[Homestead] Let's talk about water...

Gene GeRue genegerue at ruralize.com
Sat Oct 20 07:36:20 EDT 2007


I am reading a long article in TNYT about water, primarily conditions  
in the US West. Something just jolted me: "But recent studies of tree  
rings, in which academics drill core samples from the oldest  
Ponderosa pines or Douglas firs they can find in order to determine  
moisture levels hundreds of years ago, indicate that the dry times of  
the 1950s were mild and brief compared with other historical  
droughts. The latest research effort, published in the journal  
Geophysical Research Letters in late May, identified the existence of  
an epochal Southwestern megadrought that, if it recurred, would prove  
calamitous."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/magazine/21water-t.html? 
pagewanted=5&_r=1

What occurs is that the current drought in NW Georgia, east  
Tennessee, and part of the Carolinas and, I believe, Alabama, is not  
an anomaly--it is a recurring cycle--and we should plan to handle  
such conditions.

I have long read of how "virgin" timber was superior to what we have  
today. The reason is that the growth rings are smaller because there  
was less water when those trees were growing a hundred-to-three  
hundred years ago.

Be prepared.


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