Living close to nature for many people involves some integration with forests. Often this is little more than being an informed voter, but for me it is my backyard. This partnership results in a lot of curiosity and that led me to a book which could be important. The Hidden Forest by: Jon R. Luoma published 1999 I smugly started reading this book expecting to find a biased viewpoint and little new information. What if found was a good history of ecology and enough new information to change my view of forests. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in forest ecology. There are too many good quotes, so i'll list some of the facts presented: * The Andrews forest in Oregon is probably the most studied forest in the world. The original goals were economic, but because of some surprises they now are concentrating on pure ecology. They are trying to understand how a forest works. * Nitrogen fixing occurs in the canopy by the lichen Lobaria. * The conifer needles contain a fungi that produce toxins when insects attack. * Thousands of new soil animals were discovered and most have not been cataloged yet. * The ratio of root effectiveness to fungi is about a thousand to one. In other words, the nutriments are gathered by the fungi and presented to the roots. * A thimble full of soil can have a mile of fungi threads. and a hundred million bacteria. * A relationship was found between one rootlet and a single leaf. They work in pairs. This was measured but no one can explain it yet, they exchange nutriments. * About 40 percent of a leaf's output goes to support the fungi needed by the tree. * Forests in Japan and Europe are in decline and may be dying. The Andrews data suggests that old trees use different fungi than new trees and if you cut all the old ones the fungi is lost. Also, cutting a block of trees prevents the lichen from spreading and it dies. In other words, we may have killed most old growth style forests, and we don't know what we are doing with the new forests. ---------- Jeff Owens ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Zone 7, http://www.teleport.com/~kowens Underground house, solar energy, reduced consumption, no TV
