The future of forests
Ronald M. Lanner has explored the forests of the Western United States for 50 years. In the course of this, and in devoting five of his six books to the region’s trees, he has revealed that no where else on the planet has the same diversity of conifers, be it the oldest (bristlecone pines) or the tallest (redwoods) or the biggest (sequoias).
So Chance of Rain asked environment reporter Ilsa Setziol to interview Lanner on the future of the region’s timbered ranges in the face of climate change. Her discussion with the author of “The Pinon Pine,” “Trees of the Great Basin,” “The Conifers of California,” “Made for Each Other: A Symbiosis of Birds and Pines,” and “The Bristlecone Book” is not just for those who love trees, but for all who have experienced a moment of awe and wonder in a Western forest.
Update: For the December 1, 2009 paper, ”Recent unprecedented tree-ring growth in…
Rambling LA: From fire, flowers
Detail from the cover of "California's Fading Wildflowers" by Richard A. Minnich, UC Press. For more information, click on the hillsides.
By Ilsa Setziol
“WE GET excited after fires,” admits Ileene Anderson, a Los Angeles-based public lands director for the Center for Biological Diversity. “In the chaparral in Southern California, fires burn down all that thick impenetrable shrubbiness. With that over-story cleared out, it allows for terrific blooms of annuals or short-lived perennials that only show up after fires.”
Rambling LA: Native gray
By Ilsa Setziol
Who hasn’t watched their backyard squirrels scurry along power lines, spiral up and down tree trunks, whip their tails and holler “chkk-chkk-chkk” at trespassing scrub jays?
Now that autumn trees are full of acorns, the antics are in overdrive.
Surprisingly, though, the squirrels leaping from bough to bough in urban Los Angeles aren’t native.
Rambling LA: At sea and agog
Click on the whales to be taken to the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuaries page on blue whales. Photo: NOAA
By Ilsa Setziol
THE DINOSAURS are gone. So too the mammoths, saber-toothed cats and short-faced bears. Even California’s mascot, the grizzly, no longer roams the state. Megalopolis has replaced megafauna. Yet the largest animal ever still graces the California coast. This summer, I went looking for it.
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