Comment Log Display

The comments below are consolidated from various BLM CA State
Office program specialists. 

First of all, it surprised me that the standard deviation of
baseline carbon density was so high (over half the total
estimated):2010 total carbon density (MgC/ha): 5,238 MMTC +- 2,907
---> so how can the model work well with so much deviation in
baseline?

And there were several items not included in the model that seem
pretty important (in bold below).

Climate/atmosphere effects
 • ecosystem carbon accumulation 
• wildfire risk - but wildfire area is prescribed 
• post-disturbance reforestation 

• Spatially explicit baseline burned area by land category 

• Spatially explicit baseline managed private forest area by land
category

And the last item I'm curious about is what is causing desert loss
- they don't give an explanation for this in the presentation.


I'm curious as well, regarding desert losses.  Good point on the
deviation, but wide ranges are imaginable. 

I'm certain these are easy guesses, and they might be dwarfed by
scale, and perhaps you are just curious about WHICH parameters were
used,  but my thoughts include:

Fire conversion of difficult (to impossible - black brush for
example-) reclamation of Mojave systems/annual conversion and
increased aridity/diversity losses resulting from
diminishing/changing water tables/sedimentation/water uses on
non-federal lands in riparian systems, urban/suburban conversion,
and/or plant veg community shifts from rising temps.

I stood in a central section of the Mormon Wilderness area in
Nevada and looked out over a million acres of unseeded '05/'06
fire-impacted mojave landscape now in "monocultures" of Phyllaria,
red brome, or denuded blowing sandy soils.   Desert shrub
communities are not showing signs of recovering.  Pockets of extant
mojave plant communities exist, but given the new fire/annual
production cycles now in place, it's imaginable that either.