We hope that you enjoyed your visit to Mt. St. Helens National Volcanic Monument and Weyerhaeuser St. Helens Tree Farm today.1. What is the major disturbance - natural or human-caused - in your home region?
2. What large disturbance events have you lived through? Tell us about one of them (year, event) and how it impacted your community. Include any relevant links.
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There are soooo many parallels between the eruption of Mt. St. Helens and Hurricane Katrina in LA. Both were natural disasters, both were underestimated as far as the amount of damage they would cause, both were horribly mismanaged in some ways (Katrina immediately, Helens years after), and both caused loss of life of both humans, animals, and plants. Even the stories about how much timber was downed and how it was salvaged were similar! I will be interested to see what kind of comparisons my students will make between the two disasters.
By far the largest disturbance in Victoria is bushfire. There have been numerous large fires that have resulted in considerable loss of life, property and other assets. The most recent fires with high loss of life have been 1939 (Black Friday Friday January 13) 1983 (Ash Wednesday February 16). I was probably mostly affected by the Great Alpine Fire in 2003 in Victoria. It doidn't impact the community I live in but it still impacts on my work community and resulted in huge changes in how fires are managed in my State. It was a prolonged event that went for 59 days. It started with over 100 lightning fires on January 7 and wasn't contained until March 7. It burned over 1 million hectares and affected many many rural communities. Most of my other experience of disturbance have been bushfire, even the month I was born.
My home is about halfway between Mount St. Helens and the Biscuit Fire in southwestern Oregon, which burned about 500,000 acres (with varying intensity) in 2003 (?). I have been fortunate to not have experienced any such massive disturbance events any closer to home. The movie we saw today was amazing--the fact that this tremendous volcanic blast was captured on film, and that so few people were killed. When Dick Ford mentioned the large numbers of wildlife that were killed, I wondered if any of them could feel what was about to happen and tried to run or fly away.
The Biscuit Fire has received a lot of press, but it cannot compare with what we saw today. Some parts were burned with high severity but are recovering more quickly through natural regeneration. At Mount St. Helens, the area was so completely devastated with such intense heat that the seed sources and soil organic matter are not present in many areas to allow quick natural regeneration.
Okay, the Biscuit Fire was July to September 2002. For a summary, see http://www.wilderness.org/Library/ Documents/WildfireSummary_Biscuit.cfm
1. In Northeast Oregon, the major natural disturbance that we are experiencing are fires. This region and other areas across the western United States have been in a severe drought cycle since 1998. This dry season is only adding "fuel to the fire". Our snow pack this year was approx. 60% of our average snow pack, resulting in a low water year so far. Rainfall this spring was very low and most plants bloomed nearly a month ahead of schedule. The undammed rivers in our region are flowing at typically mid-August levels in mid-July. The rest of the summer and fall will be interesting.
To add a few more things to the major natural disturbances of our region in Northeast Oregon, we have experienced many geologic disturbances:
To list a few:
A) Approx. 17-6 million years ago: Columbia River Basalt Flows cover region
B) Approx. 9 million years ago: Wallowa Mountains thrust upwards and valley floor sinks by a tensional fault
B) Approx. 350,000- 10,000 years ago: glaciers carve out the Wallowa Mountains and surrounding region
C) Approx. 13,500 years ago, the Bonneville Floods rushed about 125 million cubic feet per second of water through the Snake River gorge in Hells Canyon.
D) Fire has played a large part in our natural disturbance cycles since at least recorded history.
2. Honestly, I have not lived through a major disturbance event. My father's house did burn down when I was 13 years old, but I was not there and it did not affect an entire community. While everyone was safe, I did witness how devastating it was for my Dad and step-family to deal with the aftermath. Visiting Mt St Helens yesterday, it continually hit home to me how fortunate so many people were that it blew when it did (on a quiet Sunday morning).
Our big worry in Wyoming is fire. Last July, a lightning caused fire burned close to 10,000 acres of Casper Mountain. We have had fires before, but this one was on the north face of the mountain, and everyone in Casper had a front-row seat. It was a real eye-opener for folks living in town. Many people came to realise that fire is 1) destructive 2) natural and 3) sometimes uncontrollable. Many home owners have really taken the “no fire zone” ordinance to heart, and the rest of the summer there was furious activity to clear out debris and fuels around homes. It will be interesting to see what comes in. Casper Mountain is almost exclusively 120 year old lodge pole and ripe to burn. We should see aspen coming in, followed by lots of little lodge pole seedlings. Here is a good link that shows many pictures of this fire:
http://www.casperstartribune.net/slideshow/caspermtn_fire.html
The Major disturbance in West Bank is the mismanegemant of the forest, specially grazing and tree cutting.
The biggest natural disturbance events in forests around SE Australia are drought induced bushfires. Every year there are many fires, but when years of drought dry the forest bushfires take shape with an extra dimension. Seeing the devastation on Mt St Helens was incredible. To see only rocks where old growth forests stood is testimony to the forces of natural disturbance.
In my area I have witness many fires and a few significant fire storm events where trees were uprooted and thrown across the landscape. It is great to see Mt St Helens recovering after 27 years and knowing our forests will recover in a similar way.
In Florida we frequently experience floods and hurricanes. In the early 1990's, I was evacuated out of my home when flooding waters rose up walls. Luckily, a neighbor with a backhoe hoisted my family up and out of the flooding waters. Natural disasters like these have effected the health and homes of people and animals in my community, sometimes with devastating effects.
Storms is the most interrupting natureforce in Danmark. Last time a storm made big damages in the forests were in december 1999. Since then we have had to miner storms.
Se a foto here:
http://www.mim.dk/Nyheder/Engelsk+nyhedsbrev/Arkiv/2005/Danish+Environment+Newsletter+no.+9+2005/Climate+change.htm
Eva
Flooding....
In the Porce region of Colombia the major disturbance agent, besides humans, is flooding. Usually, during the rainy season there's flooding in many areas around the river. This disturbance knock down many trees and transport many sediments to the forests. Also, landslides are an important disturbance during the rainy season.
Torandoes are the natural disaster in our area. Although this summer we have had the highest amount of recorded rainfall in history, so that has created a lot of flooding. Last summer we were in a severe drought, this summer floods! It will be a good opportunity to discuss with the students the effects of both on our landscape. Tornadoes are common in the spring in Texas, killing many people.
I myself have been lucky and have only experienced a tornado that come through our town in Oklahoma years ago. Many people were killed, with lots of destruction. The destruction from a tornado is very similiar to that of Mt. St. Helen's, everything is blown away. \With sudents we compare the two forces and how they change the land.
In Georgia, the major disturbance is fire. In fact, we just experienced the worst forest fires in recorded history this year in south Geogria. If you go to the Georgia Forestry Commission website (www.gfc.state.ga.us), you can view photos of the wildlfires. Many of the burned areas resemble the standing dead forests at Mount St. Helens. The recovery of our forests is going to also be a "Tale of Two Forests" as the fires burned both private land (owned by industry and private non-industrial landowners) and federally designated wilderness (the Okefenokee Swamp). Forest recovery in the Swamp will be enitirely natural while recovery on private lands will, in most cases, be artificially regenerated. It will be interesting to see how our ecosystems fare under each recovery method.
Regarding question number 2, I have been fortunate to have never experienced a tradgedy as devistating as Mount St. Helens. However, when I was in elementary school in San Jose, California, we lived a few miles from a large IBM manufacturing plant and one morning we woke up to an explosion and a large mushroom cloud. As this was a time when the threat of nuclear war was on everyone's minds, everyone was pretty freaked out. It turned out that the plant just had something blow up but I distinctly remember the fear and panic of people before it was made clear that the explosion was not a bomb. It was pretty crazy. Anyways, I know that was not exactly what the question was asking but I thought I would share that with you. ; )
Actually in Mexico we do have an active volcano very close to Mexico city it is called Popocatepetl and if erucps (explode) all of us living close we will be in troubles. On the other handi was born in the SE of Mexico in the gulf and in that region we have hurricanes. In 1989 we received the most devastating hurricane in 50 years, I was 7 years old and I remember we left our house for one month. We were lucky but some people left everything. Acording to wikipedia this hurricane is the second most intense ever observed in the Atlantic basin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Gilbert
I am not sure what to add about the PNW that hasn't already been said. We do however have ice storms that due to our forest cover can and do do mayor damage to the landscape.
In 1963, important event happened: a huge forest fire which crossed the central region of Parana, between the months of August and September. In Telemaco Borba (My City), the fire arrived at the end of August and affected about 85% of Klabin’s property. After the event, the company redoubled its attention to protecting its forests, by beginning to establish a specific program for the purpose of safeguarding its extensive forested and reforested areas.
The major natural disturbances in Lithuania’s forests are wind storms, droughts and fires. The most terrible human-caused “disturbance” I remember was disaster in Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant on the 26th of April in 1986 in Ukraine which has been widely regarded as the worst accident in the history of nuclear power. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Nuclear_Power_Plant#1982
There have been large storms every few years but in 1995 (6?) we had a storm that knocked power out all over the region. We were without power for 2 weeks and ended up staying at a friends house. Crews from all over the West came to help bring down trees, restore power, fix plumbing, etc. For 3 weeks we had to drive through the front yard to get out because of all the trees and power lines down.
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