Quick question to a former forester: Old growth boreal forest is the climax stage of successional growth, right? If the old growth is cut they are not the first species to germinate, right?
Answer:
"Aw, yes, the old forester's debate... The general consensus being that there is no such thing as "climax" forest in the realm of "Successional growth". Even pure Spruce Lowlands or Spruce on shallow soils, which do, theoretically, "germinate and re-propagate" are subject to the lack of or advantage of fire. No fire? Spruce yields to Cedar on lowlands ( I saw this when I cruised the "reed tract" in 1979, Pickle Lake area, Pikangikum First Nation, now the KI - 5 genre...the last true economical tracts of Spruce before we enter the Tundra lowlands). Birch and rotten Poplar "succeed" Spruce, the so- called marker of Boreal Forests, on shallow soils. Spruce re-seeds after fire prone "old Growth" falls and creates pockets or large tracts that burn because of lightning strikes or smoking mining explorers ..."
"In other words, that hated agent (and CO adding activity) that burns down towns without miles of clearcuts around them, fire, is really "climax forest"."
"George Marek and I always hated that term because it assigned a terminology to an entity that, as human beings, implies death...and by god, we do not want to talk about dying, in the surreal mind of either the industrialist or the environmentalist."
"Did that help at all?"
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| The first summer of the rest of its life. |
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