A Volcano Changes Everything

We focus a lot here on geology (this being a geology blog and all). But the thing I love about science is how you can start with one and end up visiting most of the rest as you explore. For instance: take the Mount St. Helens eruption. It’s a hell of a geology story, one which isn’t nearly finished – but that dramatic geologic moment caused a cascade of other events that have scientists of all stripes sitting up and taking notice.

It also has them saying, “Well, that was unexpected.”

For a look at why scientists are surprised at how the flora and fauna are recovering in the devastated area, and why insects may be a bigger player in the succession game than we’d considered before now, see Eric Sorensen’s fascinating article “A New Land” in Washington State Magazine. For one thing, you’ll learn a bit about why these beautiful little flowers are vitally important to forest recovery in a blast zone:

Lupine growing in the devastated area at Johnston Ridge Observatory.
Lupine growing in the devastated area at Johnston Ridge Observatory.

And why willows change everything. Well, lots of things. Volcanoes going ba-boom change a lot, too.

 

Originally published at Rosetta Stones.

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A Volcano Changes Everything
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4 thoughts on “A Volcano Changes Everything

  1. 1

    Just another demonstration that if left alone mother nature can given geologically significant time scales (more than a human lifetime) repair a lot. None of us will see it but likley in a couple of hundred years the area around Mt. St. Helens will look a lot like it did before the eruption. Partly we know this because the 1980 eruption was not the first of its type in the area. The forest around Mt. St. Helens before the 1980 eruption was in what was called a climax state. What we are seeing now is the first steps as life moves in and begins to get the conditions right for the climax species.
    Actually interestingly if you read about the end Permian extinction, which did a job on life This event killed off 57% of biological families and 85% of genera. It took about 10 million years for life to re-radiate to occupy the vacant ecological niches.
    So much of the issue today is will the human race survive, the biosphere has survived worse, and will survive the human race.

  2. 3

    I worked for Weyerhaeuser out of Centralia when Mt St Helens blew up, and did a small regeneration survey on their lands in the blast zone shortly after (not sure when, but I moved back east in April 1981, so within a year of the blast). I was amazed at how much stuff was already coming back. I was counting tree seedlings, and they were quite plentiful, considering what had happened less than a year before. It was an absolutely devastated landscape, but was already turning green.

  3. rq
    4

    I love lupine season here, just at the beginning of June – turns many of the fiels a lovely shade of blue-purple. And then one day I discovered that even wild lupines come in a wide variety of colours, like pink, yellow, white, blue and purple. Gorgeous!
    And insects are just awesome. They’ll outlast us all, that’s for sure.
    I’m utterly impressed by nature’s adaptability and ability to recover from great catastrophes – never exactly the same and with changes, but life, in the end, seems to be far more tenacious than not. Far more tenacious than just us humans, that’s for sure.

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