Very interesting, thank you.
> Don: > > That's one of the best illustrations I have seen of the continuing value > of trees to the ecosystem after they die. Foxtail pine is one of my > favorite species. Several years ago we (I was chair of the award > committee) gave the Ecological Society of America Cooper Award to Andrea > Lloyd and Lisa Graumlich for a study they did on long-term changes in > high-elevation foxtail pine forests of southern CA, where they had > reconstructed the tree population for a 2000 year period using tree ring > analyses of live and dead trees. > > You should also see some of our recently burned forests in the Boundary > Waters Wilderness in northern MN, where the fire burned away the duff > and moss that was up to 2 feet thick in 200-300 year old forests, > revealing that many of the the live trees had their root systems mostly > or totally confined to large rotten logs buried in the moss. That's how > the forest maintains itself on a granite batholith where the mineral > soil is patchy and mostly less than a foot deep, in a climate with > frequent droughts. > > Lee > > > > DON BERTOLETTE wrote: >> Randy/ENTS- >> On the topic of nurse logs, I ran across a recent photo I took in a >> foxtail pine forest ...a foxtail pine may live to be 2000 >> years...once dead, they may remain vertical for decades. Once >> horizontal, it may take even longer to degrade into duff. >> The young foxtail seedling growing at the tip of the dead and down, >> soon to be duff foxtail pine in the foreground, probably came from a >> seed that may have taken years to encounter the right combination of >> seasonal moisture, soil warmth, and scarification regime to burst into >> life and lend optimism to a forest currently facing changing climate >> conditions. >> -Don --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Eastern Native Tree Society http://www.nativetreesociety.org Send email to [email protected] Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees?hl=en To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
