Abstract
In a consumer society, landscape development too often becomes a form of consumption. As development sprawls outward along an ever-expanding urban fringe, forests are leveled and farms destroyed to make way for cul-de-sacs, backyards, malls, business parks, and the accompanying transportation.
And they shall build the old wastes and repair the waste cities, the desolation of many generations.
—Isaiah 61:4
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Notes
- 1.
The EPA defines brownfields as “abandoned, idled or under-used industrial/commercial facilities where expansion or redevelopment is complicated by real or perceived environmental contamina-tion,” a typically politic definition. Quoted by Alex Wilson, editor of EBN; personal corre-spondence.
- 2.
Full project descriptions are on the ASLA’s website, by year; see www.asla.org/honorsawards.aspx. It is possible that other brownfields won awards but escaped my attention.
- 3.
Sam Roberts, “Bloomberg Administration Is Developing Land Use Plan to Accommodate Future Populations,” New York Times, 26 Nov 2006.
- 4.
See www.epa.gov/brownfields. This is the home page for the EPA’s Brownfields program, containing (at present) many sources of information on brownfields and the legal and financial aspects of cleanup.
- 5.
Derek Caney, “Friday Morning Briefing: ‘The Atmosphere Has Become Tox-ic,’” Reuters, 3 Mar 2017, www.reuters.com/article/us-newsnow-leaks-idUSKBN16A15O, accessed 5 Mar 2017.
- 6.
Nathan Kensinger, “Surveying the NYC Toxic Sites Owned by the Trump Family,” Curbed NY, 9 Feb 2017, http://ny.curbed.com/2017/2/9/14551480/new-york-superfund-epa-donald-trump-jared-kushner.
- 7.
Historic restoration is primarily a concept from architectural preservation, and even for buildings, picking the date to re-create is not always simple. See Kim Sorvig, “Relocating History,” 2004 proceedings of ALHFAM annual conference (Association of Living History and Farm Museums), from www.alhfam.org/.
- 8.
Information on the Yuma restoration is primarily from K. Sorvig, “The Same River Twice,” Landscape Architecture 99, no. 11 (2009): 42–53, and interview notes for that article. For oth-er information sources, see the resource list.
- 9.
Rural decline can create similar conditions and may benefit from similar efforts.
- 10.
Linn’s vision, never implemented in Newark, was expressed in From Rubble to Restoration, published by Earth Island Institute, www.earthisland.org/. This brief, out-of-print title is still relevant if a used copy can be found.
- 11.
For one US example of this approach, as part of the United Nations’ Man and the Biosphere Pro-gramme, see John D. Peine, ed., Ecosystem Management for Sustainability (Boca Raton FL: Lewis, 1999).
- 12.
See www.alemanyfarm.org/history/. According to articles in this archive, SLUG’s management billed the city for gardener hours spent campaigning for a mayoral candidate, and subsequently dissolved. Reportedly, most of the garden legacy of the group persists.
- 13.
Philadelphia’s active community-garden movement has been a driving force in many “greening” initiatives that link human needs and environmental restoration. The city has an Office of Sustainability; its current programs and visions are described in Jim Kenney, “Greenworks: A Vision for a Sustainable Philadelphia,” https://beta.phila.gov/media/20161101174249/2016-Greenworks-Vision_Office-of-Sustainability.pdf.
- 14.
O. L. Gilbert, The Ecology of Urban Habitats (London: Chapman and Hall, 1989), 40.
- 15.
“Activists Rescue New York’s Community Gardens,” Washington Post, 13 May 1999.
- 16.
Peter Bareham, “A Brief History,” Landscape Design, Apr 1986.
- 17.
Michael Lancaster and Tom Turner, “The Sun Rises over Liverpool,” Landscape De-sign, Apr 1984, 36.
- 18.
Rodney Beaumont, “Focus on the Festivals,” Landscape Design, Jul–Aug 1992, 18.
- 19.
Jon E. Lewis, “How Green Is My Valley,” Landscape Design, Jul–Aug 1992, 11.
- 20.
Andrew Grant, “Life on Earth,” Landscape Design, May 1993, 33.
- 21.
Jane Porter, “The Earth Center,” Landscape Design, Feb 1996, 12.
- 22.
Grant, “Life on Earth,” 33.
- 23.
Michael Ezban, “The Trash Heap of History: How Rome’s Ancient Landfill Can Inform Contemporary Reclamation Projects,” Places Journal, May 2012, https://placesjournal.org/article/the-trash-heap-of-history/?gclid=COL0mOKHw9ICFYa4wAodY3MOwA.
- 24.
Joakim Krook and Leenard Baas, “Getting Serious About Mining the Technosphere: A Review of Recent Landfill Mining and Urban Mining Research,” Journal of Cleaner Production 55 (15 Sep 2013): 1–9.
- 25.
Joseph M. Suflita et al., “The World’s Largest Landfill,” Environmental Science and Technology 26, no. 8 (Aug 1992): 1486–95.
- 26.
Peter Harnik, Michael Taylor, and Ben Welle, “From Dumps to Destinations: The Conversion of Landfills to Parks,” Places: Forum for Design of the Public Realm 18, no. 1 (2006): 85.
- 27.
This was Massachusetts’s first effluent reuse project, according to CDM, and important because of Cape Cod’s limited freshwater resources. Strict monitoring protects the aquifer.
- 28.
Wolfram Hoefer et al., “Unique Landfill Restoration Designs Increase Opportunities to Create Urban Open Space,” Environmental Practice 18 (2016): 106–15. Available at https://cues.rutgers.edu/publications/Hoefer_et_al_2016.pdf.
- 29.
A. D. Bradshaw, “Landfill Sites—Outstanding Opportunities for Amenity and Wildlife,” paper presented at Design Now for the Future: End-Use of Landfills, Nov 1992. Bradshaw is a researcher at the University of Liverpool. Similar findings by M. C. Dobson and A. J. Moffat, in “The Potential for Woodland Establishment on Landfill Sites” (publisher and date unknown), resulted in rescinding a British directive against trees on capped landfills. Further supporting these findings, no problems have been reported from closed-landfill festival gardens that include trees.
- 30.
William Young, “Creation of Coastal Scrubforest on Landfill,” Land and Water 40, no. 1 (Jan–Feb 1996): 6.
- 31.
James Corner Field Operations, “Fresh Kills Park: Lifescape, Staten Island New York, Draft Master Plan,” prepared for the City of New York, Mar 2006.
- 32.
Hoefer et al., “Unique Landfill Restoration Designs,” 114.
- 33.
See Mira Engler, Designing America’s Waste Landscapes (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004). Although greatly overstated, this book raises many points about US attitudes toward waste.
- 34.
Kathleen Spain, “Get It Right at the Start,” Waste Age, Feb 1993, 57.
- 35.
For an interesting look at the lives of reforestation workers, see Hélène Cyr, Handmade Forests: The Treeplanter’s Experience (Stony Creek CT: New Society Publishers, 1999).
- 36.
See www.habitatnow.com/index.htm for information. Financial return on restoration often involves enrolling in the federal agricultural Conservation Reserve Program or similar programs. Revegetation against global warming may produce parallel opportunities for nonagricultural restoration.
- 37.
See note 124 in “Basic Principles,” concerning fractal geometry.
- 38.
Both quotes are from Horst Schor, “Landform Grading: Building Nature’s Slopes,” Pacific Coast Builder, Jun 1980, 80–83.
- 39.
Gullying is “damage” from a conventional perspective and can literally undermine vegetation trying to reestablish a foothold. In the longer view, however, gullying is nature’s first step in restoring the landform to its proper, irregular shape. The flatter and steeper a slope, the more destructively gullying attacks, until erosion and deposition begin to come back into dynamic equilibrium—something that can take far too long for human purposes. See note 41 below on the diffusion model.
- 40.
Horst Schor and Donald Gray, “Landform Grading and Slope Evolution,” Journal of Geotechnical Engineering 121, no. 10 (Oct 1995): 729–34. Full text is available (for a fee) online at http://ascelibrary.org/doi/10.1061/%28ASCE%290733-9410%281995%29121%3A10%28729%29.
- 41.
See D. B. Nash, “The Evolution of Abandoned, Wave-Cut Bluffs in Emmet County, Michi-gan,” PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1977. This research supports the “diffusion mod-el” of slope formation, which states that natural processes optimize slope forms so that materials removed upslope balance downslope deposition. The resulting slope cross-section is an S-curve; top and toe of the slope are both rounded. As Schor points out, this model strongly indicates that “a planar slope with constant inclination, typical of conventional grading practice, is not a stable, long-term equilibrium slope” (732).
- 42.
Schor and Gray, “Landform Grading and Slope Evolution,” 732.
- 43.
John Haynes, “Stepped Slopes: An Effective Answer to Roadside Erosion,” Landscape Architect and Specifier News, Feb 1990, 31.
- 44.
Joseph A. Todd, Some Experiences in Stepping Slopes (Gatlinburg TN: FHWA Bureau of Public Roads, 1967).
- 45.
William Comella (FHWA Regional Engineer, Arlington VA), interview, 28 Jul 1971.
- 46.
Phillip J. Craul, Urban Soil in Landscape Design (New York: Wiley, 1992), 237.
- 47.
Ibid., 237.
- 48.
Ibid., 239.
- 49.
See, for example, P. Newman and J. Kenworthy, Sustainability and Cities: Overcoming Automobile De-pendence (Washington DC: Island Press, 1998).
- 50.
William Thompson, “Banking on a River,” LAM, Sep 1998, 50–55.
- 51.
See www.cbf.org/.
- 52.
Examples of this in the mega-ditches of Albuquerque have been documented by Paul Lusk, former city planner and professor of architecture and planning, University of New Mexico.
- 53.
J. G. Bockheim, quoted in Craul, Urban Soil, 86.
- 54.
For example, Leslie Sauer, The Once and Future Forest (Washington DC: Island Press, 1998), 154–57, discusses soil protection and restoration. This is an excellent source for details on forest protection and restoration.
- 55.
Based primarily on Craul, Urban Soil, 290–91.
- 56.
V. P. Claassen and R. J. Zasoski, The Effect of Topsoil Reapplications on Vegetation Reestablishment (Sacramento: California Department of Transportation, 1994).
- 57.
Orus L. Bennet, “Land Reclamation,” in McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Environmental Science and Engineering, ed. Sybil Parker and Robert Corbitt (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993), 329.
- 58.
For a complete description of this project, see Sauer, Once and Future Forest.
- 59.
Richard Wolkomir, “Unearthing Secrets Locked Deep Inside Each Fistful of Soil,” Smithsonian, Mar 1997, 74–84. Wolkomir interviews scientists at the Soil Tilth Laboratory, Io-wa State University. One of the interviewees comments about the ripping out of native vegetative communi-ties that “agriculture is a violent activity.”
- 60.
Data on performance are from www.agrobotics.com/ as of 2017.
- 61.
Simon Leake, “Reuse of Site Soils,” Landscape Australia, Aug 1995.
- 62.
Gilbert, Ecology of Urban Habitats, 47–51.
- 63.
Ezban, “Trash Heap of History”—see note 23 above.
- 64.
Sauer, Once and Future Forest, 156.
- 65.
Robert Nold, Penstemons (Portland OR: Timber Press, 1999), 24. Elsewhere he notes that penste-mons occur in severe soils considered so useless for agriculture or development that they are often the locations of reservoirs “built to satisfy the unquenchable thirst of endless expanses of compulsively planted lush green lawns” (52).
- 66.
Whitney Cranshaw, Pests of the West (Golden CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 1992), chapter 1. See also Sauer, Once and Future Forest, chapters 17 and 22.
- 67.
Davidson, D. J., “Organic Growers Take Note: There Is Such a Thing as Organic Gyp-sum,” 14 Aug 2014, www.eco-gem.com/organic-growers-take-note-thing-organic-gypsum/. The website www.eco-gem.com/ belongs to a supplier of gypsum; it has useful, if not entirely unbiased, information on usage and benefits.
- 68.
The website www.bartlett.com has research publications and sales brochures concerning biochar.
- 69.
S. Abiven, M. W. I. Schmidt, and J. Lehmann, “Biochar by De-sign,” Nature Geoscience 7 (2014): 326–27.
- 70.
Kyna Rubin, “Root Cause,” LAM, Apr 2017, 40. The same organisms are important in phytoremediation and bioremediation (see pp. 124–126).
- 71.
Donna Mitchell, Compost Utilization by Departments of Transportation in the United States (Gaines-ville: University of Florida, Department of Environmental Horticulture, 1997), 8.
- 72.
Ibid., 9.
- 73.
US EPA, www.epa.gov/recycle/composting-home. This appears to replace the EPA composting Fact Sheet, published Sep 2015, cited in the second edition.
- 74.
“Breakthroughs,” Discover, Jul 1994, 18.
- 75.
Mitchell, Compost, 16.
- 76.
Ibid., 14.
- 77.
For information, go to www.compostingcouncil.org/index.cfm and look for the tab labeled “Programs: STA & ICAW” (the full name of the testing program is not spelled out on the home page).
- 78.
A practical guide is Michael Phillips, The Holistic Orchard (White River Junction VT: Chelsea Green, 2011). Chapter 4, “Orchard Dynamics,” puts microorganisms in perspective; pp. 137–41 are specific to effective, beneficial, or probiotic microorganisms and application methods including compost tea. Phillips’s somewhat aw-shucks style disguises a wealth of knowledge worth consulting about most woody-plant cultivation.
- 79.
This was developed at Battery Park City and is discussed in more detail in Principle 10.
- 80.
Terry Logan, Lead Contamination in the Garden Factsheet (Columbus: Ohio State University Exten-sion, n.d.). This source also recommends peat moss; local organic material is far preferable, and usually plentiful.
- 81.
Bill Thompson, personal communication.
- 82.
Associated Press, “Report: Toxic Chemicals Recycled into Fertilizers,” Santa Fe New Mexican, 7 Jul 1997.
- 83.
US EPA, Biosolids Recycling: Beneficial Technology for a Better Environment (Washington DC: Na-tional Center for Environmental Publications and Information, n.d.), ref: EPA 832-R-94-009. Legal standards are in part 503, Code of Federal Regulations.
- 84.
Craul, Urban Soil, 197.
- 85.
Anita Bahe, “Science and Policy: The Biological, Environmental, and Policy Implications of Organic Waste Reutilization in Urban Landscape Management,” PhD diss., North Carolina State University, 1995.
- 86.
Michael Leccese, “Fresh Fields,” LAM, Dec 1996, 44.
- 87.
The Center for Media and Democracy’s “SourceWatch” is an example of such reaction. See www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Biosolids. It primarily warns against use of biosolids in food production, the same position taken in this book. SourceWatch considers the term “biosolids” to be an “Orwellian PR euphemism” for sludge, which it depicts as inevitably and always toxic and the EPA standards as inadequate and corrupt. This type of reaction tends to demand zero risk, while industry—which biosolids have become—often downplays real risks. Using biosolids on non-food-producing soils seems a reasonable compromise unless there is serious contamination.
- 88.
Mitchell, Compost, 18.
- 89.
Ibid., 17.
- 90.
Phillip Craul, “Designing Sustainable Soil,” in Opportunities in Sustainable Development: Strategies for the Chesapeake Bay Region, ed. Margarita Hill (Washington DC: American Society of Landscape Architects, 1997), 49.
- 91.
Ibid.
- 92.
George Hazelrigg, “The Ultimate Spectacle,” LAM, Dec 2006, 56–63.
- 93.
Joe Alper, “Wicked Weed of the West,” Smithsonian, Dec 2004, 33–36.
- 94.
Federal Interagency Invasive Species Council, Draft National Invasive Plant Management Strategy (Washington DC: US Department of the Interior and US Department of Commerce, 1996). For a clear discussion of horticultural introductions that have caused ecological havoc, see Francis M. Harty, “Exotics and Their Ecological Ramifications,” Natural Areas Journal 6, no. 4 (1986): 20–26.
- 95.
For a pragmatic and thorough way to define and assess a species’ invasiveness, see the criteria developed by the California Invasive Plant Council (http://cal-ipc.org/). Critics of the very idea of invasiveness are mostly postmodern theorists who insist that any plant that can adapt to a region is good and that “native” is an elitist term. They base this on analogy rather than science: by comparison to the racism that can be implicit in classifying people as native or not; and by the analogy between ecosystems and economic markets, in which (they seem to believe) pure competition is the only legitimate approach.
- 96.
This information is from a presentation on invasives and landscape practice at the ASLA annual meeting in San Jose CA, 2002.
- 97.
Seth Hettena, “Officials Work to Eradicate Water-Grubbing Shrub,” Associated Press syn-dicated report, 15 Jun 2003.
- 98.
Benjamin Everitt, “Chronology of the Spread of Tamarisk in the Central Rio Grande,” Wetlands, Dec 1998, 658–68. Everitt’s finding that tamarisk invaded only after wa-ter-level disruptions has been used by some activists as proof that the plant is harmless and should be left alone.
- 99.
Statistics are from Alper, “Wicked Weed of the West.” Cal-IPC’s newsletter, Noxious Times, Fall 2004, 6–9, notes that “many studies have shown that exotic plants transpire more water than California’s indigenous plants,” and sets a financial benefit of eradicating invasives, for California’s economy alone, at up to $11 billion.
- 100.
All information on knapweed is from Alper, “Wicked Weed of the West.”
- 101.
An ASLA presentation at the San Jose annual meeting, 2002, showed a wide range of species for which these effects have been studied in detail. Because the same plant’s effect may differ between regions, the best sources of such information are usually state and local invasive plant agencies.
- 102.
Paul H. Gobster and R. Bruce Hull, eds., Restoring Nature: Perspectives from the Social Sciences and Humanities (Washington DC: Island Press, 2000). The “Chicago restoration controver-sy,” as it is widely known, is reported in Gobster’s introduction; he was a participant in the events. While Gobster’s perspective is thoughtful and broad, some of the articles in this collection, notably coeditor Hull’s, border on deconstructivist polemics. In his contribution, for example, Hull asserts that there is no real difference between the “different natures” found in parks or parking lots. Clearly, natural processes occur even in the most constructed environment; arguments like Hull’s, however, tend to deny any qualitative value for diverse, coevolved, self-sustaining systems. Although less strident, the Chicago public was also convinced that there was no qualitative difference between their planted forests and the native vegetative communities of the region. “Nature” and “natural” are very slippery terms, and careless use of them obscures any hope of clear thought; see my article “Nature/Culture/Words/Landscapes” (see note 6 in “Basic Principles,” above).
- 103.
Some titles, cited by Gobster, included “Prairie People Compile Tree Hit-List!” and “Guru’s Restoration Plans Read More Like Destruction.”
- 104.
A voluntary code of conduct for landscape architects was first proposed at a 2001 workshop organized by the botanic gardens in Missouri, Chicago, and Kew (London). “Linking Ecology and Horticulture to Prevent Plant Invasions,” authors unknown. The code urged self-education, elimination of regionally invasive plants from designs, and lobbying of suppliers not to sell invasives. As noted earlier, ornamental horticulture bears a large responsibility for the historical introduction of many invasives; some in that industry still actively and aggressively resist attempts to stop spreading these plants.
- 105.
From DR Trimmer/Country Home Products (800-446-8746). Like many equipment manufacturers, DR portrays its clients as beating back unruly nature, an attitude that itself is problematic.
- 106.
For a discussion of the ways in which patterns change over time, known as the “shifting mosaic steady state,” see Bryant N. Richards, Sustainable Development in Forestry: An Ecological Perspective (Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 1989).
- 107.
Sauer, Once and Future Forest. See especially pp. 165–93 and 298–300.
- 108.
Information on this project is from K. Sorvig, “35,000 Transplants,” Landscape Architecture 101, no. 8 (2011): 72–83, and interview notes for that article.
- 109.
J. Zickefoose, Enjoying Bluebirds More (Marietta OH: Bird Watcher’s Digest Press, 1993); like many birders’ books, this contains extensive lists of trees, shrubs, and vines that attract birds.
- 110.
Presciently foreseen as early as 1984 by Edward Theurkauf, MLA, at the University of Pennsylvania.
- 111.
Amy Adams, “Heavy Metal Garden,” Utne Reader, May–Jun 1998, 86.
- 112.
Len Hopper, Landscape Architectural Graphic Standards (New York: Wiley, 2007). Figures are given in the table on p. 803. Conversion from hectare to acre, and phytomethods as percentage of other methods, are by me.
- 113.
“Tumbleweed Could Be Low-Tech Tool for Uranium Contamination Cleanup,” Associated Press syndicated report, 10 Nov 2004; John Fialka, “Salute the Jimson,” Wall Street Journal, 18 Jun 1992, A5; Elizabeth Weise, “Watercress Engineered to Detect Land Mines,” USA Today, 3 Feb 2004, 4D. Experiments with salt-tolerant plants have been widespread since the “green revolution” of the 1970s.
- 114.
- 115.
Steven Rock, “Possibilities and Limitations of Phytoremediation,” in The Standard Handbook of Hazardous Waste Treatment and Disposal, ed. Harry Freeman (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997), 6.
- 116.
Thanks to Tawny Allen, who produced an exceptionally clear summary of technical differences among phytoremediation methods for my University of New Mexico sustainable landscapes seminar, 2005.
- 117.
Philip Rea, “Plants May Clean Out Poisons at Toxic Sites,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 12 Jun 1999. Rea is the primary researcher on this University of Pennsylvania project.
- 118.
Brian Kamnikar, “Biomounds Pass Tests in Minnesota,” Soil and Groundwater Cleanup, May 1996, 34–43.
- 119.
“Munching Microbes Make a Meal Out of Toxic Substances,” Purdue News, Apr 1997.
- 120.
“Bioremediation of Environmental Contaminants,” originally at http://gw2.cciw.ca/internet/bioremediation/whatis.html, appears to have been removed from the Web.
- 121.
Paul Bradley, title unknown, Environmental Science and Technology, Jun 1999, reported by wire services, 19 Jun 1999. For a list of this author’s titles on similar subjects, see http://toxics.usgs.gov/bib/bib-Solvents-on-line.html.
- 122.
“UWI” is the term preferred by firefighters and “Firewise” activists, occasionally flipped as “WUI”; the latter phrase is from Tom Wolf ’s excellent In Fire’s Way: A Practical Guide to Life in the Wildfire Danger Zone (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2003).
- 123.
This phrase is the subtitle of The Wildfire Reader (Washington DC: Island Press, 2006), which Wuerthner edited. The many contributors to this volume focus on fire as an ecological necessity and on the deep-seated problems of conventional forest management regarding fire. (It contains relatively little about managing development in forests but is essential reading for the background facts required to make sense of UWI issues.)
- 124.
John MacDonald, “Researchers Say Fire Becomes Political Tool,” Associated Press syndicated report, 20 Apr 2003. The timber industry has used fear of fire as a lever to allow more tree removal in national forests under the guise of “thinning.” Timber money probably explains the heavy federal funding of thinning programs. These political concerns are detailed in both Wolf, In Fire’s Way, and Wuerthner, Wildfire Reader. Wolf also notes that the current system rewards fire departments more for fighting fires than for any prevention work (pp. 22–23).
- 125.
Ted Williams, “Burning Money,” Audubon, Jan 2001, 34. President Bush called the San Diego fires “nature at her worst,” but in fact, conditions for most recent wildfires are as much man-made as natural.
- 126.
Kim Sorvig, “Will Wildfire Ravage Our Profession?” LAM, Dec 2001, 32; “Crying Fire in a Crowded Landscape,” LAM, Mar 2004, 26.
- 127.
Ventura County CA, which enforces harsh regulations and still suffers repeated destructive fires, was the basis for estimating clearance area and percentage. Since UWI clearing, by definition, occurs in the wilder parts of a county, it represents a significant reduction of the little uncleared land that remains in most regions. In many counties, 90+ percent of the forested or wooded areas that existed prior to about 1800 have long been cleared. Thus, the 3 percent figure may be misleading: annual clearance should really be reported in terms of a percentage of remaining forested land rather than as a percentage of the total area of the county.
- 128.
Sorvig, “Crying Fire.”
- 129.
Quoted in Wolf, In Fire’s Way, 36. The US Forest Service has ostracized Cohen for statements like this and is especially displeased that environmental groups have used Cohen’s sensible and honest findings to combat timber-industry pressure politics. (See MacDonald, “Researchers Say Fire Becomes Political Tool.”)
- 130.
Jonathan Thompson, Thomas Spies, and Lisa Ganio, “Salvage Logging, Replanting Increased Biscuit Fire Severity,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 12 Jun 2007. This study found that fire intensity was 16 to 61 percent higher in areas salvage logged and replanted that suffered a second burn, compared to areas that were allowed to revegetate by themselves after one fire, and then suffered a second. The authors note that “the hypothesis that salvage logging, then replanting, reduces re-burn severity is not supported by these data.”
- 131.
Restoration goals must be based on sound ecological understanding of specific ecosystems. (The Bush administration’s so-called healthy-forest initiative is purely bogus.) Interviewees for my articles cited above note that some environmental groups fear timber industry meddling so much that they insist that no management of any sort be allowed in burned public forests (reflecting the belief that nature must be untouched by human hands). This makes it impossible to undo the damage caused by a century of fire suppression and actually leads some of these groups to support clearance around every structure.
- 132.
This paraphrases the title of Stephen F. Arno and Carl E. Fiedler’s useful book Mimicking Nature’s Fire: Restoring Fire-Prone Forests in the West (Washington DC: Island Press, 2005).
- 133.
See www.firegel.com.
- 134.
He made this point in his book-signing talk in Santa Fe NM, 27 Nov 2006.
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Sorvig, K., Thompson, J.W. (2018). Heal Injured Soils and Sites. In: Sustainable Landscape Construction. Island Press, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-811-4_3
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