It's disappointing to see serious reporting like this saddled with a clickbait title like "This disease has killed a million trees in California, and scientists say it’s basically unstoppable."
But... Both of those statements are true...
Scientists say sudden oak death epidemic is no longer stoppable
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Re: Scientists say sudden oak death epidemic is no longer stoppable
#32It's disappointing to see serious reporting like this saddled with a clickbait title like "This disease has killed a million trees in California, and scientists say it’s basically unstoppable."
Why do you consider this clickbait? It's not untrue, nor does it tease with hidden information alluded to in the title. It's a straight-forward headline describing the contents of the article.
Re: Scientists say sudden oak death epidemic is no longer stoppable
#33Hawaii island is dealing with a fungal pathogen that impacts the most abundant native tree similarly: http://www2.ctahr.hawaii.edu/forestry/disease/ohia_wilt.html.
Re: Scientists say sudden oak death epidemic is no longer stoppable
#34Is anyone aware of any pre-industrial epidemics of a similar scale?
Re: Scientists say sudden oak death epidemic is no longer stoppable
#35This makes me wonder what role fire normally plays in the life-cycle of tree pathogens. Does this fungus survive heat well? Can it survive in the soil long enough to spread to a new host (presumably a new Oak tree)? As a second point, this demonstrates the danger presented by monoculture. The industrialization of agriculture horticulture has been unquestionably beneficial for us as a species. However, we do an absolu…
The interaction between forest fires and tree pathogens is an area of active research - a friend of mine is studying exactly that in her ecology PhD program. http://ucanr.edu/sites/rizzolab/Research_Projects/Big_Sur_Ec...
That is really cool, thanks! I've spend a lot of time conducting research and restoring Oak Savannas in the Upper Midwest, and I'd hate to see anything happen to few remaining areas we have left. The Oak Savanna exists because of fire, rather than in spite of it, and it would be really interesting to see if fire did more for oak trees beyond burning competing species.
In the course of writing this comment, I checked the Wikipedia page for Oak Savannas to see if it had any interesting insights. I didn't realize that California oaks formed oak savannas as well. Hopefully that means that research in the Midwest and Californian savannas can be shared and used to draw insights into one another.
Re: Scientists say sudden oak death epidemic is no longer stoppable
#36What can be done to deal with the death of trees, then? Mass planting of resistant species?
Nature abhors a monoculture. Forests with 'resistant' strains will end up causing more problems if they are only a few types of trees. Maybe we should do nothing, and let trees that are more capable of surviving fill in the gaps left by the oaks.
Where I live (Sierra foothills), the Oaks are enjoying the space opened up by the Pine tree die-off thanks to bark beetle. People are paying thousands of dollars to cut down towering pines.
I have five enormous oaks and four full-size pines on my 1 acre lot. That adds up to a potential liability of $18,000 or more. Doing nothing does not sound appealing.
Re: Scientists say sudden oak death epidemic is no longer stoppable
#37The prevention to this type of problem is probably the same measure needed to fix many forestry problems. Regular fires. But now we have homes right up to the forest and no one wants to look at charred land for two decades. So I suppose it's still a no go. The thing about fire though is eventually it probably happens anyway.
It's unfortunate that most the public isn't aware of how important forest fires are. Humans suppressing forest fires cause more damage in the long run. As far as I understand, fires essentially burn up the dead bits on the ground. When it happens naturally, the fires don't hurt the trees. But humans stop areas from burning and the dead bits build up and burn hotter, setting the trees ablaze and then we get these craz…
Perhaps what we need is to better understand how to make effective fire breaks and better manage planned fires. The reason people fight forest fires is to stop them from burning down homes and businesses, not just out of an anti-fire aesthetic. Letting a fire rage and then saying, oh we'll just stop the fire from burning this gas station, hotel, and town that is here, is damned hard to do.
Sure, people built close to forests. People also built close to fault lines, flood plains, tsunami zones, unstable soil, on top of limestone, near industrial areas, in hurricane, tornado, ice storm, or "lake effect" zones, etc. There are precious few places that are devoid of some periodic natural ravaging. We can't just say, ah well, let it all happen and don't do anything about it.
Re: Scientists say sudden oak death epidemic is no longer stoppable
#38Five hundred years ago, Spaniards spread the seeds of european annual grasses as they traveled between missions in California. Within a century or two, a large part of the California landscape had changed. Annual grasses crowded out native perennial grasses, and we got our "golden hills." Nobody knows exactly what California looked like before the Spanish arrived or how many species may have gone extinct, but you can…
Not plant related, but equally fascinating: There used to be a lake bigger than Lake Tahoe in California between Fresno and Bakersfield. It It was the largest fresh water lake west of the Great Lakes (by surface area). It was drained for agriculture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulare_Lake
For a good read on what happened to Lake Tulare, read "The King of California". The world's largest cotton plantation now sits in the lakebed and holds primary water rights. Pink sheet stock. Ticker BWEL.
Re: Scientists say sudden oak death epidemic is no longer stoppable
#39This makes me wonder what role fire normally plays in the life-cycle of tree pathogens. Does this fungus survive heat well? Can it survive in the soil long enough to spread to a new host (presumably a new Oak tree)? As a second point, this demonstrates the danger presented by monoculture. The industrialization of agriculture horticulture has been unquestionably beneficial for us as a species. However, we do an absolu…
Yes, it can survive in soil, although I don't know how well it would survive fire. Many of the affected oaks have very thick bark and are well adapted to seasonal fires, though.
It's thought that a major route of infection is late spring rain, when the weather is warm. As rainwater drips through the canopy of infected trees, the pathogen releases it's spores into the water, which then drip on neighboring trees and into the soil. Matteo Garbelotto of the UCB forest pathology lab claims that four years after an especially late spring rainfall event, you usually see a wave of dead trees (it takes about four years for the pathogen to kill a tree).
Re: Scientists say sudden oak death epidemic is no longer stoppable
#40It's disappointing to see serious reporting like this saddled with a clickbait title like "This disease has killed a million trees in California, and scientists say it’s basically unstoppable."
Why do you consider this clickbait? It's not untrue, nor does it tease with hidden information alluded to in the title. It's a straight-forward headline describing the contents of the article.
It does tease with hidden information by making you want to read the article to see what "this disease" is. And the "unstoppable" bit, while true, reads as very sensationalist.
A less clickbaity title might be something like: "The Sudden Oak Death fungus has killed a million trees in California, and is no longer stoppable". Or something like that.. I'm no journalist.