The Impossible Forest…..
The Pacific Northwest is much colder than the Amazon, has less reliable rainfall with two months of drought in the summer, has soils leached of nutrients and scraped to bedrock by cyclic glaciation, and spends most of the year under overcast dim skies. Yet, the original temperate Old Growth Rainforests outproduce tropical rainforests by seven to ten times
You only have to take one look at the sorry, stoney soils here to understand there must be some great mystery, or accident, or magic that will grow Western Hemlock two hundred feet tall to an age of five hundred years and which can grow Douglas Fir trees three hundred feet tall and sustain them for a thousand years.
This area has a special story for us all. For the Great Cathedral Forests are a community of cooperation and sharing, a non-competetive, non-warring ecosystem that, in its endless exchanges and cycling, outlives any other rainforest.
One small example of how this happens has to do with flying squirrels, trees, and fungi.
Tree roots become wrapped in a cottony down of fungi. These fungi reach out farther than the roots, gathering extra water during dry periods. They provide safe places for nitrogen producing bacteria, and pull in other nutrients. Trees that do not have these fungi on their roots grow slowly, poorly, and may not survive at all. This is all so important that as much as 25% of the sugars manufactured by the trees is sent down to the roots...for the fungi, who cannot make their own.
The flying squirrels come down from the forest canopy to eat, and one of their favorite foods is the fruit of the fungi. In the same way that birds scatter the seeds of fruit trees, the squirrels spread the spores of the fungi (in packets that include the bacteria) throughout the forest.
These are not just different species: this is an example of mutualism among organisms from four entirely different Kingdoms.
The flying squirrels are food for the Spotted Owl, and the drop in the owl population suggests a loss in food animals, a diminishment of the forest, and loss of one of the main vectors for spreading the fungi spores.
The dance must have all its dancers.
Partitioning Resources:
Once upon a Time, the Forest Service decided that old growth forests must be removed and replaced. They wanted to get rid of the slow-growing old growth and make way for younger, faster growing, "stronger" trees. They believed that competition would take place, in which only the best and strongest of the young trees would survive, thus creating a vigorous stand of superior trees.
But, instead, ALL of the trees grew. Each got a small share of the nutrients available and they grew tall and thin and weedy.
Parable of the Cheese Sandwiches:
Suppose a disaster closed all the roads to you city or town. Suppose you were all starving, and some wealthy person took pity on you and had helicopters deliver a great pile of cheese sandwiches to a local park. What would happen?
Chaos? Fighting? The strong (with guns) taking over and only doling sandwiches out to a select few? Babies and old people and the sick starving to death?
Or…would you get your act together, share the food, set up schedules so that, say, women with babies should come for sandwiches between 9 and 11 am, old folks between 11 and 1 pm, and so on so that the distribution could happen without stampedes and crowding?
That is what happens in nature. Some birds hunt early morning, some later, some mid day, some at dusk…some at night (owls). Some eat seeds or fruits or insects or leaves or small mammals or even eggs. The increase in diversity of species is driven in part by living things developing in ways that leads to this sharing, or partitioning, of resources.
References
Chris Maser The Redesigned Forest
Stephen Arno and Ramona Hammerly Northwest Trees
David Kely and Gary Braasch Secrets of the Old Growth Forest
Linda Berg Introductory Botany