Western Red Cedar once dominated summer dried, small tributaries of Pilchuck Creek and Pilchuck River, creating an abundance of fallen red needles (losing the red needles closest to their trunks). With the first October rains (it was once colder and rained less), these small
creeks’ water “ran red” and the Indigenous Peoples called the streams into which they fed: Pil (red) chuck (waters). Photos attest, in the summers these streams held 100x more water than today, not because we have less rainfall, but because there is less upstream soil to retain rainy months’ waters. It would take 1,000 years to restore Pilchuck Creek’s soil that have been lost and swept downstream; arial maps around Stanwood attest (once a deep-water seaport). As for the creeks running red again, we would have to plant 100s of 1,000s of red cedars as almost all have been harvested and replaced with Douglas Fir or volunteer cottonwoods and willows that cause the waters to run brown. PLC’s sponsored WWU SAM Project’s extinction probability is slight, <.00001% as demand for Western Red Cedar lumber exists but far exceeded by demand for Douglas Fir.
http://naeb.brit.org/uses/search/?string=thuja+plicata
https://climate-woodlands.extension.org/trees-and-local-temperature/
https://www.pacificforest.org/ee-old-trees-store-more-carbon-more-quickly-than-younger-trees
https://plants.usda.gov/home/plantProfile?symbol=THPL
https://burkeherbarium.org/imagecollection/taxon.php?Taxon=Thuja%20plicata
https://www.plc215.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Kiosk-14.pdf
https://earthengine.google.com/timelapse/#v=48.43918,-124.05803,9.257,latLng&t=0.03&ps=50&bt=19840101&et=20181231&startDwell=0&endDwell=0
The rivers in western Cascadia, from Alaska to San Francisco run the color:
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