Originally Posted by Captdon
The first part of what you said is still compete nonsense. You've changed your opinion too many times now just so you can keep disagreeing.
I'll answer your other question even though you will still only believe the horrible bad information that you seem to believe as truth and that you either learned from another misinformed person or, and most likely, you are just guessing your way through it.
An ecosystem can change when a forest is burned and when it is clear cut, that's obvious, but there IS a difference in how the ecosystem is affected and how it recovers between a naturally burned out forest and clear cut forest. Clear cutting eliminates nearly all vegetation. It has to eliminate it because most of the time that land becomes farmland, neighborhoods, tree plantations, and other man-made objects. Much of the biological diversity that once lived there were either killed or injured by the clear cutting or were forced to move into another area of forest which then causes new issues such as overpopulation and starvation for certain species. The area that was clear cut in most cases will never be the same again, especially if it's used for man-made projects post cut, and at best would take several hundreds years for enough diversity of plant life to form back again in order to give shelter and food to thousands of other species, but still the damage is usually done and species rarely full return to that sort of habitat impact. Clear cutting a forest is an unnatural act and wipes out whole sections of forest from the ground up whereas a natural forest fire will typically skip around. It will burn sections of underbrush, a percentage of bushes and trees, and for the most part will leave the majority of that section of forest mostly in tact enough to recover relatively quickly. The makeup of the forest only changes from a natural fire in that new growth can now form beneath the canopy of the trees and in between the plants that survived the fire which then strengthens the forest moving forward. You don't have that in a clear cut forest. You have nothing.
Also there is more to an ecosystem recovering than just a few animals returning. If certain keystone species are killed in the process of the clear cutting and those areas are barren and not conducive to new flora growing, which in turn means a lack of fauna, then the ecosystem of that once living forest HAS changed and will be changed for a very long time, possible even forever. When a natural fire happens many of the species can relocate and then return to the forest at a much greater speed since a large % of the burned forest is still in tact and still has life. Biological diversity (biodiversity) is just that, the diversity of biological life. That diversity is fragile. A once thriving forest with a diverse biological neighborhood of life can easily be severely injured even when small changes occur. In the pacific northwest where I live you can have an entire section of forest diminish and struggle for years to come simply because a salmon run was blocked by human interference. The lack of salmon ends up affecting everything in that area along the river and even into the forest. From the soil, to the trees, to the predators that feed on them to the population of those same salmon that weren't able to lay eggs. Without one species as part of that diversity the whole will struggle. It's all connected. That's why you can't just say "biodiversity is biodiversity". It's more complex than that little anecdote. When a species is removed or killed or loses its habitat that they depended on it drastically changes the biodiversity in that region and in turn that region of habitat as a whole, and then ultimately us in many way. Whether it's clear cutting thousands of acres of forest, building a dam and diverting waterways, forcing the relocation of species due to human expansion, pollution, and so on, they all make a difference, and it's much more impactful and damaging in the long term than most natural disasters since the recovery is very different. I see these effects and these relationships nearly every day.
Just today I was on different branches of the Columbia River with my professor studying the habitats for salmon and trout and how it changes from the pacific ocean to these smaller tributaries. I've been out there several dozen times now and even the smallest changes make a big impact and most of those changes and challenges they face come from humans since many of those affects such as water chemistry, a lack of food, barriers, water temperatures, injury, pollution, and so on would not be a natural hinderance for them. A forest is no different. But you dont care.
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