Rain either falls or doesn't on the just and unjust alike. That alone
determines how much water there is. Nevertheless, local summer rainfall
depends
on atmospheric humidity generated in great measure by transpiration from
trees and other forms of vegetation, trees are just better at it. That is why
deforestation leads to drought.
What is most important is that the vegetative cover be composed of species
that coevolved with the suite of animal species that are indigenous to the
area, that way biodiversity is maximized and energy can be most effectively
cycled through the ecosystem. Texas used to be mostly fire controlled
savanna with large numbers of grazers and browsers, none of which, including
cows, are fond of eating juniper.
People are finally getting wise to the dire effects of exotic invasive
species, but many make the mistake of thinking that just because a given
species is indigenous that means it is OK, but nothing could be further from
the
truth. Anthropogenic disturbance such as too many hooved locusts and fire
supression can easily throw native plant species out of whack.
North Florida used to be similar to Texas in many respects, fire controlled
pine oak savanna with many of the same species such as diamondbacks and
junipers. The main difference is that in my area we generally have sand
covering the carbonate rocks so the place isn't as juniper friendly as Texas.
Sandy soils are generally acidic, so when we chop down our forests and then
plow what little soil there originally was gets totally destroyed. Pioneers
got in a few years of crops, after which a few years of watermelons, but
after that not a damned thing, so they gave up and ran range cattle which
destroyed whatever was left. Most areas were subsequently turned into planted
pine, the ultimate ecological insult, but those farms that were simply
abandoned while awaiting development reverted to "nature".
The problem is that what came back was in no way natural. The soil was
gone, the sand acidic, and fire was excluded by the zillions of roads, so
instead of a fire controlled savanna with widely spaced pines and live oaks
what
we got was an uncontrollable regrowth of damnable laurel and water oaks,
total trash trees that formed biologically destitute monocultures.
Nothing, and I do mean nothing, will grow beneath a thicket of laurel oaks.
They exhibit allelopathy and kill everything that comes near them. In
addition to impoverishing the ecosystem they grow very fast and tall so they
threaten to overtop and shade out the live oaks. Unlike live oaks the damned
things coppice when cut, so cutting without stump treatment with herbicide
only encourages them. Needless to say we long ago killed off most predators
so there are zillions of squirrels to spread the acorns far and wide. Fire
ants, Bt sprays, and various unknown insect plagues have killed off all
the pollinating insects so now there are no flowers in Florida, and thus no
herbaceous ground cover plants to compete with seedling laurel oaks.
Every knowledgeable naturalist in north Florida passionately hates laurel
oaks, but few are willing to go to the trouble of controlling them. I was
about in despair until I notice something interesting. Stress due to
alternate flooding and drought made the laurel oaks susceptible to Hypoxylon,
a
common opportunistic fungus that forms blueish patches on the sides of the
trunks, after which over a period of years they would decline and eventually
die. The live oaks were simply outliving them.
Nevertheless I thirst for the sap of laural oaks. Some I directly cut and
stack for firewood, being sure to poison the stumps. Some I girdle which
causes them to slowly die without much coppicing, great for woodpeckers and
such. Others I chop in several place with a machete then squirt herbicide
into the cut. That causes weakness leading to more Hypoxolon. If there is a
mature laurel oak not threatening any live oaks I leave it alone. They only
live about 70 years, by which time a live oak is merely a teenager, so in
the end the live oaks win.
It is all a lot of work but well worth it. So are your efforts to combat
juniper and thus bring back a functioning ecosystem, so fire up those chain
saws boys, all you need is gasoline, roundup, and beer!
Sleazel
