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The New York Times Magazine – Oct 29, 2023

October 27, 2023 boomersdaily Leave a comment

THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (October 29, 2023): The latest issue features The Scientists Watching Their Life’s Work Disappear; Can We Save the #Redwoods by Helping Them Move?; ‘It’s Like Our Country Exploded’: #Canada’s Year of #Fire and #ClimateChange Is Keeping Therapists Up at Night….

The Scientists Watching Their Life’s Work Disappear

All the photographs in this article are black-and-white. David Obura holds finger coral.

Some are stubborn optimists. Others struggle with despair. Their faces show the weight they carry as they witness the impact of climate change.

Interviews by Catrin Einhorn

Amid the chaos of climate change, humans tend to focus on humans. But Earth is home to countless other species, including animals, plants and fungi. For centuries, we have been making it harder for them to exist by cutting down forests, plowing grasslands, building roads, damming rivers, draining wetlands and polluting. Now that wildlife is depleted and hemmed in, climate change has come crashing down. In 2016, scientists in Australia announced the loss of a rodent called the Bramble Cay melomys, one of the first known species driven to global extinction by climate change. Others are all but certain to follow. How many depends on how much we let the planet heat.

Can We Save the Redwoods by Helping Them Move?

Redwoods with foliage in a violet specturm. All of the photographs in this article have special color treatment to highlight the foliage.

The largest trees on the planet can’t easily ‘migrate’ — but in a warming world, some humans are helping them try to find new homes.

By Moises Velasquez-Manoff

When Philip Stielstra retired from Boeing in 2012, he needed something purposeful to do. He and his wife, Gay, were casual golfers, but Stielstra, an antiwar activist in college who refused to fight in Vietnam — he worked in a post office instead — wanted a pastime with bigger stakes. Before leaving his job, he received an email from the city of Seattle: The Parks and Recreation Department needed “tree ambassadors.” Tree canopy cover had receded in the city, and the department was responding by promoting an appreciation for its remaining trees. The volunteer ambassadors would learn about these trees and lead residents on walking tours to marvel at them. Stielstra, despite being a self-described introvert, signed up.

Nature, Travel, Videos, Views, Wilderness

Soundscapes: California’s Giant Redwood Forests

Video September 3, 2022 boomersdaily Leave a comment

Redwood National and State Parks are a string of protected forests, beaches and grasslands along Northern California’s coast. Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park has trails through dense old-growth woods. Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park is home to Fern Canyon, with its high, plant-covered walls. Roosevelt elk frequent nearby Elk Prairie. Giant redwood clusters include Redwood National Park’s Lady Bird Johnson Grove.

An #OurGreenPlanet co-production with The Listening Planet, in association with The Moondance Foundation.

Disasters, Ecosystems, Nature, Reviews, Science, Stories, Wilderness

Wildfires: The Alder Creek Giant Sequoia Graveyard

Video December 15, 2021 boomersdaily Leave a comment

On a dead still November morning in the Sierra Nevada, two researchers walk through a graveyard of giants. Below their feet: a layer of ash and coal. Above their heads: a charnel house of endangered trees.

This is Alder Creek Grove, a once idyllic environment for a majestic and massive specimen: the giant sequoia. It is now a blackened monument to a massive wildfire—and humankind’s far-reaching impact on the environment. But these two researchers have come to do more than pay their respects.

Linnea Hardlund and Alexis Bernal, both of the University of California, Berkeley, are studying the effects of record-breaking fires such as the one that destroyed large swaths of Alder Creek Grove in the hopes that their findings will inform forest management that might preserve giant sequoias for future generations.

So far, those findings are grim: mortality in Alder Creek Grove is near 100 percent. Of the mighty trees that stood watch for thousands of years, only charred skeletons remain. About a century of aggressive fire suppression and a warming, drier climate have created a perfect environment for unprecedented fire.

On August 19, 2020, it came to the Giant Sequoia National Monument. The SQF Complex was two fires—the Castle and Shotgun fires—that burned for more than four months, affecting nearly 175,000 acres. And a preliminary report on the Castle Fire estimated that 10 to 14 percent of all living giant sequoias were destroyed.

Hardlund, who is also at the nonprofit Save the Redwoods League, and Bernal fear that, without scientifically informed intervention, such fires will continue to return to the Sierra Nevada—leaving the once proud guardians of the forest a memory and another casualty of our ecological failure.

Travel, Videos, Views, Wilderness

Views: Sequoia National Park In California (4K)

Video November 23, 2021 boomersdaily Leave a comment

Sequoia National Park is an American national park in the southern Sierra Nevada east of Visalia, California. The park was established on September 25, 1890, to protect 404,064 acres of forested mountainous terrain. Encompassing a vertical relief of nearly 13,000 feet (4,000 m), the park contains the highest point in the contiguous United States, Mount Whitney, at 14,505 feet (4,421 m) above sea level. The park is south of, and contiguous with, Kings Canyon National Park; both parks are administered by the National Park Service together as the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. UNESCO designated the areas as Sequoia-Kings Canyon Biosphere Reserve in 1976.^[3]

The park is notable for its giant sequoia trees, including the General Sherman tree, the largest tree on Earth by volume. The General Sherman tree grows in the Giant Forest, which contains five of the ten largest trees in the world. The Giant Forest is connected by the Generals Highway to Kings Canyon National Park’s General Grant Grove, home of the General Grant tree among other giant sequoias.

Travel, Videos, Views

Drives: Redwood National Park In California (4K)

Video October 5, 2021 boomersdaily Leave a comment

Driving through the best stretch of road in Redwood National Park in Northern California USA. Known for having the world’s largest (not tallest) coast redwood, which measures 20 feet (6.1 m) in diameter and 340 feet (100 m) tall. Just a couple miles east of Crescent City, this unpaved stretch of Howland Hill Road offers motorists an intimate encounter with the towering old-growth redwoods in Jedediah Smith State Park. Numerous pull-outs and trailheads along the way, including the Boy Scout Tree Trail and Stout Grove. – Redwood National Park Brochure

Route: https://goo.gl/maps/B6WJSBPDEX9A72ea6

Ecosystems, Nature, Travel, Videos, Views

Views: Redwood Forest Recovering From Fire In Santa Cruz, California

Video May 16, 2021 boomersdaily Leave a comment

“Sunday Morning” takes us to California’s Santa Cruz Mountains, where a Redwood forest scarred by fire shows signs of rebirth. Videographer: Derek Reich.

Travel

Top Hikes In California: Bothe-Napa Valley State Park Offers Redwoods & Views From Coyote Peak

July 24, 2019 boomersdaily Leave a comment

From a Curbed.com online article:

Rising on the west side of Napa Valley, the Mayacamas Mountains are best known for producing costly cabernets for wineries like Mayacamas and Mount Veeder. But they’re gorgeous, too, as this sprawling state park proves. For a beautiful, medium-challenging hike, follow the Redwood, Ritchey Canyon, South Fork and Coyote Peak trails on a 5-mile loop that leads through coast redwoods and up Coyote Peak to Instagram-worthy views. Then sit and snack on the sandwiches you got at Sunshine Foods in nearby St. Helena.

State Park website: https://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=477

To read more click on following link: https://sf.curbed.com/2019/7/24/20700994/best-hiking-trails-napa-wine-country-day-trips

Arts & Literature, Travel

Road Trips: Mendocino Coast Offers Wind-Washed Cottages, Wine, Redwoods And Artware

July 8, 2019 boomersdaily Leave a comment

From Wall Street Journal article by Ryan Haase:

“With its wind-washed cottages and water towers, the town of Mendocino looks like it was built by a seafaring crowd rather than a tree-felling one, even though forestry was once big business here. After it faded by the 1950s, artists came in and now Mendocino pumps out pottery, paintings, glassware, jewelry and woodwork.”

NORTHERN California’s coastal stretches have long lured roadtrippers, even before John Steinbeck, his wife, Elaine, and their peripatetic poodle rumbled down the Paciﬁc Coast in 1960. In “Travels With Charley,” Steinbeck famously enthused about ogling the “ambassadors from another time,” referring to the region’s ancient redwoods. Last summer, as wildﬁres raged uncomfortably close to those redwood forests, four-wheeled vacationers steered clear. By the year’s end, ﬁres burned more than half a million acres in Northern California alone, but largely spared the coastal woods and villages. Now that the smoke is clear and driving-vacation season is shifting into high gear, we’ve designed a detailed three-night itinerary. You set out from San Francisco, snake through Mendocino County and then on to Humboldt County, with the landscape growing wilder with each mile.