Comment by comrade1234 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by comrade1234 | Hacker News Reader

I have an ancient forest near where I live in Switzerland. In the core zone of the forest they do no maintenance whatsoever. The trees live, they get gigantic and very old. They die. At some point the top breaks off and then many years later the rest of the tree is so fungus-eaten it tips over too and rots on the ground.

Sunlight never reaches the ground because of the tall giant trees so there's no undergrowth. It's just dead leaves and mushrooms.

Something that was completely 100% noticeable was that during this drought of several months this forest was still incredibly healthy. You walk into the forest and the temperature drops several degrees Celsius and the ground still seems wet. I could tell that the groundwater level sunk maybe 4 feet by looking at some pits that normally have water. But still the ground didn't feel dried out.

I compared this to a forest where they do maintain the forest and harvest giant trees for wood. They don't clear it but just by cutting out these tall trees they let sunlight reach the ground and dry the forest out.

Well, I also have an oak forest just in front of my balcony here in western Switzerland. Most of it is natural reserve, around half is literal scientific reserve. They don't harvest, let everything where it falls unless it completely blocks one of few pedestrian paths, then they use horses to drag it aside. It has few small streams (with crayfish!!) and one river flowing through

That forest was crispy dry, almost dusty in recent weeks. One spark could burn it all down easily. We had... 2 properly rainy days through whole summer? Few thunderstorms but they were very local, and all of them avoided directly our area and that forest like plague.

At least those crayfish managed to survive as I've seen 2 last week, they are more susceptible to water pollution and some brutal fungal infection which can be brought from other streams and basically sterilize whole stream (happened in other parts of our canton around Lausanne). Water somehow didn't stop. Back where I come from in eastern Europe their local crayfish weren't often so lucky - streams bone dry.

i am currently hiking through switzerland (in cossonay this evening) and have been struck by how wet the forest ground is compared to my home (colorado, usa). locals have told me that’s very recent because of the storms that came through a few days ago.

the mittelland seems dry but since i’m walking through farmland, mostly, everything around me looks green, while i walk on dusty paths.

today was very hot.

A good example of ecological buffer in action.

In the last years Europe had suffered a wave of wildfires at a level never seen before. Most of it started by people and many of them provoked in a sort of coordinated attack. Also there is a war in Ukraine blowing up everything at full steam and releasing huge amounts of heat to the lower atmosphere. Both facts must be taken in mind to understand the current situation.

Europe has suffered a damage in many ecological buffers that that may be recoverable unless they suffer a second attack. A forest can be burnt just a limited number of times before it turns into a desert. Monegros was one of the biggest oak forests in Spain. The name can be losely translated as "black hills" that suggest repeated wildfires as wrong management techniques. Take a look at the place now. Australia was also covered in rainforests in the past.

I really hope that when the nature sabotage stops, the situation will improve a little at least, even if we are at a much, much worse place than before the Ukraine war.

The problem is everyone killed the single greatest raiser of ground water levels for its fur. The humble and hardworking beaver.

Perhaps the cutting and removal of the trees also plays a factor? They suck in water over their life, then once they are cut the forest loses that moisture.

Trees essentially just make steam. They suck in water, transport it up to the leaves where it evaporates. So forests create rain.

Anyway your concern about losing moisture stored in trees isn't really warranted, the tree does not give back moisture.

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