Continued

Keep It In The Watershed

Forests also condense water. Studies have found that forests, fungi, and other plants emit terpenes which emit ice nuclei that condense water inside clouds and prompt precipitation. Meanwhile, forest canopies act as an interception point slowing down heavy rainfall and softening the impact on soils, avoiding runoff and soil erosion. The network of roots in a forest act as an anchor for the soil and support permeability, helping avoid direct runoff of pollution into our waterways. Without the intervention of trees, unfiltered water entering our waterbodies can create large “dead zones” such as the one found in the Gulf of Mexico/ America. 

Water is slowed down by trees, permeating the soils, filtering into the groundwater, and replenishing aquifers, streams, lakes, and bays.  This underscores the vital importance of the water cycle and the need to restore natural forest ecosystems across the globe, including across the U.S.A. 's approximately 19,000 watersheds (as estimated by the USGS.) Watersheds are areas without delimited borders where precipitation and snowmelt seep into the groundwater replenishing above-ground non-salinized bodies of water, i.e. streams, lakes, and bays. Watersheds can be as small as the Patapsco River Watershed, the Chesapeake Bay which spans 64,000 square miles from New York to Virginia, or as large as the Mississippi Watershed, the third largest in the world covering 31 States and two Canada provinces. 

Not only our waterways but also the life inside of these require forests. Forests are able to provide streams with nutrients from fallen trees, leaf litter, fallen fruit, and insects. Additionally, vegetation lining river banks provide shade, cool the water, and provide cover and spawning ground for many fish species such as trout. However, current forestry practices have reduced fish spawning habitat, generated mass wasting of eggs due to increased sedimentation, and clearly have a negative effect on fish populations as seen in the long term Carnation Creek Project regarding coho salmon. Excessive erosion and habitat degradation due to logging effectively brings down survival rate with dramatic effects on the economy.

Aqua est vita, water is life: Removing our forests harms the water cycle which throws off weather patterns. Just this year,  hurricane Helene caused flooding in Asheville, NC that left them with $53 billion in damages because this water cycle has been altered. Removing our forests also reduces the availability of clean water that we all rely on and impacts fisheries. A good start to protecting our water, balancing the weather, and avoiding extremes is to protect and expand forests in the watersheds.

Additional readings

 Braga, C. (2022, October 3). Effects of Deforestation on Humans and the Environment. The Humane League. https://thehumaneleague.org/article/effects-of-deforestation

Rabalais, N. N., Turner, R. E., & Wiseman, W. J. (2002). Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia, A.K.A. “The Dead Zone.” Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 33(1), 235–263. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.ecolsys.33.010802.150513 

Tschaplinski, P. J., & Pike, R. G. (2017). Carnation Creek watershed experiment—long‐term responses of coho salmon populations to historic forest practices. Ecohydrology, 10(2), np-n/a. https://doi.org/10.1002/eco.1812