Research towers measuring forest ecology, climate change are being installed in Jackson Demonstration State Forest 

MENDOCINO Co., 8/7/24 — Two steel research towers are being installed in the Jackson Demonstration State Forest (JDSF), resulting in tree removals and a road closure. The two Eddy Covariance Flux Towers measure the interplay of air currents, energy, and carbon, according to a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) exemption that Cal Fire obtained for the project. 

“These will be the first towers placed in the redwood forest ecosystem here, filling a critical data gap in directly monitoring their contributions to the state’s climate change goals for natural and working lands,” said Kevin Conway, the head of Cal Fire’s Demonstration Forest program. Cal Fire is authorizing construction of the towers under the CEQA exemption, meaning no permits are required for tree removal or construction. The project will remove about 60 trees. Due to construction and tree work, Road 510 will be closed from Aug. 1 to Nov 1 to all traffic, including hikers and bikers.

A notice about the road closure is here, which also includes maps of each tower area:

There are no other such towers in the JDSF. One tower will be 200 feet tall, making it much taller than more familiar local structures such as the Point Arena Lighthouse, the tallest lighthouse on the West Coast at 115 feet (tied with one in San Mateo County), or the Albion River Bridge at 164 feet tall. Radio towers are commonly very tall, with one on Cow Mountain south of Ukiah listed at 215 feet tall.

The 200-foot tower off Mitchell Creek Road is in a mature redwood forest with large trees. Some trees as big as 40 inches in diameter will be cut down for the tower. None of the timber will be sold commercially. The tower near the Parlin Forks Conservation camp, at Camp 20 on State Route 20, measures 120 feet, tall enough to extend above the canopy of a younger forest. This puts each tower about 40 feet above the redwood and Douglas fir forest canopy, documents submitted with the CEQA exemption show. Trees can be taller than 200 feet closer to the coast, but this far inland they grow slower, participants on recent forest tours learned.

Conway explained that data collected from the towers will be compared with data from other areas. “There are a number of other towers located in other forested ecosystems, and the data from these towers will be available to the network of researchers through AmeriFlux.” The AmeriFlux network, to which the new tours will contribute, is a collection of data points shared by scientists internationally who study fluctuations in CO2, water, respiration and energy among others in forested landscapes. See About the AmeriFlux Network. The research team that will monitor the towers in JDSF comes from  Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and UC Davis.

A Flux Tower continuously measures gas exchange between the land surface (soil and vegetation) and the atmosphere. It can continuously monitor greenhouse gas movement over extensive areas, such as most of the demonstration forest. Flux tower data lets researchers track greenhouse gas regulation by ecosystems and find out how different land management practices affect emissions.

In practical use, this new kind of scientific instrument studies how water loss and carbon retention in the forest change due to forest harvests, planned burning or wildfires. Timber cutting removes the protective canopy and results in erosion and much more water runoff over a shorter period of time. That’s partly how legacy logging silted and blocked Coho salmon streams and ended all fishing for Coho in California in the 1990s.

The towers will be set on a concrete base and outfitted with scientific instruments and will not include cell or radio tower equipment despite a lack of a signal in most of the area, Conway said. Guy wires will extend out from each tower to a maximum of 200 feet. Two or three small instrumentation sheds and a fence will be constructed at the base of each tower. 

About 35 trees between 11 inches and 24 inches in diameter will be removed at the Parlin site and approximately 25 trees between 11 inches and 40 inches in diameter will be removed at the Mitchell Creek site, CEQA exemption documents state. Tree removal will be concentrated at the tower base and along the guy lines. Trees removed will include coast redwood, Douglas fir, grand fir, other conifers, and hardwoods. No commercialization of trees is proposed under this project. Wood leftovers less than 12 inches in diameter will be piled and burned onsite or lopped and scattered. Large woody material may either be bucked and left onsite or ground-yarded and hauled to the Parlin Mill, where inmates have long manufactured wood projects, including picnic tables for state parks. 

The road closure is for Road 510, which is permanently locked at both ends and only open to non-motorized traffic — which also now will be prohibited until Nov. 1.

“Road 510 is used by recreationists from the gate on Simpson Lane to connect in with the trail system primarily accessed from the Caspar Scales [the main road into JDSF, located at the end of Fern Creek Road off Highway 1 in Caspar],” said Conway. “The road is open for non-motorized use and the gate on either end is locked. Users of the Simpson Lane gate can still connect in with the Hare Creek and Road 400 area for a long walk/bike ride.”

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