California Farm Bureau Commentary: Logging can protect forests, increase water supplies
Practical solutions to California’s energy and water shortages will always have a better chance of being implemented if they adhere to the limitations placed upon them by those concerned about climate change. A solution that should work for everyone is forest thinning. … It turns out that forest thinning also reduces the amount of water that is immediately taken up by the roots of overcrowded trees and undergrowth and transpired into the atmosphere. Instead, more of this water can run off into tributaries or percolate to recharge springs. How much water? A 2011 study by experts from the University of California, Merced, and UC Berkeley … reports that 60% of the state’s consumptive water comes in the form of Sierra runoff, and when forest cover is reduced by 40%, total runoff increases by an estimated 9%. … if California’s forests were thinned appropriately, 2.2 million acre-feet of water would be added to California’s water supply in an average year.
— written by Edward Ring, senior fellow with the California Policy Center and author of the “The Abundance Choice: Our Fight for More Water in California.”