
The trees that make Southern California shady and green are dying - MilnerRoute
http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-dying-urban-trees-20170403-story.html
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panglott
'urban forests are suffering partly because “so many of the trees we grow
don’t belong here and aren’t sustainable without plentiful supplies of
imported water.”

“Historic photos of the region show coastal shrubs, oaks on the foothills and
sycamores along streams and rivers,” he said. “Yet, we planted way too many
trees from areas that get two to three times as much rain as we do.”'

What may be worrying is if these drought-stressed trees are cultivating an
artificially high population of pests that will then put added stress on the
sustainable population of native drought-tolerant trees.

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orasis
Broadscale keyline design would greatly improve water retention in California:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyline_design](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyline_design)

I've done this in areas on my property and in two years I can already see new
clovers outcompeting old cactus.

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dylanz
Absolutely. I've help design a few desolate properties and seen amazing
results with simple keyline swales. Broad scale is definitely possible with
simple machinery. Help trap and absorb some rainfall and you're off to the
right start.

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pvaldes
Less money for megabombs and more money for environment?

Sounds like the sensible way to me.

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ctack
Imagine keeping the huge defence budget, but using it to plant and irrigate
massive forests.

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pvaldes
Americans would enjoy a better life and would have more money for spending in
luxuries (Because their air conditioning bill in summer would be much smaller
and winter is not so harsh with some extra wood and a chimney). More people
buying things and travelling, less danger of recession (and more money for the
people that sells hotel rooms, for example).

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cardamomo
And the additional emissions from air conditioning, retail product
manufacturing, and travel would raise CO2 levels even higher?

We need to develop an ecologically aware definition of quality of living,
rather than one that prioritizes extracting value for humans from a supposedly
separate source of natural resources.

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pvaldes
Not necessarily, because more forests equals to less CO2 in the air. Is a well
known fact that trees store carbon atoms and water. Army activities on the
other hand release also lots of CO2 (and much worst things like deplected
Uranium) to the environment.

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debacle
I know a few arborists. This is generally the cycle:

1\. There is a tree problem.

2\. Muni orders some sort of study after the problem has become unassailable.

3\. Arborist performs a study, finds lack of naturalized species, lack of
diversity, lack of appropriately spaced trees.

4\. Muni throws their hands up in the air because money and keeps doing the
wrong things.

