Tree Planting: You don't know what you got til it's gone.

Caption: Forests cover nearly a third of the Earth's landmass. Falling into three categories -- tropical, temperate and boreal -- the forest types each have differing influences on local, regional and global climate.
Credit: Nicolle Rager Fuller, National Science Foundation
Usage Restrictions: None
Related news release: If a Tree Falls in the Forest, and No One Is Around to Hear It, Does Climate Change?
Image from Eureka Alert
Press Release: see Eureka Alert for one version.

Second Image from Wikipedia

I first read about this Science article at Olelog, who explains it all pretty well, I think, and provides a few more links.

According to the article - I, who live in the temperate zone, with our house at the lake in Sierra Nevada forest and our little house in the Nevada outback in upland steppe (sagebrush zone to pinon-juniper zone), should not plant trees, but rather should strip trees and bushes, possibly either to plant wheat (winter wheat? native wheatgrass?) or to plant cement or white river rock! [These are my extrapolations, not specific statements in any of the above links.]

I think not. I will go xeriscape in places like Reno. I will not, however, cut down temperate-zone trees in order to xeriscape or plant native grasses. The effect I've noticed of having a lawn with plants and trees in desert towns like Reno is the following: green grass (not native grass that turns brown by late spring) will cool your house in the summer considerably. Cement and white river rocks around your house will heat your house in the summer considerably (the winter heating effect can be desirable, but there are other ways to achieve that goal, such as windows in all the right places).

I won't do it. MOH and I have been growing spruce trees for the last several years; I'm not about to kill them now.

Just a rant or reaction, mostly. But my interpretation, although extreme, really does suggest that stripping and not replanting forests would stop, negate, or at least slow global warming. If that is the case, then global warming in and of itself could have the effect of counteracting global warming when the temperate tree line moves north, creating grasslands across the temperate zone. (Of course, in that case, we will still have to go cut down the boreal forests!)

On another minor issue, the Science abstract uses the following phrase: "...the low albedo of boreal forests is a positive climate forcing." Why the (fairly) recent jargony use of "forcing," which now permeates the climate change literature, or at least the online literature. One could simply say: "...the low albedo of boreal forests has a positive effect on climate." OR: "...the low albedo of boreal forests increases overall global temperatures." Forcing used to be a verb. Now it's used as a noun and an adjective. Yikes, is what I say! Oh, well. I'm not in that field. I'm not going to change that usage. But it sounds jargony to me, and it sounds non-specific, also. Is a "positive climate forcing" equal to something that raises temperature, or is it merely something that has a "definite" effect rather than a "positive" effect (the latter presumably being an increase in temperature)?

I guess my only real point here is that I'm not cutting trees in my area (or in Alaska, either, for that matter) for the sake of counteracting global warming based on this Science article. I guess Johnny Appleseed should have been shot for his efforts, although try telling that to the people of Paradise, CA (for some reason, there are persistent local legends that Johnny Appleseed made it that far west!).

They took all the trees
Put 'em in a tree museum
And they charged the people
A dollar and a half just to see 'em

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot

Big Yellow Taxi (as written and sung by Joni Mitchell)
© 1966-69 Siquomb Publishing Co. BMI

2008: No Heat Records Here So Far

It's T-shirt weather here in eastern Nevada, although no heat records have been broken this year so far, unlike in Geotripper's neck of the woods. Heat records here in May of 85 F or more were set in 1954 (1), 1984 (2), 1986 (2),1996 (2), 2000 (1), 2001 (2), 2002 (1), and 2003 (2). The three records that broke 90 F in May were the records set in 2002 and 2003. Of course, May isn't over.

In other weather news, snow is predicted for Wednesday.

NOTE: This post refers to weather, which is not the same as climate.

Questions in The Night

Ah, the smell of coffee in the morning...

Well, I'm up early, and it's still dark outside, because we have been under the domain of Daily Time for a couple weeks, now. The sunrise above, is what it might look like here in an hour or more.

Getting up early sometimes leads me to wondering perennially stupid questions, at least if I'm not woken up by work worries or other things, which is fortunately not usually the case, unless I'm overly concerned about drill rigs or things like that. Questions:

• How large will the Basin and Range and Intermountain West become in the next 10 to 50 million years?


• Is the entire Basin and Range underplated by core complexes that we simply haven't seen yet (because they are presently too deep to see)?


• Will the ocean move into the rifted Intermountain West before Las Vegas or Los Angeles can steal northern Nevada's groundwater?


• Will we discover a "Walker Lane of the East" somewhere, somehow bounding the eastern part of the Great Basin the way the Walker Lane more or less bounds the western part?


• Will the mantle (or "Serpentosphere"??) ever be proven to be a source of methane? And will we tap it for energy by drilling deep into the San Andreas fault?
  
• Will we survive the next 300 years of natural and user-enhanced global warming (according to Milankovitch cycles, much pooh-poohed by many geologists, we will reach a temperature peak naturally in about 300 years, and in fact are already over the main temperature hump toward a long cooling trend)?


• And what will our slide into the next ice age bring in the years following that upcoming peak be like (provided, of course that we don't change all that)?
  
• Will Yellowstone erupt sometime within the next 500,000 to 1,000,000 years (or Any Day Now), thereby putting an immediate halt to any current man-made and natural global warming?


• Will geologists discover a gold deposit in the present locality of the Mendocino Triple Junction in 1 to 3 million years, which would be similar to the McLaughlin gold deposit near Clear Lake, CA , which formed within a couple million years of the triple junction passing through that area?
  

These are the things that wake geologists up in the middle of the night! Stay tuned to find out the answers, if any are forthcoming.

At it Again

Well, Stan Keith is at it again, at least in making up new words that can be applied to either plate tectonics or mineral deposit formation. Unfortunately for all, the new word "Serpentosphere" can only be investigated, as far as I can find, by attending an upcoming meeting of the Geological Society of Nevada on Friday, March 21st in Reno, NV. Free beer is at 6:00 pm, dinner at 7:00, and the talk at 8:00. (Contact Kelly Parsons for reservations or more info, 775/323-3500, gsn@gsnv.org.) The talk is being authored also by Monte M. Swan, Martin Hovland, Hakon Rueslatten, and Hans Konrad Johnsen. Because the abstract has been published in a newsletter by the Geological Society of Nevada (GSN), I'll quote it below:

The Serpentosphere consists of an earth-wide nearly continuous layer (or spherical shell) of rock dominated by serpentine group minerals (serpentinite). The Serpentosphere is typically about two kilometers thick beneath ocean basins where it is mainly composed of lizardite. Beneath continents, the Serpentosphere is mainly composed of antigorite (alpine peridotite/serpentinite) and may be several kilometers thick. The base of the Serpentosphere coincides with the gravity and high-velocity seismically defined transition beneath both continents and ocean basins commonly referred to as the Moho. Beneath ocean basins and adjacent to spreading centers, oceanic Serpentosphere is continuously generated by the interactions of deep circulating marine composition water – partly in super-critical state –with harzburgitic peridotite in a process referred to as serpentinization. Conversion of the harzburgite to lizarditic serpentine under supercritical condition is texturally preservative and probably induces about 40% volume expansion. The volume expansion provides an excellent mechanism to expel and propel fluid products – including hydrocarbons – from the area of serpentinization to seep sites at the crust hydrosphere/atmosphere interface. A downward diffusing, super-critical serpentinization front is present beneath every ocean basin and is more active where it originally formed near oceanic ridge thermal anomalies. When ocean Serpentosphere is subducted beneath continental or oceanic crust areas, it converts to antigorite-dominated serpentinite rock (generally coincident with greenschist facies metamorphism). During flat subduction, the relatively lowdensity antigorite ‘floats’ and is underplated to the base of the continental crust at the Moho geophysical interface.

In effect, both oceanic and continental Serpentospheres reflect a deep ‘weathering’ process that consists of the interaction of deep crustal and oceanic, water-dominated fluids with the upper portion of a mainly harzburgitic peridotite at the top of the earth’s lithospheric mantle. The process is analogous to the formation of the pedosphere through interactions of the earth’s hydrosphere-atmosphere layer with the top of the earth’s lithospheric crustal layer. In this context, the Serpentosphere may be viewed as a thin membrane that separates water-absent, life-free abiogenetic processes in the mantle from water-present, life-related processes above the Serpentosphere in the oceanic crust.

The Serpentosphere has enormous and novel implications for four major geologic problems that are of current interest to the geologic and social community: the driving mechanism for plate tectonics, the origin of life, the origin of hydrocarbons, and contributions to global climate. A close relationship between trace elements in crude oils and serpentinite has been found. Migration of the serpentine-associated hydrocarbons to seep sites on the ocean floor and in subaqueous continental environments is essentially the base of the food chain for the biosphere and provides a nutrient and energy source for life in these environments. Heat, methane and carbon dioxide generated during the serpentinization reaction provide a major thermal and greenhouse effect to the earth’s hydrosphere-atmosphere system that is overlooked and underappreciated by the current global climate science. The ductility of the serpentine group minerals provides the tectonic “grease” that allows crustal plates to be able to slide and glide around on the earth’s crust at the Serpentosphere/Moho interface. Because Serpentosphere has been continuously generated since the beginning of geologic time it must be considered as one of the fundamental entities of our water-surfaced planet – the only water-planet we know of ...

Online references to this idea are scant, consisting of these two, and this interesting cartoon:

I won't analyze this Serpentosphere concept, and will just say that I find it interesting because it is related to flat subduction and the concept of hydrothermal hydrocarbons, evidence for which has been seen in the mercury deposits of the California Coast Ranges. Also, he is trying to promote a new model for oil exploration, which can't be knocked these days (unless it doesn't pan out). I won't be at the meeting, so will not be able to hear about this first hand.