🚀 go-pugleaf

taganov@unixg.ubc.ca (Robert Edgar Froese) writes in the context of a
discussion of Clayoquot Sound:

>In article <28016@mindlink.bc.ca> a4205@mindlink.bc.ca (L.J. Street) writes:
>>
>>2.  The OGTRF [old growth temperate rain forests] ecosystem is very 
>> complex and far from completely understood or even catalogued.
>______________
>Most would say this point is debatable.  Above ground local ecology is
>relatively well understood.  Above ground species composition is fairly well
>catalogued.

No. In fact, very little is known about OGTRF ecology, and Clayoquot Sound
ecology in particular. What possibly could have made you think otherwise?

Look at the study of the area's ecology commissioned by the Clayoquot Sound
Sustainable Development Strategy Steering Committee, "Clayoquot Sound: Life
Support Services and Natural Diversity", July 1991.  Regarding animal
species in the area, it states that no "baseline information" (inventory)
exists for most vertebrates and all invertebrates.  Regarding fungi: Fungal
diversity is presumed high in Clayoquot Sound, but there has been no
ecological inventory of fungi per se. Regarding soil organisms: "To date we
know almost nothing about their relative diversity in B.C., or of details
of their ecosystem functions" and "How much this diversity occurs *only*
within old forests is also essentially unknown" (pp. 69, 70). Regarding
subspecies diversity: It is particularly high in B.C., whose geography
isolates local subspecies, but diversity in Clayoquot Sound has not been
researched. The report makes just four recommendations -- all call for more
research.

L J Street is correct, particularly in the context of a Clayoquot Sound
discussion: The OGTRF ecosystem is very complex and far from completely
understood or even catalogued.

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>>4.  An OGTRF would take a very long time to return to it's original
>>state after clearcutting, if it ever would.
>_____________
>It depends.  If manged with expeditious return of all OG values as a
>priority it might not take that long, however forests are not yet managed
>that way and it may not be necessary to do so.  If the forests could come
>back after an ice age, I would believe it silly to say that they cannot come
>back after clearcutting.

Since we do not understand all OG values, we cannot presume to be able to
recreate a forest that represents them. Nor does it follow that because a
forest was created once (since the last ice age), it can be created again.
The forest is a complex system that evolved to its present state under a
particular set of conditions. We have no good understanding of either its
present state or the conditions that created it.

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   ...Art Pope, UBC Dept. of Computer Science