Lee- I REALLY enjoyed my visit to Horseshoe Meadow/Cottonwood Pass (just south of Whitney Portal) last October. I'll look for the Graumlich/Lloyd paper, as I had fire history in my mind as I hiked from the Meadows up to Cottonwood Pass. I'm attaching an image of a little fire history vignette I encountered midway (11,000 feet in elevation?)...note the char following up (down?) the spiral grain of the bole, the shrubby opening at it's base...
Your comments about the deep duff covering the punky, spongy decaying root system (what better long term source of moisture/available nutrients!?) have me thinking that would be the opposite end of the wet/dry nurse log continuum! In the case of the foxtail pine, the intermittent moisture retention regime probably served the seed viability dynamics to a T! -Don > Date: Thu, 26 Mar 2009 08:09:25 -0500 > From: [email protected] > To: [email protected] > Subject: [ENTS] Re: Nurse logs > > > 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 > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > From: [email protected] > > To: [email protected] > > Subject: [ENTS] Re: Nurse logs > > Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2009 22:10:52 -0500 > > > > > > > _________________________________________________________________ Windows Live™ SkyDrive: Get 25 GB of free online storage. http://windowslive.com/online/skydrive?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_skydrive_032009 --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
