DNA extracted from redwood sprouts in Big Sur and in Berkeley had appeared to have tested positive for spores of the Sudden Oak Death pathogen. Flowering dogwoods, Madrone, Mountain Laurel, 16 oak varieties now are hosting and producing pathological responses. My god, what have we done?

Reply to post by Reed Holt, on January 09, 2002 at 17:26:22:

Help an Easterner understand: Has a specific new strain of Phytophthora been identified as the cause of SOD? Or are environmental stressors making trees susceptible to some of the same fungus/i that have been around forever?

Either way, it's not good news. But it's important to understand the enemy to fight it and hope to win.

Reply to post by Guy , on January 09, 2002 at 17:26:22:

Hello Guy,
no, it's the same strain, just finding new hosts. A friend up at UBC notified me of isolation positives on the Port Orford Cedar(coastal B.C.) but when his department head discovered the email, he got repremanded - seriously. Bad news is censored I guess.

UC Berkeley has done an outstanding job to date, given what they work with (get on the web and browse their work) but the 1.2 billion ($) appropriation from Congress (specifically for SOD research)last year hasn't been appropriately distributed to all I feel can help. Any information from the USFS database is old and general, still refers to infection vectors as raindrops splashing mud on the trunks. Native variety? Most likely not but sure seems to have taken a liking to the entire West coast. Predisposition? Look at forest health overall, nationally. Hypox and wilt in Arkansas and central areas - eastern epidemics, again, the poor Adirondaks, all of Canadian Maritimes and northern Europe. I sampled air quality here over the years - high and low vol reports. Particulate is one thing, but what's in the particulate is something entirely scary.
Anyhow, the die-backs have officially become epidemic. I find myself communicating a bit more with California folk who tend to get dirty and chalk-up some miles, the ones who look a bit more closer at conditions and prevailing factors. Certainly the ones in the labs who were giving a sample, an arsenal of toxins, and a blank check are not the ones who can deliver us from this evil, that federal spending tit seems to be off and down the wrong trail, but it's the conventional one and certainly is the American way.
Hey - you still haven't forwarded the pathology on which B-type and staging results. Are you interested on some info that cuts into the prognosis a bit deeper? If so, let me know, I want to help, it's what I do.

How's everything else way over there east?

Reed

Reply to post by Reed, on January 09, 2002 at 18:09:13:

Reed, it's the same here in NC. Researchers who document pollution's role in forest dieback are reprimanded. Firs and dogwoods have their suberin dissolved by poisons made from utility and auto exhaust and are wiped out. The fattest gov't tits are pointed everywhere but to the field.
Tourist, PR and utility lobbies hush the bad news.
On the urban front, isn't culturing beneficial microorganisms in the soil via vertical composting the best way to invigorate trees? Has there been followup to Watson et al's study on radial trenching a la the old Chinese way?
Is it a viable hypothesis to suggest pathogenic fungi can be displaced? Can an experiment testing that hypothesis be set up?
Some in my department feel this kind of project could have thesis potential, but how to test it?
I sure could use some HELP!! on this.

(Reed, on the other disease matter, the diagnosis is now hairy-cell leukemia. Going in soon for 7 days of 2CdA. Fear and loathing. Please respond directly if you have pointers on what to expect.)

Reply to post by Reed Holt, on January 09, 2002 at 17:26:22:


Perhap a more important question than "My god, what have we done?" is "My God, why do we keep doing it?"

The URL I attached below is a small commentary about the diversity and numbers of those little guys that infect the soils. We keep finding more of them every year, but there are no tags on their tiny toes to tell us if they're beneficial or destructive. Indeed, they may easily be both at different times or different contextx, and we don't have the beginning of a clue as to what they do to each other or the creatures around and above them.

In some of Shigo's remarkable imagery, he described trees as having wobbles--much like a top whose force of spinning is beginning to drain and gravity is rearing its insistant head. The tree can compensate, he said, inside a range, still there is a point where compensation can't make a difference. A tree can alter some subtlies to offset some new changes, but it only has a few resources--things it chose genetically to keep itself simple.

Give a top a hit with a stick when it's wobbling and you can knock it right over; something that wouldn't happen when the top is at maximum speed. The whack would just glance off.

Howver, if either the top or the tree is busy compensating and at a lower level of energy, one little shift in circumstances can be catastrophic. How can trees compensate for us?

I'm not suggesting that I know much of anything, but what is quite clear is that we have screwed up big time in our arrogance and stupidities--and we're still too dumb to begin to admit it. We have altered the climate; we bring new varieties of spores in on our shoes when we return from a Club Med vacation; we accept cheap diseased lumber for crates in intercontinental shipping; we do whatever we want and our vision never extends beyond about a quarter-inch past our collective wallets.

Seems to me, the saints of this world are going to be the poor because they don't have enough to mess anything up. They simply endure.

I guess that hold true for the rest of the world's creatures as well--in relation to us.

Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. That is, after all the buffoons are cleared out.

---------------

A somewhat sad Wulkowicz

Reply to post by Wulkowicz, on January 09, 2002 at 17:26:22:

Bob, so eloquently stated.

I flip flop too - one day I take on a forest project determined to identify the principle threat, get everything in order, lock and load, fire a few rounds, and sometimes even change things. The next day I don't seem to care, citing and extropolating data that tells me we're in for what we've sown. Wilt gets a kick in the butt here, next it's hypox. We know both that changes have occured and why they have. Pathologists who step outside the clinic and go beyond identifying into therapy are not much more than janitors who sweep the pink dust over someone's vomitin a grade school hallway. Somewhere someone has to quit cooking food that makes kids heave, from there perhaps we can unplug the mentality that bleeds the earth dry.
Yucca mountain starts gearing up today to receive radioactive waste - in spite of the fault line directly through the facility. This will allow our nukes to activate to capacity as well as promise the permits for new ones. Fuel efficiency studies and mandates were tossed aside yesterday in favor of fuel cell research -giving us another ten or more years of Ford Excursions and Chevy Suburbans. Patriotism means spending more on bigger stuff and if someone objects, tap their phones and then kill them. No wonder why they don't like us, I never thought the Taliban really wanted to go to Disneyland anyway, something else entirely different was bothering them.
The potato famine that ultimately led to most NYC cops being Irish was a boondoggle that came with warning from legend from the people who provided the potato in the first place - they flately stated that several varieties need be planted instead of just one. Who could listen to wisdom from people who don't believe in Jesus? Seems they knew much more than we did, maybe next time we might try to listen a bit closer.
There are answers to the questions of Sudden Oak Death but precautions and industry are not too favored for the truth - they'd rather patent something Madison Avenue can market and Wall Street can account. That's the American way, God bless us huh?
I have hope in the young people, as soon as they turn off the MTV. Maybe they can deliver us from this?

Oh well, rant and rave and I'm sorry, but thank you.

Reed

Reply to post by Guy , on January 09, 2002 at 17:26:22:

As always, the predispositional factors regarding our current forest decline complex, are more important than insects or diseases. The beetles and the fungi of the forest are the "vultures". They affect trees much later. We have had excellent results using a University of California patented nutrient called bio-serum phospite fertilizer. I feel that the mycorrhizae are being affected by our current high nitrate depositional problem. Nitrate deposition is 3x the normal rate.