Canopy Soil Is an Exciting Frontier in Forest Science
High in the branches of the Pacific Northwest, entire ecosystems know nothing of the ground below.
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THE HALL OF MOSSES, A looped hiking trail in Washington State’s Hoh Rain Forest, is known for a kind of otherworldly lusciousness. Vibrant ferns line misty paths. The roots of centuries-old trees tangle around each other, forming miniature mazes. Most spectacularly, soft moss coats the towering Sitka spruce trees, drooping in fringed curtains from the branches. It’s awe-inspiring, but there’s more wonder in store. “When you look up, you see that beautiful green drapery,” says Korena Mafune, a soil ecologist based at the University of Washington in Seattle, “but the real secrets are what it holds underneath it.”
It’s impossible to tell from the ground, but on the branches, beneath the trailing moss, is a whole lot of dirt. This “engulfing mat of organic matter,” as Mafune calls it, is a soil formed from fallen leaves, airborne particulates, and moisture that accumulate in the nooks and crannies well off the forest floor. Built up over decades or centuries, this canopy soil provides a home for insects, fungi, birds, worms, and epiphytes, which are plants that grow on other plants—and much of this life never touches the ground. It’s an aerial ecosystem, a network of life that’s only possible in old-growth forests.
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The study of the canopy layer—the network of leaves and branches above the forest floor—is a relatively new science. Before the 1980s, scientists were largely focused on the forest floor. “I wish I’d interviewed an old forester in the year 1900 to say, ‘How come you’ve never thought about the whole tree?’” says “arbonaut” Margaret Lowman. “But it just never seemed to be part of the formula.”
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https://www.atlasobscura.com/article...ific-northwest