Insurance

Last week, the Marin Open Space District created a "shaded" fuel break along a fire road in French Ranch. They chipped and bucked a lot of trees near the road, some of which had fallen during winter storms. They took out a good number of trees in the lower grassland, before you reach the forest. It feels a lot more open and sunny now. Forest management isn't always pretty, but in a couple of years things grow back and look a lot better. And the long-term context is that over the last 40 years (with no grazing, no fires, and warmer temperatures) the woody vegetation is spreading, slowly converting the grassland to coyotebush and Douglas-fir forest. Perhaps the management goal is to revert these transitioning slopes back to a grassland? Or more likely, with work only occurring along the road, it is to give vehicles more room and safety during a wildfire.

But now imagine someone cutting down your favorite shade tree in your local park. The loss of individual shade trees on the steep hot sunny hike up to ridgetop forest makes this hike less accessible to kids and elderly and less pleasant for everyone. On a recent hike with my daughter and her friend, they were tired and we stopped to rest at one of these missing trees before heading back down. Doing that hike today would be a hotter and sunnier and less-pleasant experience.

February (left) and July (right) photos show the loss of 25-year-old shade trees on a hot south-facing slope.

A young solitary Pacific Madrone (Arbutus menziesii) was cut down in a Marin Open Space Preserve last week.

Honorable Mention

 About thirty years ago, when I was at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, I took an environmental law class. At the end of the class we had to write a brief and present it to a panel of volunteer judges in a real courtroom. The judges awarded students first, second, third place for the best briefs, and I had an honorable mention--for being clever.

The case we had to argue was a real one from our environmental law book--a developer had proposed a housing development in the Central Valley, and a raptor center had challenged it on various environmental and CEQA grounds. Our instructor was also clever--he assigned which side of the case we were to argue based on our opposite inclinations. Since I probably exhibited signs of populism, caring about good governance, and prioritizing environmental and people protection over developers making money at public expense, I was assigned the developer's side of the case to argue.

This put me in a difficult position. In a real job, I just would have rejected it--frankly, I felt the developer's case sucked. I saw no way to win, or even argue that side with a straight face. But as a student, I couldn't say no. I had to do it somehow.

Then I had an idea.

Storm Totals, Storm Damage, Power Outages, Falling Trees, and Moving Logs

January 2023 will go down in the record books as one of the stormiest, snowiest, and rainiest months for many parts of California. As of January 16th, San Geronimo Valley had received 19 inches of rain--making it our second-wettest January in the last decade (after 2017). In addition, the wind, landslide, and flood damage has been widespread. And the month is only half over. Much of that was packed into the first 11 days.

The story starts in December, after a dry October-November start to the 2023 water year (following 3 dry years). Here in San Geronimo Valley, I measured 16.59 inches of rain in December, at 240% of average, the wettest December in 8 years and second-wettest in the last decade.

Logs began moving in San Geronimo Creek in early December, when a series of storms brought rare lightning and thunder, and enough rain to get San Geronimo Creek up to 200 cfs. This was not a large flow, but trees fell in the creek and rafted down to an engineered logjam that was placed in the creek in 2020. An October 2021 storm that peaked at 2,500 cfs had already moved around the logs connected to boulders in this logjam--logs that were designed to stay in place. Surprisingly, a log that didn't move in 2021 was scooted several feet downstream by the 660 cfs flow on December 27th, 2022. It stopped when the boulder it was anchored to bumped up against another log embedded in the creekbed.

Note the moving log bolted to a boulder at the lower right corner of the
photos on December 10th (left) and December 28th (right).

Two storms at the end of December were impressive. The one on the 27th dropped half-an-inch of rain an hour for six hours. Once again there was rare lightning and thunder. Read about "snow level bending" as freezing levels fluctuated near Lake Tahoe. Twenty-two foot waves towered along the coast.

On December 26th, 2022, seventeen-foot waves were oversteepened
and trailing banners of spray because of the east wind. They foreshadowed
the 22-foot waves that were forecasted on the 27th.