>Jerry,
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>>"old Growth" lumber is longer lasting that "new growth" lumber? How'd they determine that, a university do some actual testing or is that eco propaganda? (Not making claims, just curious but suspicious of all the junk science coming out of the eco movement.)
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I seem to recall that some of the trees used today as harvest crop for the building industry are less dense that what is often called 'old growth'. The quality of woos has as one of its primary components the density of the rings. Softer woods have fewer rings and harder woods have more. The fast growth trees that are used today are less dense (ring wise) than the lumbers used, oh, 100 years ago for two reasons. One is that there is less of the older, denser-ring trees as they do take longer to grow and the replacement trees now being planted and harvested have apparently been genetically engineered to grow faster - hence the less dense ring structure.

http://www.ultranet.com/~jkimball/BiologyPages/P/PlantTissues.html

The basic flaw in what you were taught is that ring density is NOT related to the age of the tree. It is related to speed of growth, which is related to the rain fall at the time of growth. Hardwoods by nature are slower growing and have higher density rings than softwoods, but both hardwood and softwood trees will show ring thickness variations depending on rainfall during the growing seasons. In fact, researchers use the ring density of ridge pines that are over 4,000 years old to determine which years in the past had drought and which did not.

Only the growing regions on a tree are alive: the leaves and the little green band just beneath the bark, called the phloem. That is why you can kill a tree by cutting a band around the tree all the way through the bark (Girdling) to the wood (xlyem). Girdling removes the phloem but not the xylem. The central region of the tree, the rings, are xylem, and are not alive but consists of vascular bundles of "tubes" used to conduct water and minerals from the roots to the leaves. Phloem conducts sap (tree food) from the leaves to the rest of the tree and the roots. Last season's phloem band becomes the this seaon's new dead ring, and adds to the xylem. When a ring of xylem is formed it location, diameter and thickness is permenant. Otherwise researchers could not uses them to determine the age of a tree, or the growing conditions of each year during the trees life time.


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The tradeoff here is that less dense trees are also less strong and that's also why you now see more and more pre-fabricated joists, chipboard and so forth. These newer responses/products, interestingly enough, are a LOT stronger than the older growth wood was/is (and continue to get better) so we've gotten to a place where we can leave the older trees pretty much alone, plant more of them in places we do not want to harvest and we can also use the newer 'type' trees for the crop.

Even though faster growing trees (bred genetically or because of adequate watering) have wider rings and are 'softer', using modern fabrication techniques create products that are stronger than those made from hard or soft woods alone. Unless, that is, manufacturers do not sterilze their adhesives, which results in Aspergillus Niger contamination of wall boards, siding, etc.... the black mold. Which is, by the way, the same stuff that caused the Curse of Tutenkhamen. (ie, the Mummy's Curse).


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Additionally, a lot of the thinning is healthier for the existing trees. They do die naturally you know (I know you do) and by removing them we reduce the deliterious effects of any fires that get started.
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>All the hand wringing is just plain silly. There are more trees in the ground now than when this country was founded and that number continues to grow (and should IMO). An awful lot of the individuals in the so-called environmental movement are noting more than socialists that want to damage this nation and who hide behind the environment. Others are those who actually worship the earth and who are in their own right extreme religious fanatics who would rather that man be eliminated from the earth than not.
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>Trees can be effectively managed as a crop without destroying the so-called old growth forests.

True. But as long as it is economically advantageous to harvest old growth (no imput costs) and no laws exist to regulate harvesting of older trees the clear cutting will continue. Many responsible companies are following clear cutting immediately with tree planting. Many are not.
JLK