The Voltage Gate

Walking through a streamside copse of eastern hemlock in the ancient Appalachians is revealing for several reasons. First, the sheer size and age of these virgin stands can be humbling - at 45+ meters high, one tree may have been alive for more than 600 years. Second, a closer look at the forest's composition can tell ecologists two things: By assessing the pollen contained within pond sediment, you learn that these hemlocks started repopulating the eastern US about 12,000 years ago, following in the "footsteps" of the maple genus (Acer spp.) after the retreat of the massive glaciers covering most of the United States. We also learn that eastern hemlocks tend to hug water sources, giving way to deciduous trees as the incline of the valley steepens. Mixed forests like these are principle in most of the Appalachian mountains.

But the Appalachian mixed forest is only one small ecoregion in a much larger biome, the temperate forests. Named for relatively mild temperatures and moderate annual precipitation, they stretch across the globe between 30 and 40 50 degrees latitude, from the Gondwanaland throwback Valdivian forests of Argentina and Chile (they resemble forests in New Zealand and Australia), to the home of the pandas, the Hengduan Shan in China.

Temperate forests vary greatly in the amount of rain they receive, anywhere from 650 mm 3,000 mm. On the high end of the scale are regions like the Pacific northwest, where redwoods and sequoias live in what is sometimes classified as a temperate rainforest due to the high levels of precipitation, mid range for a tropical rainforest. They're seasonal. Deciduous (and one or two conifers like the larch) drop their leaves during the winter to conserve energy.

The soils of temperate forests are typically fertile, but their specific properties depend on the composition of the forest. In deciduous dominated forests (oak-hickory, beech-maple, etc.), nutrients cycle quickly, creating a substrate rich in organics. Soils in coniferous dominated forests are much more acidic and nutrient cycling tends to be more conservative.

Fire is important to nutrient cycling and population regulation. Many conifers have specially adapted thick bark to ward off the effects of fire and the cones of some species, the "fire-climax" pines like the pond pine or the Monterey pine, often depend on the touch of flame to open.

Like the tropical rainforest, temperates are vertically stratified, with organisms living and growing in the canopy, a shorter layer of mature trees below, the shrub layer and, of course, the understory, where nematodes, fungi and bacteria break down the thick mat of leaf litter into organically rich soil. Light is relatively abundant in the forest understory, allowing ferns and herbaceous plants to thrive. Mosses and lichens cover tree trunks and rock in the more moist portions of the forest.

Vertebrate life is equally diverse. In China, the red panda and the giant panda live in the same general area and subsist on the same food - bamboo - without being in direct competition. They fill very specific niches, however, predominantly eating different parts of the plant and browse slightly different regions. White-tailed deer, grouse, bobcats and black bear dominate the Appalachian forest. In eastern Russia the and leopard, both highly endangered, found refuge in Manchuria, which the last ice age left untouched by glaciers.

Humans have affected temperate forests more than any other biome due to the habitability, fertility and resource richness of these areas. Forest covered most of the eastern US and western Europe until civilizations moved in to urbanize.

Next time: Taiga

This post is part of a series of Basic Concepts: Ecology (Intro, Biomes I, II, III, IV, V, VI). For the entire list of Basic Concepts in Science, visit Evolving Thoughts.