Through the power of HAZ and looking at old photographs it seems trees take much longer to decompose than I would have guessed. I'm sure it's directly related to sunlight, rain and such.
I think alot depends on the amount of dampness and the quantity of bugs and insects (ants, grubs, and termites). In the rainforest I bet entire trees disappear in a few years, but old stumps in Arizona could likely be untouched for hundreds of years. It depends on what type of wood it is as well. Cypress and Oak will be around alot longer than pine and apple trees.
Hike Arizona it is full of sharp, pointy, ankle-twisting, HAZmaster crushing ROCKS!!
Hike Arizona it is full of sharp, pointy, shin-stabbing, skin-shredding plants!
Hike Arizona it is full of striking, biting, stabbing, venomous wildlife!
Wood used as beams in ancient ruins can be dated back over a thousand years. No reason why a large log couldn't take an extremely long time to break down as well.
"The only thing we did was wrong was staying in the wilderness to long...the only thing we did was right was the day we started to fight..."
-Old Spiritual
My book, The Marauders on Lulu and Amazon
Cedar stumps along the California, Oregon and Mormon trail in Wyoming are still in good shape after approximately 150 years. That's why the early cowboys preferred cedar posts for fencing. The barbed wire would rust away before the posts gave out!
And of course any fallen tree branch in my neighbors yard will be their till hell freezes over or until his wife buys a chain saw and cuts it up for a crafts project! :bigth:
A man's body may grow old, but inside his spirit can still be as young and restless as ever.
- Garth McCann from the movie Second Hand Lions
The Custer Expedition of 1874 (or there abouts) took numerous pictuires of the Black Hills in South Dakota. Sometime in the early 1970's the glass plates from the photos were discovered in the Capitol Building. A researcher took them and attempted to re-take the photo 100 years later. Some locations of course could not be found, but many were. In several, the same log was visible. In a brilliant demonstration of what to keep and what to dispose of, I no longer own the book of before and after photos. This book also demonstrated the over-forestation of the area.
Last edited by Sredfield on Jul 05 2009 7:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Shawn
The bear went over the mountain to see what he could see.
the lignin in wood is highly resistant to degradation, very few things degrade it and most are specialized fungi, not someting you see in the dry forests of AZ,
a good burn and that thing will be gone....... not wishing that on humphreys though
wood that is high in lignin will also burn hotter and longer than wood low in lignin
An adventure is merely an inconvience rightly considered
There are some pretty huge stumps up around here, from back when they were doing the logging. Some areas must have looked totally different back before that.
There is a point of no return unremarked at the time in most lives. Graham Greene The Comedians
A clean house is a sign of a misspent life.
Part of the "Point Huitzil" route at GC has the hiker climbing down a tree trunk located in a crack in the Coconino sandstone. This tree is said to be from about 1150 AD and was used by Anasazi Indians.
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