national forests

[caption id="attachment_3240" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="We're talking about set-ups like this... although a lot smaller. That's the point. Photo courtesy U.S. Department of Energy"][/caption]

Quick -- before it goes behind the pay wall -- check out this intriguing Wall Street Journal story on how plans to combat climate change could mean tearing up the wilderness.

The WSJ's Jim Carlton points out that across the country, and particularly in the West, are streams where power providers would like to install small hydroelectric dams. From a climate-change standpoint, this is great: Carbon-free power! Enough to serve millions of homes! And often, no threat of NIMBYs, says the piece, datelined in Sultan, Wash., just up the road from InvestigateWest World Headquarters:

A big public utility is on the  cusp of building a hydroelectric-power plant on a picture-perfect stream in the Pacific Northwest, but the plan has yet to draw the usual opposition.

That is in part because approved project, which involves building a dam on a tributary called Youngs Creek, is so small and remote that is has attracted little notice.

However, Carlton points out, the cumulative impact of actually building the thousands of these plants envisioned by power producers could have a substantial impact in the form of crisscrossing the backcountry with roads needed to build and maintain the dams.

The numbers cited by Carlton here in Washington state are instructive:

According to the U.S.

A rule banning mining, logging and new road construction on nearly 40 million acres of national forest land was reinstated by a federal court Wednesday. Among those covering the decision by the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals were the Anchorage Daily News and the Los Angeles Times.

The rule was created during the Clinton administration, but later repealed during the Bush administration in favor of state-level decision making. As a result, the Tongass National Forest and national forests in Idaho are the only areas of forest land that are not protected under the reinstated rule. Another case affecting the rule is going on in the Denver-based 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.

After the approval of a timber sale in the Tongass last month, it will be interesting to see if the Obama administration enforces the “Roadless Rule” by reinstating it for the Tongass as well.

– Emily Linroth

Major limits are coming on where noisy ATVs can go in national forests, but the limits are being imposed with different strategies and goals, reports Matthew Preusch of The Oregonian. Some forest managers in Oregon and across the West are considering allowing the motorized vehicles on all roads where they can already go, but banning them off-road, while others are closing thousands of miles of previously open roads.  The change is the result of a 2005 U.S. Forest Service rule aimed at controlling the motorized recreational vehicles that can harm sensitive habitat and disrupt the solitude of the forest. Trails are supposed to be plotted by the end of the year.

Most anyone who's driven to a trailhead in a national forest has encountered the phenomenon of washboard roads. And the even mildly curious among them have asked: What gives?

Scientists have come up with an answer. Basically, people are driving too fast on those roads. Mathew Preusch of the Oregonian detailed a study in a blog post today. Says  University of Toronto physicist, Stephen Morris, one of the researchers involved:

"We built lab experiments in which we replaced the wheel with a suspension rolling over a road with a simple inclined plow blade, without any spring or suspension, dragging over a bed of dry sand. Ripples appear when the plow moves above a certain threshold speed."