Talking in the Forest

Nature, New Attitude to Nature

The first day in the forest of British Columbian, when she started her research, Suzanne Simard, a mother grizzly bear and her cub chased her off the job. But she persevered and eventually completed her research. She put on her respirator, and then put plastic bags over her trees to isolate them above ground.  With her giant syringes she injected the bags with her tracer isotope carbon dioxide gases. First, she did that to the birch. She injected carbon-14, the radioactive gas, into the bag of birch. And then for fir, she injected the stable isotope carbon-13 carbon dioxide gas. She used two isotopes, because she wanted to know if there was two-way “communication” going on between these species of trees. She wanted to identify the source of the isotopes. She waited an hour because she estimated that this would be enough time for the trees to suck up the CO2 through photosynthesis, turn it into sugars, send it down into their roots. In fact, she hypothesized that the trees would transport the carbon belowground to their neighbors.

 

When the hour was up, she moved her Geiger counter over the leaves and heard the perfect sound—Kkhh—that indicated to here that in fact the birch had taken up the radioactive gas. Then she moved to the fir tree to see what she would hear there. She heard what to her was a beautiful sound, namely,  the same Kkhh! She interpreted this as the sound of the birch tree “talking” to the fir tree.  In fact, she interpreted that to mean that the birch was in effect asking the fir tree if it could help it out and the birch “replied” that in fact it could help. Specifically, Simard theorized that the fir was asking for carbon because Simard had placed a shade cloth over it.

 

This of course is where the sceptic could ask what the justification was for making these conjectures?  Was there a better or simpler explanation for the movement of carbon?  Was her conclusion a leap of faith instead of an inevitable scientific conclusion based on the available data?  I am not so sure, though I find her conjectures deeply intriguing.

 

After that she examined the cedar and speculated it was silent. The Cedar was in fact in its own world and was not connected to the “Web interlinking birch and fir.” Was there such a web, or was this wishful thinking?

 

Simard thought the data was clear and irrefutable.  In each of her 80 plots she checked all the replicates. The C-13 and C-14 was showing that “paper birch and Douglas fir were in a lively two-way conversation.”

 

She claimed that the data showed that at that time of the summer, the birch was sending more carbon to the fir tree than the fir tree was sending back to birch and that this was particularly evident when the fir was shaded. At other times of the summer, she discovered that fir was sending more carbon to birch than birch was sending to fir. She speculated that this was as result of the fact that the fir tree was still growing while the birch was leafless. According to Simard, “The two species were interdependent, like yin and yang.”

 

That led Simard to an epiphany—a Eureka moment.  She believed she had made a major discovery that would change forever how scientists look at trees in a forest and how they interact in it. Trees are “not just competitors but…cooperators.”  If that is true, that is a revolution in science.  She believes that she found solid scientific data that proved there is “a massive belowground communications network, the other world.”

 

Simard hopes that with new understanding of forests there will come a new way for humans to interact with forest. She really hopes that instead of clear-cutting and instead of applying herbicides we will employ what she called more holistic and sustainable methods. These methods will also be more practical and less costly.

 

She explained how she viewed her science in relation to these issues.  She used science to determine how paper birch and Douglas fir were communicating? According to her research, they were conversing not only in the language of carbon but also nitrogen and phosphorus and water and defense signals and allele chemicals and hormones.  All of this she refers to as “information”.

 

Hard to believe, but…

Maybe forests are more interesting than we ever thought. In fact, maybe nature is ever more interesting than we thought it was.

How Trees in a forest Communicate with Each Other?

Nature, New Attitude to Nature, Plants

 

I have been thinking a lot about forests lately. Forests are endlessly fascinating. If you are tired of forests, you are tired of life. I also says that about orchids.

 

“A forest is much more than what you see,” says forest ecologist Suzanne Simard. Her 30 years of research in Canadian forests have led to an astounding discovery — trees talk, often and over vast distances. I listened to a Ted Talk that she gave at Banff, Alberta in 2016.  It was extremely interesting. After listening to her I thought about forests in entirely new ways.  I had a new attitude to nature.

 

She said that forests are not just a collection of trees, as we tend to think of them. That is certainly how foresters and loggers think of them. They use the expression “stand.” According to Simard, “Yes, trees are the foundation of forests, but a forest is much more than what you see.”

 

Forests are complex systems.  What you see above ground is just a part of that system. As Simard pointed out, “underground there is this other world, a world of infinite biological pathways that connect trees and allow them to communicate and allow the forest to behave as though it’s a single organism. It might remind you of a sort of intelligence.” This is a shocking way to think about forests.  It goes entirely against a long history of forestry science.  It is a rebellious way to think about forests.

When Simard’s dog fell into her outhouse and she and her grandfather tried to rescue it, she began to realize that there was a lot beneath the surface and that science had not paid sufficient attention to this subterranean world.  She saw “that palette of roots and soils was really the foundation of the forest.”

 

As a result of her epiphany she studied forestry at university. That she worked with those who were literally battling the forests. They were in a war against the forests and the forests were losing. She was alarmed by the extensive clear-cutting, but also the spraying of chemicals as part of this military engagement and the hacking, as she called it, of aspens and birches to make room for more commercially valuable planted pines and firs. This disturbed her greatly. “It seemed that nothing could stop this relentless industrial machine.”

 

She went back to school and studied some more.  There she noticed that scientists in the laboratory had discovered that one pine seedling root could transmit carbon to another pine seedling root. She wondered if that could be observed in a real world forest. She believed that “ Trees in real forests might also share information below ground.” This was extremely controversial.  Many scientists did not accept that trees could “communicate.”  This was to them an entirely foreign concept. It was anthropomorphizing forests like Jane Goodall had been anthropomorphizing chimpanzees. Scientists have also said that they must resist that temptation. As a result, she had trouble getting funding for her proposed research projects.

 

Eventually she got some funding, but it meant the research would have to be done on the cheap. She wanted to do her research in the forests. She grew 80 replicates of three tree species: Paper birch, Douglas fir, and western red cedar.

 

Simard surmised that the birch and the fir would be connected in a below ground web, but not the cedar. It was in its own other world.  She got her scientific apparatus, many supplies and tools from Canadian Tire. But she also secured some sophisticated equipment from her university, including  a Geiger counter, a scintillation counter, a mass spectrometer, microscopes. After that she actually got some really dangerous stuff: syringes full of radioactive carbon-14 carbon dioxide gas and some high pressure bottles of the stable isotope carbon-13 carbon dioxide gas. She had obtained the legal right to do that for her research, but she had to be careful.

 

Her research revealed some fascinating stuff. I will talk about that next time.

 

Mothers of the Forest

Books, Environment, Indigenous Religion and Philosophy, New Attitude to Nature

 

When Suzanne Simard was a very young forester she learned from experience that the way foresters were reforesting forests was not working very well.

 

She noticed that after cutting most trees in a swath of trees they replanted selected trees. They did not want to plant trees that they thought might compete with the trees that were “useful.” They also did not leave many tries behind. It was basically a clear cut. When she questioned this approach, the senior forester she worked with asked, “are you an environmentalist?”

 

She had grown up with loggers but they usually did not cut everything. It did not seem right. In time she learned that it wasn’t smart either.

 

She noticed it first as a young forested and the knowledge was later reinforced when she studied the science of forests.  The underground connection between species in the forest consisting of underground mycorrhizal networks. These are networks that connect fungi under the ground to the roots of trees also under the ground. These allowed nutrients and water to be transported between species under the ground invisible except to scientists. The fungus delivers nutrients from old trees to seedlings. Cutting this link was devastating for forest renewal. The old trees could afford to do this because they had plenty to give.

 

As Simard found, “young trees got their start in in the shadow of old trees by linking into their vast mycelium [part of the fungal network under the ground] and receiving substances in return until they could build enough needles and roots to make it on their own…The seedlings in this forest were regenerating in this network of old trees.”

 

This was no accident and it explained why seedlings did best when they were not cut-off from the mature trees that were not just competing with them. They were actually helping the younger trees. As Simard said,

 

“A below ground network could explain why seedlings could survive for years, even decades in the shadows. Those old growth forests were able to self-regenerate because the parents helped the young get on their own two feet. Eventually the young ones would take over the tree line and reach out to others requiring a boost.”

 

I know to many this may sound fantastical.  If you think that you won’t be alone. I am not sure how valid her science is, but she has received a lot attention. And she has credentials.  To me what is most important about her work is that it announces a new attitude to nature, which I firmly believe is badly needed. I have even given a name to this philosophy. I call it affinity. Miriam Webster’s Dictionary defines affinity as sympathy marked by a community of interest. The dictionary uses the example of “she felt an affinity to him because of their common musical interest.”  I would say, a community of interest, like a forest. Like kinship.

 

The Forest is a Socialist Community

Affinity, Books, Environment, Nature, Plants, World of ideas

 

Professor Suzanne Simard of the University of British Columbia has become a bit of a celebrity as a result of the best-selling book she wrote about forest communities and in particular the Mother Tree. Her book was called Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forrest. The popular television show Ted Lasso had a character say on that show: You know we used to believe trees competed with each other for light.  Suzanne’s field work challenged that perception and we now realize that the forest is socialist community. Trees work in harmony to share the sunlight.” Believe it or not trees share! Go figure.

 

Simard says that her research into trees has shown trees are able to transmit information about potential disease and pest threats to the other trees through a network of underground fungal root systems that allow trees to share carbon, water, and other nutrients. Added to that, even more surprisingly,  they share information.

 

She has been working in Douglas fir forests near Kamloops B.C.

 

The actual descripitons of some of her scientific experiments are quite interesting. You will have to read the book to get the information. As a result of her research, she was able to produce a map showing trees are connected through underground fungal roots systems. Simard found forests are communities and mother trees are their lifeblood. As she explained,

“They’re actually like societies. They have these deep relationships with each other, the trees do, and with all the other creatures in the forest. It’s like this big interrelated community and there are all kinds of sophisticated ways that they communicate and interact with each other.”

 

The researchers found,

 

“What we found in connecting this map is that pretty much all of the trees were connected together. They had multiple linkages with each other and what emerged from map is the biggest oldest trees were the most highly connected. That’s why we started calling it the mother tree, because all of this convergence of information led us to realize that these really old trees were really essential. They’re like the nucleus of the forest in regenerating the forest.”

 

This goes to give further evidence that what all the world’s major religions have been saying for centuries is true, namely that we are all connected. All life is connected. We are all kin.

 

The Mother Tree Project

Affinity, Books, Indigenous Religion and Philosophy, Nature, New Attitude to Nature, Science

 

In 2015 Suzanne Simard began to apply her scientific research findings to the practice of forestry.  She wanted to know if her theories will work in practice. She wanted to reverse the current forestry practice of “free to grow” that was based on the assumption Simard believes is wrong, namely that the best way to regenerate a forest is to keep out the competitors and make the desired trees “free to grow.” She wants foresters to acknowledge that the system they used for decades is not the best. There is a better way.

 

The better way she proposes she calls the Mother Tree Project. It recognizes that trees thrives best when they are connected to the other organisms in the ecosystem, not when they are isolated.  As she said, “the guiding principle of retaining Mother Trees and remaining connections within forests to keep them regenerative, especially as the climate changes.”

 

Simard recognizes that this cooperative and communitarian approach will be needed as forest are subjected to increasing pressures and stresses such a climate change, drought, insect infestation and the like. Simard is confident “Free to Grow” will not work as well as her approach. It has the added benefit of expanding biodiversity.

 

The Project consists of 9 experimental forests located across a “climate rainbow” in British Columbia, for hot and dry forests in the southeast corner to cold and wet stands in the north central interior of the province. Her team of researchers is examining how the structures and functions of the forests and the webs of relationships that play out in them in the real environment will work with the new practices and procedures she endorses. She is confident substantial improvements in forest regeneration will be the result.

 

Then she wants to establish what she calls “an emergent philosophy: complex science.” This new science will be

 

Based on embracing collaboration in addition to competition—indeed, working with all of the multifarious interactions that the forest—complexity science can transform forest practices into what is adaptive and holistic and away from what has been overly authoritarian and simplistic.

 

We can change our ways. We can do better. Our disconnectedness has been the problem. That is where we must make the fundamental changes.  What I have been called a “new attitude to nature.” This disconnectedness is not just causing problems in the forest. It causes problems everywhere. It drives our despair. It defines our alienation. We have to understand the amazing qualities of nature. As she said, it is causing huge problems with our relationship to plants in particular. Like me she is a plant guy. Instead,

 

 “by understanding their sentient qualities, our empathy and love for trees, plants and forests, will naturally deepen and find innovative solutions. Turning to the intelligence of nature itself is the key.”

 

That is the way to discover the wisdom of the forest and that is the way to learn that wisdom.

 

Transformative Thinking

Affinity, Books, Indigenous Religion and Philosophy, New Attitude to Nature, World of ideas

 

 

These two  principles that Suzanne Simard explained she got from the Secwepemc and Salish people are fundamentally the same as similar principles of various North American indigenous groups.   Simard endorses them (as do I).  As Simard opined:

 

“I believe this kind of transformative thinking is what will save us. It is a philosophy of treating the world’s creatures, its gifts, as of equal  importance to us. This begins by recognizing that the trees and plants have agency. They perceive, relate, and communicate: they exercise various behaviors. They cooperate, make decisions, and remember—qualities we normally ascribe to sentience, wisdom, intelligence. By noting how trees, animals, and even fungi—any and all non-human species—have this agency, we can acknowledge that they deserve as much regard as we according ourselves.  We can continue pushing our earth out of balance, with greenhouse gases accelerating each year, or we can regain balance by acknowledging that if we harm, one species, one forest one lake, this ripples through the entire complex web. Mistreatment of one species is mistreatment of all.”

 

It is fascinating and vitally important to realize that these indigenous principles are exactly what Simard’s scientific research leads her to. Simard believes that her  scientific research proves the truth of traditional knowledge. As she said, “the rest of the planet has been waiting patiently for us to figure that out.”

As Simard said,

“Making this transformation requires that humans reconnect with nature—the forests, the prairie, the oceans—instead of treating everything and everyone as objects for exploitation. It means expanding our modern ways, our epistemology, and scientific methodologies, so that they complement, build on, and align with Aboriginal roots. Mowing down the forests and harvesting the waters to fulfill our wildest dreams of material wealth just because we can has caught up with us.”

 

If Simard is right, and she has significant scientific research that points in this direction, it is truly transformative. It would be part of a new attitude to nature. If adopted, it could change the world. Sometimes we need a revolution in our thinking.

Tree People

Affinity, Books, Indigenous Religion and Philosophy, Nature, New Attitude to Nature, Plants

 

Suzanne Simard understands the importance of logging in British Columbia. She comes from a long line of loggers. Her scientific knowledge has revealed to her that current practices of loggers and their forestry facilitators and their conventional approaches that ignore the importance of connections in the forests between members of the forest communities is not the best.  Hopefully, Simard with her scientific knowledge of forestry and trees, together with the local indigenous people, and their traditional knowledge, that is coming closer together, can teach the British Columbian officials that there is a better way. It is an ancient way practiced by indigenous people in the area for many generations.  It is based on a different attitude to nature that recognizes the importance of the connections in the rainforest between the myriad organisms that live there.

 

Simard’s logging ancestors understood how important logging was to the people who lived there, but they must learn to understand that trees are more than a resource to be exploited. Logging can be a renewable resource, but it requires a respectful attitude to the creatures that occupy the forest ecosystems. Simply seeing forests as a resource is not good enough.

 

Simard learned from an indigenous person named Subiyay who talked of

 

“the trees as people.  Not only with a sort of intelligence—akin to us humans—or even spiritual quality perhaps not unlike ours. Not merely as equivalent to people, with the same bearings.

 

They are people.

The tree people.

           

I don’t presume to grasp Aboriginal knowledge fully. It comes from a way of knowing the earth—an epistemology—different from that of my own culture. It speaks of being attuned to the blooming of the bitterroot, the running of the salmon, the cycles of the moon. Of knowing that we are tied to the land—the trees and animals and soil and water—and to one another, and that we have a responsibility to care for these connections and resources, ensuring sustainability of these ecosystems for future generations and to honor those who came before. Of treading lightly, taking only what gifts we need, and giving back. Of showing humility toward and tolerance for all we are connected too in this circle of life. But what my years in the forestry profession have also shown me is that too many decision-makers dismiss this way of viewing nature and rely only on select parts of science. The impact has become too devastating to ignore. We can compare the condition of the land where it has been torn apart, each resource treated in isolation from the rest, to where it has been cared for according to the Secwepemc principal of k’wseltktnews (translated as “we are all related” or the Salish concept of neca?mat ct (“we are one”).”

 

It was very interesting to me that the scientific knowledge Simard had acquired and the knowledge gained by Indigenous people of the forest through living there for millennia had come to such amazingly similar conclusions—namely that we are all connected.

Connecting Ocean to Continent

Books, Environment, Indigenous Religion and Philosophy, Nature, New Attitude to Nature, Plants

 

The key to the scientific research of Suzanne Simard relates to mycorrhizal fungi which are are beneficial soil fungi that form a symbiotic relationship with over 90% of plant species. That means both get something from the other.  It is a beneficial relationship for both. The fungi ins the soil act as an extension of the root system to improve the forest plant’s nutrient and water uptake. These fungi, or mycorrhizae (“fungus-root”), create underground networks that supply plants with phosphorus and water, while receiving in return carbohydrates (sugars) in return that they are unable to create well. This network is her prime research subject.

 

 

Suzanne Simard’s research is far from over. She continues to try to figure out how forest communities operate. So far, her team’s research has shown that the mycorrhizal fungal communities which they detected underneath the ground in the temperate rainforests of British Columbia differ depending on the number of salmon that were returning to their natal streams. They still don’t know exactly how far into the forest those networks transport salmon that returned to those natal streams, but they do know those networks transport nitrogen from the carcasses of salmon that did return to their natal stream to the surrounding land around those streams.

 

As a result, the team searched for the bones of salmon that had been carried into the forest by bears, wolves, and eagles. The bones were all that were left of those carcasses once these creatures were finished dining on salmon. As Simard, said, in her book Fidning the Motehr Tree, “The bones were all that were left once the flesh was eaten and the residual tissue decayed, nutrients seeping into the forest floor.”

 

They are trying to determine how the restoration of stone traps which the indigenous people were forced to abandon by successive Canadian governments affects the transportation of nitrogen from the ocean to inland. For example they would like to know the extent to which the spawning salmon feed the cedars, birches, and spruces for thousands of miles inland along the shores of those rivers. As a result of research already completed, they know that “Salmon in this way [are] connecting the ocean with the continent

 

Simard acknowledges that indigenous people of the area, including the Secwepemc “knew how vital salmon was to the interior forests, and to their livelihoods and they’d cared for the populations according to far-reaching principles of interconnectedness.” In other words, the indigenous understood as the European colonialists did not, that interconnection was crucial to the health of everything that lived in those coastal temperate rainforests.

 

It was a pity that those colonial powers failed to appreciate that the indigenous people had learned a lot about the land they occupied during their thousands of years of occupation.  Had the colonial powers recognized that and not assumed that the Europeans had superior knowledge, those communities would not have been devastated as they were. This was just one more example of how presumed European superiority was a deadly unfortunate illness that affected everything in the forest. It could have been so much better.

 

This was a fundamental error that has been perpetuated ever since. Hopefully scientists like Suzanne Simard and her fellow researchers will be able to teach the current Canadian forestry authorities that the indigenous people know a thing or two about their forests and they would do well to listen to the wisdom of the people who live there and will not always assume that they know better. The Canadian authorities need a new attitude to nature and that attitude can be obtained from their indigenous partners in the temperate rainforest.