over more that 3 times, we could make a calculation of: A. Loss of Ca in NS forests (our cuts do not remove all biomass) And B. How much worse shape we are in in comparison w Connecticut So what? David Garbary and my finding (Botany in 2011) showed that NS has a group of rare Appalachian herbs that are restricted to our highest calcium forests; floodplains, even though in Appalachia they grow on upland slopes. With climate change plant distributions will move north but only if we have not exhausted our soils. We should be able to do something with these data. Nick On Dec 24, 2015 4:52 PM, "Stephen Shaw" <srshaw@dal.ca> wrote: > A question regarding Fred & Peter's point about loss of nutrients. > In a natural deciduous forest of any type that has not been harvested at > all, for a 100-year old tree (say), what proportion of the total recyclable > nutrients per tree-area will have come from the accumulated annual leaf > fall (+ fallen dead branches + feasting caterpillar, squirrel and > woodpecker turds, etc), and what proportion will be returned only after the > woody trunk and main branches have finally died, fallen down and decayed at > age 100? > If the first is dominant then the argument about loss of nutrients by > logging and tree removal is not strictly valid, whereas if the second > dominates, it is. > > I'm sure somebody must have looked at this carefully, and for different > types of forest and different soil types. Are the proportions known? > Steve > ________________________________________ > From: naturens-owner@chebucto.ns.ca [naturens-owner@chebucto.ns.ca] on > behalf of Fred Schueler [bckcdb@istar.ca] > Sent: Thursday, December 24, 2015 12:28 PM > To: naturens@chebucto.ns.ca > Subject: RE: [NatureNS] Red Herring & Forestry > > Quoting John and Nhung <nhungjohn@eastlink.ca>: > > > Yeah, I get the impression that the main problem with the Point Tupper > > monster is its size. A smaller operation might have fit in quite nicely. > > Of course, the NewPage surprise added to the mess, but mess it is, and I > > hope the government ad the operators can ramp back its biomass > consumption > > to a more sensible, sustainable scale. > > * I was crafting a more complex reply to this thread, but I'll just > say that the problem with biomass harvesting from forests is to get > the nutrients removed in the wood back into the forest so successive > generation of trees can grow at a decent rate. We tried to deal with > this in our county forest here but certain foresters reacted so > negatively to the question of fertilization that the advisory > committee was illegally terminated as a consequence - but here's our > discussion of the nutrient question in forests that are having wood > removed - http://pinicola.ca/limnutr.htm - on sand and limestone we've > got very low intrinsic levels of nutrients, but the problem exists in > all woods if they're intensively exploited. > > fred. > ========================================================== > > > > Fingers crossed for a mild winter, with minimum demand for firewood! All > > this tells me we still need to take solar heat and other renewable > sources > > more seriously. > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: naturens-owner@chebucto.ns.ca [mailto: > naturens-owner@chebucto.ns.ca] > > On Behalf Of Stephen Shaw > > Sent: December 24, 2015 11:59 AM > > To: naturens@chebucto.ns.ca > > Subject: RE: [NatureNS] Red Herring & Forestry > > > > Ed Darby? Abraham Darby I around 1709 modified the blast furnace that > had > > already been evolving for over a millenium, to consume coke instead of > > charcoal as the source of carbon that formed the carbon monoxide used to > > reduce raw iron oxide to pig iron, the starting point for other iron > > products. Charcoal gave a purer iron product, but making coke from coal > > proved much cheaper than making charcoal from harvested trees, by then a > > scarce commodity. For both charcoal and coke, a main byproduct was/is > CO2 > > gas from the finally oxidised carbon, released into the atmosphere. The > > cheaper Darby coke method, later improved, caught on rapidly: a gnomic > irony > > of this is that while saving some of the CO2-consuming much diminished > > forests from approaching extinction, it led rapidly to much greater iron > > production via burning fossil carbon that underpinned the Industrial > > Revolution in Britain, which in turn led to ever increasing CO2 > emissions, > > eventually worldwide. > > > > On a lesser point not covered by reporter Aaron Beswick's article in the > C-H > > that Dave referred to, if you had tried to get a few cords of 16" cut > > firewood for your wood stove in early 2015, as we did, you would have > found > > that initially, none of the local suppliers around Halifax could get any > > logs, because they believed that such wood that had been harvested was > > nearly all going directly to Point Tupper biomass monster, because that > had > > been built too large for the available supply of so-called 'waste' wood > and > > bark. Central planning at its very best. Our supplier eventually got > some > > logs from New Brunswick, but the price went up considerably. > > Steve > > ________________________________________ > > From: naturens-owner@chebucto.ns.ca [naturens-owner@chebucto.ns.ca] on > > behalf of David & Alison Webster [dwebster@glinx.com] > > Sent: Wednesday, December 23, 2015 7:12 PM > > To: naturens@chebucto.ns.ca > > Subject: Re: [NatureNS] Red Herring & Forestry > > > > Hi Nick & All, Dec 23, 2015 > > I have only few minutes so will deal with the "gn