CBC knows how to jerk an old dog's chain first thing in the morning

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1. David Raymond Amos‏ @DavidRayAmos
   

Replying to @DavidRayAmos @FloryGoncalves and 47 others

YO @CBCShane Methinks you overpaid smiling bastards in @CBCNB sure do know how to jerk an old dog's chain first thing in the morning Well I still recall the LIEbranos locking you out N'esy Pas? #nbpoli #cdnpoli #Trump #TrudeauMustGo

http://oldmaison.blogspot.com/2005/09/sussex-gold-found-and-bernard-lords.html

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/forests-and-floods-clear-cutting-new-brunswick-floods-1.4703225

Of forests and floods: Devastatingly high water raises clearcut questions

Some researchers say clear-cutting can boost the severity of floods, such as the one province just suffered

Shane Fowler · CBC News · Posted: Jun 18, 2018 4:00 AM AT 

Some scientists in Canada say the severity of certain floods can be linked to deforestation. (Shane Fowler/CBC)

136 Comments 
Commenting is now closed for this story.

 
Randy McNally

Thank you Shane Fowler and Thank you CBC for finally reporting on what most everyone who has been on this earth and more specific in the St. John River valley,for more than a couple of decades knows. There is, as those with the eyes to see, already are aware, a direct link between clear cutting and flooding in this province. In fact, I would take it a step further and say the way in which this province is being raped and pilfered by the forest industry without any regard to anything other than profit, should be criminal. But sadly it appears we are actually living in what amounts to a banana or more accurately a logging republic.

David Amos 

 @Randy McNally Need I say I saw red when I heard this nonsense on the radio this morning?

"Like JDI and Curry, the provincial government also maintains that deforestation is not a flooding factor in New Brunswick.

The Department of Energy and Resources Development "tracks the area harvested each year on Crown lands, and harvests are kept within long-term sustainable levels," said spokesperson Jean Bertin.

"Less than two per cent of the forest is harvested each year, and clear-cutting is used on only a portion of that land."

I agree with your opinion about what everybody already knows. However the St. John River Valley ain't the only area stricken with unusual flooding since the Crown has allowed out forests to be mowed down for the benefit of the wealthy few. Look at the photos CBC offers about the woods in the Sussex area then check their work oon the topic.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/flood-preparedness-c-plus-nb-1.3830561

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/sussex-corner-flooding-leads-to-state-of-emergency-1.2612022

That said methinks your forefathers must have been in the map business N'esy Pas?





 
Karen Goodwin

just take a ride back of Lepreau right through to St. George and Wickham. Hardly any trees left standing but I guess it is okay as the public cannot see the devastation. What the Irving companies want they get. This is crown land, stop cutting

David Amos

@Karen Goodwin Methinks they had a flood down there as well N'esy Pas?

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/flood-compenstation-from-ottawa-could-take-years-1.4672287

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/irvings-criticized-over-st-stephen-flood-1.1028695

 
Pat Fitzgerald

Just look at your driveway versus your lawn. Where does the water hold back and where does it run off? Vegetation holds back water, and barren ground does not.

David Amos

@Pat Fitzgerald YUP

 
Allison Miller

It seems to be a no brainer to me that clear cuts don't absorb as much water as forests. On my property, where I have 60 acres of mixed forest, snow lasts at least several weeks longer in the woods than in the fields where I grow crops.
Clear cuts may not have been the largest contributor to the floods in New Brunswick but they surely had an impact.

David Amos

@Allison Miller Methinks folks should checkout their favorite streams for brook trout after there has been clear cutting up stream. Stream that used to have a steady flow will go down to a trickle until a rainstorm then the water comes in a huge rush to gnaw at the banks then back to a trickle . Kinda like what happens in Arizona N'esy Pas?

 
Paul Bourgoin

Forest engineers disguised as Biologist is a major factor impacting on wildlife habitat and water quality. The promises of JOBS, JOBS is another tool pulling the wool over Joe Public's perception of forestry reality. Forest worse enemy is Industry greed and Politicians who agree just to be popular while expecting financial election funding from industry that will support their career . New Brunswick has no forest left only a tree farm pretentiously labeled as a forest. I am Sorry for future generations’ stolen legacy.

David Amos

@Paul Bourgoin "I am Sorry for future generations’ stolen legacy"

Me Too

 
cheryl wright

i think we all need to remember what we learnt in grade 10 science and biology as opposed to listen to people who get paid to say what they do. of course trees hold back water. they drink water, they slow the snowmelt with their canopies, and they stop erosion. it isn't rocket science people. maybe irving can hire tree planters and actually invest in reforestation at a higher level. I for one would love to see it. at the same time stop clear cutting for a few years to give those little trees a chance to grow. there is nothing wrong with select cutting. government can stop fisheries from occupying areas where there are whales why cant they put an end to clear cutting?? oh wait... money. don't get me wrong... I know that there are need for jobs in this province and I am not a tree hugging nimby but there has to be a better way. as far as the spring flood.... irvings aren't the only ones to blame. nb power should also have to take some responsibility for the dam and the issues that caused. they said that if they closed the gates it would only be able to be closed for 2 hrs before they would have to reopen it. well I can tell you that 2 hrs of non flow into the st john river would have helped those that are looking at never being able to go back to their homes.

David Amos

@cheryl wright "there is nothing wrong with select cutting. government can stop fisheries from occupying areas where there are whales why cant they put an end to clear cutting?? oh wait... money. "

Methinks you were being rhetorical because you answered your quandry correctly in less than a heartbeat N'esy Pas?

David Amos

@William Reed "A small operator with horses could do a better job of it if forest health was the main concern."

Methinks more folks would make more money if we went back to the way it was 100 years ago N'esy Pas?

 
Neil Austen

Believe scientists over self-serving rhetoric and wishful ignorance.

David Amos

@Neil Austen Yea Right

Methinks most Maritimers blessed with common sense don't believe this dude N'esy Pas?

"Allan Curry, a professor at the University of New Brunswick, doubts clear-cutting is a factor in flooding because it's not done on a scale that would make a difference?

 
Paul Bourgoin

Habitat miss-management, forestry practices, political tolerance, no political backbone are why New Brunswick will be known as a tree farm and all the record trout, giant salmon, monster deer and wildlife abundance which was ours and part of our history will be regarded as historical past and will not be part of our children’s future!

David Amos

@Paul Bourgoin Methinks the "Powers That Be" in the liberal notion of a "Place To Be" don't care about our children’s future and quite simply never did N'esy Pas?

David Amos

@Dwight Williams Methinks there is no need for research This is not rocket science. The woods have been worked by "peoplekind" for thousands of years However the actions of greedy people over the past two centuries has put everything Mother Earth has to offer in jeopardy. Hollywood offers lots on entertainment on this topic. The sad part is a lot of it is based in facts well researched already N'esy Pas?

 
William Roberts

It is called exploitation of resources and no one does it better then Irving. Their huge profits come at a far greater impact on the land and people who try to live on it. Canadians should be furious that this is aloud to do on. If it were being done else where we would be screaming our lungs off. These trees/forests are the earths lungs as well. Stop the clear cutting.

David Amos

@William Roberts Methinks talk is cheap in CBC N'esy Pas? When was the last time you ran for public office or sued the Crown while being ignored and locked up and laughed at?

Stephen George

@David Amos

Couldn't happen to a more deserving person.

 
Chantal LeBouthi

NB give up is Wildlfe and Forest. the NB Government don’t care about the consequences on clear cutting or the destruction on habitats and rivers. Don’t care about nb poeples health

What NB government priority is banning chocolate milk, promoting glysophate spraying and pot sale

David Amos

@Chantal LeBouthi Methinks we should be grateful that the liberals are trying save our kids from the evils of chocolate milk. However they failed to make folks understand why they spray us with that nasty Yankee herbicide N'esy Pas?

 
Shawn McShane

The director of the province’s wildlife branch was put on leave and then transferred out of his job, he asked the Gallant government for old growth forests to be preserved.

A picture tell a thousand words. New Brunswick has virtually no intact forests left. Is Allan Curry, the professor at UNB an industry shill like Louis Lapierre K.-C.-Irving Chair in Sustainable Development at the Université de Moncton?
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/louis-lapierre-stripped-of-order-of-canada-1.2675141

David Amos

@Shawn McShane "A picture tell a thousand words"

Methinks its all over but the crying for the Crown's forest assets. Heres hoping some of the private wood lot owners will be wise enough to run the Irving's off their land in order to save what is left of the woods for their kids to enjoy a little of what once was N'esy Pas?

Of forests and floods: Devastatingly high water raises clearcut questions

Some researchers say clear-cutting can boost the severity of floods, such as the one province just suffered

Shane Fowler · CBC News · Posted: Jun 18, 2018 4:00 AM AT

Some scientists in Canada say the severity of certain floods can be linked to deforestation. (Shane Fowler/CBC)
In the rolling hills near Penobsquis, almost every tree has been cut down for as far as the eye can see.
Greying piles of stumps and woodchips occasionally clot the bare landscape, and a single strip of trees has been left to shade the small streams at the base of the hills.

• New Brunswick Crown Forestry Debate 
• Blaine Higgs open to changing PC-negotiated forestry deal

The former forest in southern New Brunswick, now a series of clearcuts, is known to local conservationists as the Red Dragon.

And according to some scientists and conservationists, the Red Dragon, along with countless other tree-shorn areas in the province, contributed to the record flooding along the St. John River this spring.

Rapid warming

 

Clearcuts on the hills near Penobsquis in southern New Brunswick have left much of the area bare and earned it the name 'Red Dragon' among local conservationists. (Shane Fowler/CBC)

Floodwaters ravaged homes, cottages and infrastructure and threw questions about how and why into conversations all along the southern reaches of the river.

Meteorologists pointed to the rapid shift from winter temperatures to summer-like conditions as the main culprit.

A closer look at the role deforestation might have had on 2018's flood

00:00 02:31

Razing large parts of the woods may factor into why this year's flood was so catastrophic 2:31

But many whose properties were pulverized asked if clear-cutting boosted the magnitude of the flood.
In his blog, Green Party Leader David Coon pointed to research by André Plamadon for the Quebec Department of Natural Resources, who found that when more than half a watershed has seen clear-cutting in the previous 35 years, "the spring freshet may be severe enough to cause physical changes to local watercourses."

Recent research

 

The spring flood caused catastrophic damage to homes, cottages and infrastructure. Among the hardest hit were communities along Grand Lake, where some homes and cottages were destroyed. (Shane Fowler/CBC)

Kim Green, a fluvial geologist in British Columbia, studies streams and watersheds, and the links between forest removal and flooding.

She has spent decades researching how snow and water behave in forested areas and after clearcuts, and says that mature, undisturbed forests mitigate flooding.

"You take the trees away and the first thing that happens is you no longer have the canopy of the trees that was originally intercepting snow," said Green, who got her doctorate from the University of British Columbia and teaches at Selkirk College.

"The forest canopy is actually removing snow from the equation."

Kim Green, a fluvial geologist in British Columbia, has spent years studying how the removal of forests can lead to a greater magnitude and frequency of flooding. (Submitted: Kim Green)

Green believes reduced absorption is another major impact of forest removal. When snow melts slowly, trees drink more of the meltwater. A lot more.

"Through the spring period, in particular, trees are consuming a lot of water," she said in an interview from her home in Nelson, B.C. "Your average tree is consuming about 150 cubic metres of water every year."

"So about 16 trees or so are consuming an Olympic swimming pool-sized amount of water."
The process is called evapotranspiration, she said.

"The roots are just sucking that water out of the soil."

More sun on the snow

 

Canadian researchers say the forest canopy can keep as much as 60 per cent of snow from ever reaching the ground, thus reducing the potential flood threat come spring. (CBC)

Perhaps the most significant impact is the one obvious even to laypeople. Without a canopy to shade the snow on the ground, it melts a whole faster when the temperature starts climbing.

"You have a lot more solar radiation getting directly onto the snowpack and that is melting it much faster," said Green from her home in Nelson, B.C.

"And it's also melting it, generally, earlier. So earlier, faster."

This combination, she said, gets the snowmelt into streams and river systems fast and effectively.

Snow, shade and soil

 

John Pomeroy, the Canada Research Chair in water resources and climate change, says research in Saskatchewan has found more runoff flowing into streams from clearcuts than from areas with a forest canopy. (Erin Collins/CBC)

John Pomeroy's research has shown the same thing.

"We know that in northern Saskatchewan you get about seven times more runoff to stream flow from clear-cut areas in the spring than you do from the surrounding forest canopies," said Pomeroy, the Canada Research Chair in water resources and climate change at the University of Saskatchewan.

"And those are probably rather extreme examples, but from that we can suggest that it's still rather substantial in New Brunswick."

Operations during wood harvesting can compact soils to the point where they hold a small fraction of the water they did before, Pomeroy says. (CBC)

About one-tenth the sunlight reaches the ground under a forest canopy than in a cleared area, said Pomeroy, who is also director of the Centre for Hydrology in Saskatchewan.

"So there's a lot of heat energy from that solar radiation that isn't there to melt the snow."

Scientists argue clearcuts like this one in Tracy, south of Fredericton, lead to faster-melting snow because of the lost shade provided by tree canopy. The melt can be three to seven times as fast, resulting in floods. (Shane Fowler/CBC)

Compacting the ground during the harvesting of trees can also add to flooding woes. Wherever heavy machinery is used the soil becomes more compacted and less spongy and holds less water.

"And it's the amount of water the soils hold under a forest that is really important in holding back floodwaters," Pomeroy said.

The Red Dragon

After the trees on the hills near Penobsquis were harvested, the area showed up as a massive red blotch on Frank Johnston's satellite maps.

Johnston is retired but serves on the board of the New Brunswick Conservation Council and monitors satellite imagery of New Brunswick's reduced forest canopy from Global Forest Watch.

We've lost approximately 20 percent of our forest cover since the year 2000.- Frank Johnston

From space, he said, the clearcuts near Penobsquis resemble the red dragon on the national flag of Wales. Hence the "Red Dragon."

"It looks a bit like a desert," said Johnston, who has degrees in biological sciences from the University of New Brunswick, McMaster University and the University of Calgary.

Much of the Red Dragon clearcut in the St. John River watershed remains bare a few years after the trees disappeared. (Shane Fowler/CBC)

The Global Forest Watch web program was developed with the University of Maryland, NASA and Google, among others, to monitor the loss of forest across the planet.

An algorithm shows areas of New Brunswick that have changed from "green" to "brown," signifying a loss of forest canopy.

The province is rapidly turning "brown," according to Johnston's data.

"New Brunswick's forests are in some danger," he said. "We've lost approximately 20 percent of our forest cover since the year 2000," he said.

Frank Johnston, a member of the New Brunswick Conservation Council board, is convinced the province suffered severe floods this spring in part because of clearcuts. (Shane Fowler/CBC)

"It's about twice what neighbouring jurisdictions, Maine, Nova Scotia, Quebec, harvest in their forests."

Johnston also sees the deforestation from the air, with his own eyes, in a chartered plane equipped with GPS cameras.

Excluding "protected" areas, it is virtually impossible to find a part of the province that has not been cut down, he said.

"New Brunswick has virtually no intact forests."

Johnston is convinced clear-cutting played a role in the spring flooding in the St. John River watershed, and the Red Dragon is just one of many areas in the watershed that contributed.

But not everyone agrees.

Industry research

J.D. Irving Ltd. says it has financed research into watershed management and the effect of "forest management" on the flow and temperature of water and on silt levels.

"There is no indication that our forest management activity is having a significant impact at the landscape scale on any of these variables," said Mary Keith, the vice-president of communications at JDI, the only major forest company in the province to respond when CBC News asked for interviews.

Roughly 25% of the harvested area is planted and the remainder of the forest quickly regenerates naturally to softwood, mixed wood or hardwood conditions.- Mary Keith, J. D. Irving Ltd.

Keith also said that in this region, the company defers to "local scientists who are familiar with our geography."

She pointed to biologist Allen Curry, a UNB professor and one of the science directors of the Canadian Rivers Institute, a group focused on making rivers healthy.

"In any landscape, if you remove the vegetation from that landscape you're going to change how the water moves across that landscape and what it's going to do," said Curry, who for decades has taught biology, forestry and environmental management.

He agreed the science is clear about the impact of forest removal on melting snow and runoff.

Connection dismissed

 

Allan Curry, a professor at the University of New Brunswick, doubts clear-cutting is a factor in flooding because it's not done on a scale that would make a difference. (Shane Fowler/CBC)

But he doesn't believe clear-cutting is connected to the spring flood.

"We simply don't have that scale of tree-cleared land in the St. John River Valley to be taken seriously as a contributing factor," he said.

Clearcuts would be just a small factor in the higher river, he said.

"Probably not even significant — because that is not a major player in our watershed here in the St. John system."

The New Brunswick government and forestry company J.D. Irving Ltd. say that areas where forests are cut regenerate 'quickly.' But some scientists say cuts like this one near Little Lake, southwest of Fredericton, will take nearly a century to grow back. (Shane Fowler/CBC)

Curry also noted that forestry companies often plant new trees on the land they clear.

"Typically, when you first clear the land, it creates an increase in water flow across the land and into the river," he said. "It changes how the water is accumulated and how the groundwater is as well.

"But in a forestry situation, after about five years, you start to get the vegetation coming back, and the hydrology starts to stabilize a bit."

JDI said it plants more trees than it cuts.

"Roughly 25% of the harvested area is planted and the remainder of the forest quickly regenerates naturally to softwood, mixed wood or hardwood conditions," Keith said in her email.

New Brunswick clearcuts, such as this one outside Saint John, are often replanted with select species of trees after harvesting, but those can take decades to grow to a point where they can shade snow. Some scientists argue the young trees can actually accelerate the melt. (Shane Fowler/CBC)

But what does "quickly" really mean?

Kim Green and John Pomeroy both said it takes decades to bring a forest back to the point where it can effectively retain large amounts of water.

"It's normal practice in Canada to replant forests," Pomeroy said. "So after 10 or 20 years you get a forest of smaller trees. In many cases, in 30 to 40 years, they are starting to look pretty big.

"But they don't always behave like a mature forest for up to 100 years."

J.D. Irving Inc. says it replants roughly 25 per cent of the areas where it cuts trees. Scientist Kim Green says the young saplings can act like 'heat sinks' and actually reflect sunlight into the snowpack, leading to an even faster melt. (Shane Fowler/CBC)

New growth

Those big trees do the best job of holding water when storms and floods hit, he said.

What's more, Green said, until the planted trees are big enough to provide shade, they can make things worse when the temperature rises.

"What happens is the little green stems are absorbing the heat, the incoming heat," she said. "Then they are reflecting it into the surrounding snowpack."

The result is an even faster melt than happens with the clearcut.

"It can take 50 years, 60 years, 70 years to really start seeing any recovery in a regenerating stand," Green said.

The New Brunswick government says research in other parts of Canada into the link between deforestation and flooding does not apply to the snow, forest or river systems of this province. (Shane Fowler/CBC)

Like JDI and Curry, the provincial government also maintains that deforestation is not a flooding factor in New Brunswick.

The Department of Energy and Resources Development "tracks the area harvested each year on Crown lands, and harvests are kept within long-term sustainable levels," said spokesperson Jean Bertin.

"Less than two per cent of the forest is harvested each year, and clear-cutting is used on only a portion of that land."

Future forests

Echoing JDI, Bertin said research elsewhere on forest removal and flooding should not be applied to New Brunswick.

"It's acknowledged in watershed research that lessons learned from research done in one watershed or jurisdiction," said Bertin, who is not a scientist.

"It is challenging to 'transfer' to other watershed or jurisdictions because of the complex variables involved."

Many clearcuts in New Brunswick look like this one outside Sussex, according to Frank Johnston, who monitors the changing picture of forests by plane and satellite. (Shane Fowler/CBC)

Green agreed there are some obviously different variables in different regions but said her research in British Columbia applies to New Brunswick.

"Snow melts the same way regardless of where you are," she said. "And forests tend to have the same effect on that snowmelt."

As the frequency and magnitude of floods increase in some areas, Green said, she is seeing a shift in government forestry policy, at least in B.C.

"Things definitely need to be changing," she said. "There needs to be an awareness about the sensitivity of streams to logging that's currently not out there within our provincial regulation frameworks."

About the Author

 

Shane Fowler

Reporter

Shane Fowler has been a CBC journalist based in Fredericton since 2013.