Lake Tahoe
Lake Tahoe, is now threatened because fires could ravage forests around the lake and destroy the fabled clarity of its water.
The threat began to take shape in the 19th century, when the lake was ringed with open ponderosa pine woodlands maintained by frequent low-severity fires. Beginning in the 1850s, the big pines were logged to provide timber for mines and railroads, and fires were suppressed with growing efficiency. The forests that grew back were dominated by dense stands of white fir, many of which have succumbed to drought and insect attack in recent decades.
The unhealthy forests around Lake Tahoe fit the popular notion of a forest as a cool, dense screen providing privacy and seclusion. A wildfire in the Lake Tahoe Basin, however, would no longer be mild and restorative, but fierce and destructive, racing through treetops and devastating entire landscapes. It would also cook the soils, leaving them vulnerable to post-fire rains washing sediment into the lake.
The U.S. Forest Service manages 80 percent of the land in the Lake Tahoe Basin, some 165,000 acres. Which works closely with partners, and coordination has improved in recent years with help from Pathway 2007, a collaborative process that charts a mutual course for the future of the basin. Pathway partners include the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board and the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection.
August 29, 2006 6:47 AM | Category: Lake