Hello ! I was spying on y'all on google maps for my evil plot and witnessed this artificial pattern in some of your forests. I suppose it is to prevent wildfires but can anyone confirm ?
https://www.google.fr/maps/@43.2852332,-123.4652266,97822m/data=!3m1!1e3
Posted Jul 2, 2021, 1:28 PM UTC · edited
This seems to be the explanation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checkerboarding_(land)
This is correct. If you go to the parcel viewer for the county in question, you'll probably see alternating sets of owners: often the feds and state, or the state and a logging company (such as Weyerhauser).
Definitely for logging
Spying on Roseburg? That's new one, it's not a part of the country that gets much attention, though it can be pretty beautiful.
I don't pretend to be an expert and lost access to verify 100% but I don't think it's checkerboarding. See this link, green is national forest (public) and whiteish is private and it doesn't appear to be checkerboards. I can't verify completely again with higher resolution because I don't have the specific app this year, but it appears accurate enough.
That was weird, I'm from Canyonville, and I'm pretty sure this is the closest I've seen reddit get to my hometown.
I can confirm that the checkerboard look is because of logging though, I was just there two weeks ago and I'm going down to visit my mom this weekend.
I have family nearby or else I wouldn't know much, hope the weather is treating you well now.
The film "the Sisters Brothers" takes place a little south of there, they mention Jacksonville at least.
I was going to say, my wife worked there for a year, and I was surprised to see a foreigner centered on it. It's not exactly the most happenin' place.
Looks like a logging area to me. They log in one section while letting another grow. Once the lighter colored areas (which have been planted more recently) grow up they'll log the darker areas.
Zoom in, it's not so uniform. It's just clear cutting of forest land.
I'm American and never noticed that. Cool.
Thats just diffrent tracts of land, being used differently.
They're pretty much all being used for logging actually. But the patches have been clear cut at different times, so they're in different stages of regrowth.
If it is fairly uniform, it is logging. But you will also see more irregularly shaped bald patches that are due to bark beetles. Bark beetles have always been an issue, but climate change has allowed them to do some serious damage these last few years. There are large sections of forest that have died as a result, and the trees had to be cut down.
Source: I spent most of my life living in a national forest area.
Also from norcal, living in national forest/park areas. And know big time loggers in the industry.
You are correct. They cut a certain patch of land, process the trees, and plant new ones to harvest in 20 years or so, and just move through the plots like this. Initially this was somewhat problematic because the deforestation of an area caused erosion in the ground, but they work with a lot of ecologists to fix watershed issues, and, at least in my opinion, is a good deal. Harvesting and using wood, as long as you replenish it, is an excellent way of cleaning CO2 from the atmosphere. it's not on the scale that we really need, but from an emissions standpoint I'd say a lot of it is pretty neutral, due to the CO2 fixation in growing a square mile of trees every year. While a lot of the wood will eventually be turned back into CO2 from various processes, it is generally more lumber, which means it will be used for structures and last decades before CO2 becomes an issue. I don't see it as kicking the can down the road, these forests naturally burn quite a bit (a lot more recently, but that has other variables). For the most part the ecology of these systems is well managed and it's counter-intuitively a green industry in those areas/these days.
Link?
Edit: if you zoom in you'll see what appears to be a series of produce and tree farms.
It is probably due to logging. Your lumber has to come from somewhere.
Many forests in WA are actually "tree farms"
Edited with google maps link
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Most people have replied already, but it's a mix of land ownership and forest age.
In much of western Oregon, land is divvyed up into pretty uniform parcels- some held be the federal government (Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service) and some held by private logging industries. The ownership of this land is dispersed in a 'checkerboard' fashion.
Second, the way that land is managed between private and federal ownerships produces an interesting matrix of forestland. Private forests are there for money, and it's a hell of a lot more profitable to clearcut log rather than to thin, or selectively harvest. Meanwhile, federal forestland is managed more for the goal of resource and ecological conservation rather than for profit. Logging techniques are more diverse and creative since the government doesn't have to return a profit per se- they just might be providing timber or other resources to fulfill their objectives. So you get checkered patterns where one square is super green (probably federal land) and other squares that are a weird array of squiggly patterns ( usually private land with state regulations that restrict how large the clearcut size is and where they can cut).
Link to the origins of checkerboarding: https://osupress.oregonstate.edu/blog/checkerboard-effect
Could be illegal pot grows lol...
It's a logging technique. Rather than clearcut entire areas, smaller sections are harvested at a time. This allows the unharvested sections to produce seeds for the harvested sections to rebound quickly. There are many other harvest techniques that are similarly more environmentally friendly and sustainable in the long term, but this is one of the popular ones. Exactly which methods are used on a given site varies based on a few different factors such as terrain, tree species, greater ecology of the area, and a few other factors. I do know of at least one example of an area where large-scale clear-cutting actually has a lower environmental impact.
A.) It's still clearcutting, the lumber industry (in the case of the PNW and Northern California, Sierra Pacific and Red Emerson) just came up with a new euphemism for it.
B.) The "seeding" thing is bullshit, since the clearcuts are replanted with rows of a single species (in this region's case Doug Fir).
The word you're looking for is "profitable." SPI would clearcut California into a desert if they had the manpower, and not look back.
[citation needed]
EDIT: Aaaaand here come the downvotes by people who don't know what they're talking about, and just figure the top right-sounding response must be correct.
Again: Checkerboard clearcutting is done because it costs less than selectively harvesting 2-3x as much area. That's the bottom line, anything else is industry bullshit spun by forestry scientists paid to do so.
You say citation needed but failed to provide any citations yourself. You just come off cynical.
Here's a profile of Red Emmerson's mindset. Feel free to explain how scientifically sound and environmentally concerned his (or rather his sons') practices are:
https://www.forbes.com/feature/archie-emmerson-timber-forest-fires-logging/#266d508c64f9
https://www.sierraclub.org/california/letter-sacramento-sierra-loggers-lets-be-clear-about-clear-cutting
A profile of a person does not constitute a citation. You're cherry picking data at best, and saying an entire industry is fucked based on one person. You've provided no actual data.
Complaining about downvotes is kind of gauche.
And forests are a renewable resource. Companies replant them.
Clearcut replants are far, far worse than the naturally occurring forests they pretend to replace. They're far more susceptible to both disease, fire, and erosion, even ignoring the damage done during the logging process, and are incredibly disruptive and destructive to wildlife.
Ok. Even if they are worse, how do you propose the problem be fixed? You can't get heavy machinery back into the woods, cut down a couple trees and not disturb the rest of the woods. I also doubt you can convince the globe to stop using wood. I'll actually agree with you, but let's not act like nature doesn't repair that damage when things like wind, birds, bees, etc can move around seeds from other plants and increase diversity again.
EDIT: Forest fires are another great example. For smaller shrubbery on the forest floor, it gets virtually destroyed. In a similar vain, clearing an area allows new growth for plants that may have been forced out by the forest canopy. Now, unlike California, Michigan doesn't have many wildfires. However, we do have a shitload of logging up north. I remember a logging site across from where our fishing camp was when I was a kid. 20 or so years later I came back and there's a ton of different stuff growing in that formerly empty lot, so I'd say logging has some advantages.
As another “actual northern” California resident, who lives in the same county as Red, good on ya for pointing these things out.
Is that type of clear cutting a problem?
https://www.fs.usda.gov/nfs/11558/www/nepa/101283_FSPLT3_4352066.pdf
Sorry about all the downvotes, but you’re entirely right.