excerpt from : PETER KUITENBROUWER in THE GLOBE AND MAIL PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 19, 2021
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Journalist Peter Kuitenbrouwer is a Registered Professional Forester.
Startling photos have been circulating this week of the floods in B.C. In one, the city of Merritt, near Kelowna, lies submerged. Some conifers and other trees speckle the watery lawns; evergreens dot a hillside. As in much of B.C., and, indeed, across southern Canada, Merritt settlers cleared dense forests to make way for the houses, roads and parking lots of our communities. In Abbotsford, another city suffering from the floods, a recent photo shows a local farmer using a Sea-Doo to tow a terrified Holstein. Abbotsford is now a farm centre, but began life as a mill town.
Many people are bemoaning the failure of world leaders to make meaningful progress to curb climate change at the COP26 summit in Glasgow. But we needn’t twist arms in Scotland to combat global warming, when solutions lie here at home. Did climate change cause the storm that engulfed much of B.C.? Certainly it contributed. Another factor is logging, which has left the landscape denuded of the forests that absorb rainwater and mitigate the effects of torrential rainstorms.
I was born in B.C. and have three siblings there, plus an uncle, two aunts and plenty of cousins. My heart goes out to everyone struggling with this emergency. At the same time it’s important to underline the role that trees play to mitigate floods.
Among their marvels, trees perform something called transpiration: they suck water from the ground, which transpires through their needles, or leaves, into the air. The U.S. Geological Survey notes that a large oak can transpire 150,000 litres of water a year; this water stays out of rivers and sewer pipes.