It was a false alarm when I wrote last week that the sun had set and wouldn’t rise again until mid-January. From my desk in the living room I noticed a bright light through my indoor forest garden…the sun rose and set again in the course of 2 minutes… :)
In my local area, a disproportionate large area of forest has been clear-felled recently, a practice we need to stop if we are to take climate change seriously as this releases much carbon dioxide. It was sickening to see just how large an area has been felled in recent years in this series of photos taken recently on a flight to Oslo. The usual excuse given is that a lot of trees have fallen in recent extreme storms and need to be “cleared” up. And what is causing these storms? A vicious circle in other words…
See my blog post about our recent field trip to discuss these problems here: http://www.edimentals.com/
The sun is now rising close to due East having swung round day for day from close
to north over a few short weeks…the sunrise is now rushing towards south….
As part of Trondheim’s climate festival, which runs all this week, Naturvernforbundet (Friends of the Earth Norway) arranged a tour to experience first-hand a couple of remnants of old forest in Malvik! We learned more about the need to preserve more old forest in Norway, to extend the size of existing reserves and the importance to change the way we manage the forest as soon as possible to bind as much carbon as possible! Today’s clearfelling practices need to be changed to more ecologically sound methods.
We learned how to spot old forest remnants from afar, that about 80% of the carbon is below ground level and that only about 3% of the forest in Norway is over 160 years old, although the amount of old forest is now on the rise. We also visited Storfossen on the Homla river and talked about the spray zone around the waterfall where several rare lichens and mosses can be found. The forest along the river in this dramatic canyon-like landscape was finally protected by law last year: http://malviknytt.no/2015/12/11/homla-naturreservat-vernet-i-dag
It was a very interesting day thanks in particular to biologist Arnodd Håpnes from Naturvernforbundet in Oslo who lectured and asked questions from the well attended tour participants together with Martin Stuevold from the local group who are pushing the plans for protecting the forest locally and also Jan Erik Andersen from Fylkesmannen who also informed about the complicated process of trying to protect more forest…
A collection of pictures from 3 hours in the woods….about 30 minutes to cycle up to the start of the trail and 15 minutes down again..
