Stolen Rain. Tony Mount

      Summary

      Two centuries of World deforestation have

      warmed the coastal lands they cleared and let their

      soils steal the rain once borrowed by their trees, to add

      more to soil's moisture store and increase its run-off.

      Sealed roads and roofs and runways now drain

      more stolen rain into our rising seas.

      Rain stolen from our lower falls

      inland, so less runs off to

      feed our inland rivers

      as they dry.

      Tony Mount has a sixty year interest in

      forest fire ecology and is author of

      Tasmania's Soil Dryness Index

      Introduction

      Current global warming and rising sea levels are mostly blamed on carbon emissions from our burning of fossil fuels. But another, more certain man-caused climate change - two centuries of worldwide deforestation - seldom gets a mention.

      Fortunately, Tasmania's Soil Dryness Index has long measured interception - one of clearing forest's major climate-changers.

      Fifty years ago Forestry Tasmania combined four years of rainfall and river flow from Tasmania's Emu River, with two years of detailed research from Lidsdale, NSW, to create the Soil Dryness Index that still forecasts floods and fire weather today.