EAGLESTAR.NET LAND AND PROPERTY REVIEW
http://www.eaglestar.net
Issue #58
March 5, 2009

IN THIS ISSUE:
Properties of the Week: Idaho
Special Report: Forests and Water, Pt. 9
- Human Impacts
Auction News
Sponsor's Corner:
- 10 Acres on High Hill, NC
Last Week's Top Searches
Buyers List Update
New Issue Numbering System
LandTerms.com Term of the Week: Relict


"We travelled rapidly over a lovely country of open forest and mountain valley,
which continually drew exclamations of delight and surprise from every member
of the party...
as we passed successive vales and glades, filled with verdant grass knee high
to our mules, dotted with flowers, and the edges skirted by gigantic pines."
- Lt. Edward F. Beale (American military officer and explorer, b. 1822 - d.
1893), describing the area around Flagstaff, Arizona in his journal (Sept. 11,
1857)


PROPERTIES OF THE WEEK: IDAHO
Baldy Mountain Ranch
Lava Hot Springs, Bannock County, Idaho
650 acre high mountain alpine ranch. Baldy Mountain is located about 8 miles
from Lava Hot Springs, Idaho, in the Portneuf Mountain Range, about 140 miles
north of Salt Lake City, Utah and 25 miles south of Pocatello, Idaho. Borders
State Forest on 2 sides of the property. Elevations on the ranch range from
6500 feet on East Creek to 8375 feet. It has rugged alpine terrain in places
and pristine meadows and gentle forest in other locations on the ranch. Listing
ID: 15465. View photos and additional information at
http://www.eaglestar.net/zlu3-.html

Copenhaver Ranch
Riggins, Idaho County, Idaho
Remote 10.5 acres surrounded by wilderness. Access by plane and jet boat or
drive to Mackay Bar and access cable car crossing. Very rare opportunity to own
a piece of the historic Copenhaver Ranch. Remote back-country property nestled
on the banks of the South Fork of the Salmon River, surrounded by The Frank
Church River of No Return Wilderness and Payette National Forest. Listing ID:
21231. Find photos and more at http://www.eaglestar.net/tlb.html

River Frontage Development Land
Clearwater River, Idaho
300 acre Clearwater River frontage with 180 degree views of the surrounding
mountains, river and valley below. Includes 3/4 mile of historic Lewis and
Clark Trail. Marketable timber, sloped land and level areas. Private, desirable
location between Lewiston and Orofino with easy access off Highway 12. Power
and phone runs through land. It is zoned Agricultural Residential with 5 acre
minimum lot size. Listing ID: 20660. Photos and more information at
http://www.eaglestar.net/cdal2-.html


SPECIAL REPORT
I Can't See the Stream for the Forest:
Part 9 - Human Impacts
The previous articles in our continuing series on the role played by forests in
a global water crisis drama have delved into the natural factors that govern
water production in forested areas. The main point of this series is that in
many areas of the world, the careful and deliberate removal of trees in
forested areas can increase the amount of surface water available for human use
while promoting overall forest health at the same time. Such an act of man can
thus have multiple and far-reaching positive effects. So too can man negatively
impact forests and water supplies - and indeed there are few forests in the
world that have not been adversely affected by humans.

In many areas, the extent and pace of human-induced ("anthropogenic") changes
in forests are alarming, as are many of the changes themselves. Some of these
effects will be examined in this article, using southwestern US ponderosa pine
forests as a case study example. If you would like to review any of the prior
articles in this series, they can be found in Issues 42-46 and 55-57, at
http://www.eaglestar.net/newsletter

In the Beginning
In the southwestern United States (Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah),
humans have been doing things to alter forest characteristics in order to
benefit themselves for thousands of years. These activities included removing
trees for fuel and to build structures, lighting fires to flush out game or to
re-invigorate fallow fields, and the collection of forest plants for medicine
and food. Even though millions of indigenous Americans depended on Southwest
forests for their livelihoods and did things to change the forest every day,
the impacts were relatively minor compared with the changes to come. This was
at least partly due to the strong belief held by early humans in the region of
the importance of living in harmony with nature, taking great care not to harm
it.

The settling of the frontiers of the Southwest began in earnest in the latter
half of the 19th century. This was driven in large part by the construction of
railroads and a series of laws which allowed homesteaders to claim land for
free, provided they lived on it and planted a certain number of trees there,
among other requirements. Like other places in the western US, many of those
who traveled to the Southwest sought timber, gold, or other natural resources,
which at the time were plentiful across the vast and untamed landscape.

These newcomers, largely of European descent, were like the Sinagua, Anasazi,
Pueblo, and other ancient peoples that preceded them in that they wanted the
forest to provide, in one way or another, their daily sustenance. The
difference was that the settlers, miners, loggers, and others who later came
west brought machines. By about 1870, the steam engine, the advent of
railroads, and a remarkable lack of foresight on the part of the area's
citizens had combined to create a situation in which unprecedented changes were
happening in the region's forests - and none of them good.

Due to mechanization, the severity and extent of the alterations undergone by
the forests of the Southwest over the last 140 years has occurred on a scale
previously unimaginable. These changes have happened in three general areas.
The first is the structure of the forest - how the individual trees and stands
of trees are arranged, how large, old, or tall the trees are, and so on.
Second, the forest composition has been affected - that is, the number of each
tree species present in a given area. Finally, and perhaps most disturbing, the
way the forest functions - such as the provision of habitat, natural cycles of
disturbance and renewal, and the production of surface and ground water - is
now fundamentally altered in many locales.

There are many different forest types in the southwestern United States, each
with unique characteristics. Within each forest type, there are countless
arrangements and combinations (stands) of trees with different heights, ages,
and bole (trunk) diameters. No short example, then, can possibly describe the
kinds of changes that have occurred in every Southwest stand or forest type.
While it may be somewhat of an oversimplification, the millions of acres of
ponderosa pine forests are used here as an example of the general nature of the
forest alterations that began with the large-scale arrival of European
immigrants in the late 19th century.

Changes in Forest Structure - Logging
The effects of the intense and arguably irresponsible logging operations that
took place in the ponderosa pine forests of the Southwest in the late 1800's
and early 1900's are still visible today. In fact, with just a little
knowledge, they become glaringly apparent. Forest stands that were once
characterized by enormous and ancient ponderosa pines scattered across a
grassy, open, park-like landscape have been replaced by thousands of small,
spindly trees as close together as the hairs on a dog's back - hence the name
"doghair thicket".

And so were the ponderosa pine forests of the Southwest transformed. Often,
entire landscapes were either completely cleared of trees ("denuded" or
"clear-cut") or else they were "high-graded". This latter term means that all
the best timber specimens were removed with little thought given to the health
of the trees that remained, or how the local gene pool was being weakened by
taking all the healthiest, most disease- and insect-resistant trees. The
logging that was done at this time changed, perhaps forever, the number of
pines in the forest, the age classes of those trees, and their spatial
distribution across the land.

Changes in Forest Function - Fire Suppression
Alterations in forest structure and function go hand in hand, and so too have
wildfire suppression policies and historic logging practices combined to create
millions of acres of fire-prone doghair thickets. At the same time, the regime
of natural wildfires upon which ponderosa pine forests depend for survival has
been almost completely usurped, and local surface water production from rain
and snow, which sustains many mountain communities, has fallen as much as 30%
or more.

A disturbance regime is a natural pattern of events that creates conditions
necessary for the renewal and regeneration of a forest. Disturbances consist of
things like windstorms, outbreaks of insect pests or disease, or perhaps most
important in southwestern ponderosa pine forests, wildfire. Disturbances help
to remove old or decaying trees and other forest material, or sometimes even
young and healthy trees, providing sunlit openings that are relatively free of
competition for space or nutrients. In these openings, new plants and trees can
establish themselves, a process known as "succession". In the Southwest
ponderosa pine vegetation type, the natural fire regime is essential for forest
health - unfortunately, this realization in many areas has come far too late.

In the open, park-like ponderosa stands of the past, it was difficult for tree
seedlings to establish themselves, due mainly to the frequent, low-intensity
fires that burned across the forest floor. These fires created near-perfect
conditions for the quick-growing native grasses of the area, which easily
outcompeted the slower pine seedlings. The fledgling United States depended on
the timber from these forests, and, having lost millions of acres to unchecked
wildfires in years past, implemented its policy of excluding natural fire from
the pine forests of the Southwest. The result is what we see today: loss of
native grasses and other low-growing vegetation; the replacement of open stands
of scattered large pines with dark, dense thickets of small, unhealthy trees;
and the dramatically increased risk of catastrophic, out-of-control wildfires
due to the excessive fuel loads that have built up over time.

Changes in Forest Composition - Grazing
With the influx of settlers to the Southwest came their livestock, without
which no ranch or homestead would be complete. Much like the logging practices
of the time, little thought was given to the ecological consequences of turning
loose hundreds of thousands of sheep and cattle to graze unfettered on the
sweet and rich grasses that grew in the region. The grazing practices of the
time soon led to an invasion of noxious weeds, which were transported into the
area either in livestock feed or on the livestock themselves. Noxious weeds
like dalmatian toadflax and leafy spurge outcompete native plants, sometimes
overtaking very large areas. By allowing this to happen, the Southwest's
ranchers and homesteaders were actually harming themselves, since the noxious
weeds that began to replace natural forage provides no nutrition to livestock
and can sometime be poisonous.

Overgrazing of livestock led to a huge reduction in the low-growing grasses and
plants that used to provide fuel for the low-intensity fires that frequently
swept through ponderosa pine forests. This factor, combined with logging and
fire suppression practices, resulted in the huge ponderosa population explosion
that occurred beginning in the early 1900's. Other effects of overgrazing
included massive erosion and loss of topsoil, sedimentation in stream and river
channels, invasion of grassy meadows by trees, and the lowering of groundwater
tables.

Of course, forest processes and relationships are far more complex than can be
explained by this simple example. Early logging, fire suppression, and
livestock grazing practices had profound effects on forest structure, function,
and composition, respectively. However, historic logging practices not only
caused radical changes in the structure of the forest, but also affected both
composition and function, as well. For instance, where ponderosa pine grew
together with other species like white fir, the ponderosa pine was taken and
the other species left, which altered species composition. Likewise, grazing
and fire suppression practices have resulted in alterations in all three forest
characteristics: structure, composition, and function.

Surface Water Changes
If you've been following this series on water and forests, then you know that
trees transpire (release) water during respiration. The more trees in an area,
the more water released. Of course, larger trees release more water than
smaller ones, but thousands of small trees release much more than just a few
large trees. The changes undergone by ponderosa pine forests of the Southwest -
namely, the replacement of park-like stands with doghair thickets - have
resulted in greatly decreased amounts of both surface and ground water
available. For surface water (lakes and rivers), estimates range from 10% to
30% or more depending on such site characteristics as soil type or existing
stand structure. With respect to the current state of forested watersheds in
the Southwest, other concerns include the greatly increased threat of mountain
community watersheds being severely damaged or destroyed by wildfire.

Ecological Restoration
Unfortunately, many of these ill-advised forest operations and practices
continued unabated into the latter half of the 20th century. Recently, however,
a movement has begin to introduce sustainable and ecologically sensitive
grazing, logging, and fire-suppression practices to the field of forest
management. But this movement, known as ecological restoration, advocates much
more than that. At its core, ER seeks to restore damaged forests and other land
types to their natural conditions, and to reintroduce natural disturbance
regimes.

In the ponderosa pine forests of the Southwest (and many other forest types as
well) ecological restoration involves tree thinnings - removing trees in a way
that is designed to mimic historic natural conditions. It also involves the
process of prescribed or controlled burning, in which a fire crew burns piles
of slash (the tree limbs and other discarded material left after a thinning
operation) or does a broadcast burn, intended to burn ground cover, tree
seedlings, and woody material on the forest floor within a defined area. Other
tools employed in restoration operations include reseeding areas with native
grasses and plants, the manual removal of noxious weeds, and the
re-establishment of natural wildlife habitat.

Other Forest Types
There are lots of other forest types in the Southwest other than ponderosa
pine. Some, like white fir or Douglas-fir, have a fire regime characterized not
by small, low fires, that occur often, but by infrequent, very large,
stand-replacing fires. Others, like corkbark fir and Engelmann spruce, were not
logged nor grazed as excessively as the pine forest type. Nevertheless, despite
their differences, human-caused changes that began about 1870 continue to
profoundly affect all these forest types today, and in ways that are much more
similar than they are different from one another.

The next article in this series will be the final installment. It discusses
what steps landowners and citizens can take to improve forest health and
increase water supplies, both on their forested private property and the public
property owned jointly by all US citizens. Watch for it in your inbox.


AUCTION NEWS
Browse thumbnail photos and short property descriptions at
http://www.eaglestar.net/Land_Auction_Calendar/index.html

Only selected auction listings will be featured this issue. The next edition of
Hot Properties and Auctions will feature all current auction listings. Watch
for it this coming Monday, 3/9/09. To see all auction listings now, go to the
Auction Calendar at http://www.eaglestar.net/Land_Auction_Calendar/index.html

220 Acres with Tree Farm
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Live Oak, Suwannee County, Florida
220 Acres with established slash pine tree farm, scores of towering live oaks,
5 minutes from downtown Live Oak, FL. Selling Divided, High Bidder's Choice
March 7. Former estate of W.D. "Duke" Peppers. Don't miss this opportunity to
purchase prime Suwannee County real estate. Listing ID: 23102. Photos and
contact information at http://www.eaglestar.net/bmr.html

Western Kentucky Hunting Land
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Tolu, Salem, and Marion; Crittendon, Livingston, and Caldwell Counties,
Kentucky
Trophy deer hunting! 887 acres of prime hunting land offered at auction in 6
tracts ranging in size from 57+/- acres to 213+/- acres. These properties
feature ponds, food plots, homes, cabins, crop land, CRP income land, river
frontage, timber, farming operation income, and more! Crittenden County along
with the surrounding counties of Caldwell and Livingston consistently produces
big whitetail bucks. Western Kentucky is quickly becoming a preferred
destination for hunters looking to harvest Boone & Crockett class whitetails.
Listing ID: 23273. Photos and more information at
http://www.eaglestar.net/dle3-.html


SPONSOR'S CORNER
The Land and Property Review would like to thank this week's sponsor:
10 Acres Hunting Land with Home Site
Oxford, Granville County, North Carolina
Located between Kerr Lake (60,000 acres) and Oxford, NC (our "Mayberry"), this
lovely tract is high up on the slope of a lovely hill. Less than an hour from
the big cities of Raleigh, Durham, Duke Hospital, VA Hospital, and the RDU
International Airport. Only minutes from Oxford. Land is perked, new survey and
will have a modest gated, private entrance. Only six tracts and six homes total
will ever be in this community, called Rocky Ridge. For sale by private owners.
Frame and log homes only. Listing ID: 20952. Photos and additional information
are available at http://www.eaglestar.net/crch9-.html


LAST WEEK'S TOP SEARCHES
Top searches by state or country, with the previous week's rank in parentheses:
1. Oregon (11)
2. Texas (3)
3. California (1)
4. Kentucky (2)
5. Washington (21)
6. Pennsylvania (6)
7. Indiana (19)
8. New York (5)
9. Tennessee (20)
10. Idaho (14)

Movers - states with significant ranking increases, with the previous week's
rank in parentheses:
13. Canada (33)
17. Michigan (37)
18. Missouri (36)

Other recent popular and interesting searches by visitors to EagleStar.net:
"Ridge Spring SC"
"historic homes"
"cabins in Manitoba"
"homes fixer uppers"
"gold claim"
"acreage for for sale"
"1 acre lots"
"Adams County Wisconsin"


BUYERS LIST UPDATE
http://www.eaglestar.net/Land_Buyers_List/index.html
Find the properties you are looking for by placing unlimited free buyer's ads
on Eaglestar.net. This service is intended for serious inquiries only. It's
fast, easy, and best of all, free. Navigate to
http://www.eaglestar.net/pages/buyers.html to begin.

To contact a buyer, please call or email us at 800-239-3448 or
info@eaglestar.net and we will put you in touch with them. Please note this is
a service provided to EagleStar.net clients with PAID property listings only.

Looking in: Canada. RV / Home Site, recreation, horses, hiking, ATV. Please
refer to buyer #23182.

Looking in: Mexico. Want to buy a ranch or plantation, 500 to 1000 acres, in
higher temperature area. Please refer to buyer #23107.

Looking in: Eastern Pennsylvania (PA). Want to rent home with small barn and a
couple of acres located on the eastern coast of Pennsylvania. Have livestock
(goats) and need to relocate. Around $800 per month. Please refer to buyer
#23092.

Looking in: southern Kentucky. Looking for approx. 50 acres in southern
Kentucky. Would like to move there in the near future. Please refer to buyer
#23090.

Looking in: Wyoming. Want mountain cabin. Please refer to buyer #23012.

Looking in: Oklahoma. Seeking ranch, views, home site. Livestock operation.
Please refer to buyer #23014.

Looking in: Anywhere. Looking for operating coal mines for sale. Please refer
to buyer #23008.

Looking in: KY. I am looking for land 1-? acres with no restrictions as to
buildings. Or small fixer up. Need owner financing with low down, low monthly.
(I know, me and everyone else!) Will consider other states besides KY. Such as:
TN, MO, AR, WV, VA, etc. Please refer to buyer #22927.

Looking in: Anywhere in the USA. 501(C)(3) nonprofit horse rescue foundation
seeking expansion, donated property. Tax deductions available for donations.
Please refer to buyer #22720.

Looking in: NW area of Minnesota Near Gatzke in Marshall Co or similar type
area and ground.
1031 exchange, looking for 2000 acres more or less in NW Minnesota Marshall
County Gatzke, Minnesota area. Productive crop farm land. Please refer to buyer
#22626.

Looking in: Hardwood timberland in the Eastern US. Looking for large tracts of
hardwood timberland, minerals preferred but not necessary. Looking for 10,000+
ac but will consider 1000+. Please refer to buyer #22627.


NEW ISSUE NUMBERING SYSTEM FOR NEWSLETTER
The issue numbering system for the Land and Property Review has been changed.
The annual volume numbers have been removed and all issues have been
renumbered, beginning with Issue #1 (Jan. 28, 2008). Subsequent issues are
consecutively numbered. The numbering system was changed to avoid confusion and
make it easier to locate past issues in our online archive
(http://www.eaglestar.net/newsletter).


LANDTERMS.COM TERM OF THE WEEK
http://landterms.com
Each issue we feature a real estate, forestry, natural sciences or other
land-related term from our partner site, LandTerms.com.

This week's term: Relict
1. Biology, Ecology, Forestry: A species of plant or animal existing in
geographic or temporal isolation; plants or animals that exist in local areas
smaller than their historic ranges, either from an earlier time period or as
some of the last remaining examples of nearly extinct species.
2. Restoration: Isolated areas of ecosystems that have not been impacted by
human activities and are still subject to a historic and natural disturbance
regime.
3. Geology: Minerals, rocks, or other geologic structures or features that
remain after the exterior material that previously covered or surrounded them
is no longer there, as through erosion or chemical reaction.

Find thousands of land-related terms, definitions, articles, abbreviations,
quotations, and more at Landterms.com! Click on the "Categories" button at the
top of each page to see the list of over 35 categories.


SUGGESTIONS
We welcome reader suggestions, comments, and questions.
Email: newsletter@eaglestar.net

ARCHIVES
See archived issues of the Eaglestar.net Land and Property Review at
http://eaglestar.net/newsletter.

CONTACT
American Eagle Star
Tel: +1 702-471-0077 Toll Free 800-239-3448
Web: www.eaglestar.net
Email: info@eaglestar.net

All land areas (acreages) listed in the Land and Property Review are
approximate.

Copyright 2009 All Rights Reserved