There you go again trying to be a forestry expert. I suggest you give it up.
Nature restored the forests around Mt. St. Helens all by herself? I don't think so....
"The center recounts the seven-year effort of Weyerhaeuser foresters to replant 18.4 million trees on over 45,000 acres. Now, two decades later, some of those trees are more than 50 feet tall."
Oh so quick to respond.........I bet you thought Saddam had WMDs and were eager to invade Iraq:
Mt. St. Helens covered with sterile volcanic ash circa 1984, 4 years after the eruption.
"Animals, from the tiniest wood-boring insect to the largest elk, appear to be having a profound influence on the developing vegetation. Animals are selecting and colonizing areas on the basis of habitat characteristics and, in turn, helping to shape habitat structure and composition. A comparatively simple system like Mount St. Helens offers a great opportunity to investigate developing habitat relationships."
vulcan.wr.usgs.gov
""But it wasn't just one event," Dale said. "You had pyroclastic flow"—a mix of hot gas and ash that speeds down a volcano's slope—"debris avalanche, and heavy ash deposits. And each of these events had a different pattern of survival and then recovery."
Traditional thinking on ecological succession—the pattern by which life-forms come back over time—held that first, certain species would recover, and then others would, along a particular order. For instance, grasses might appear, followed by rabbits and other animals that eat grasses.
But the reality at Mount St. Helens has proved far more complex. Ecological succession has proceeded at different speeds in different areas. Succession proved to be highly unpredictable.
"Chance factors, such as what time of day or year the eruption occurs, can strongly influence survival and the course of succession," Dale said.
For example, the eruption occurred in May, when some of the mountain was still covered in snow. The snow proved to have a strong influence on plant survival. Also, many of the salmon that inhabit local rivers were out to sea when the volcano erupted—as they are every May.""
news.nationalgeographic.com |
