The month of October sees the boundaries of the Pacific Ocean push far beyond its shores. Every coastal British Columbian recognizes the seasonal dump of water from the Pacific, lifted through transpiration, which cascades onto the coastal rainforest. But, there's another part of the ocean currently surging hundreds of kilometers inland: Pacific salmon.
October's Pacific rains create prime spawning conditions for wild Pacific salmon. It's also a banner month for the towering trees of British Columbia's coastal temperate rainforests. However, you might be surprised that it's the salmon, not the rain, that make it such a great month for the trees.
This story of salmon, bears and trees illustrates the interconnected web of life, and has aptly spawned the name "The Pacific salmon forest".
Right now, millions of chum, …show more content…
Tom Reimchen of the University of Victoria, tracked uptake of nitrogen from salmon in coastal forests. They did this by following the nitrogen isotope 15, which is found almost exclusively in marine environments. It turns out that the great trees of coastal temperate rainforests—such as Douglas fir, Sitka spruce, western hemlock and western red cedar—owe a good deal of their girth to the tsunami of nutrients carried from the ocean by salmon, then into the forest by the bears. In rivers with robust salmon populations, Reimchen's team discovered peak years where individual Sitka spruce derived 80 per cent of their nitrogen from the isotope found in ocean-going salmon.
Just like there's more to the birds and the bees than what they do with flowers, there's much more to this story, too. Millions of insects also eat the leftover salmon, bolstering invertebrate populations, which in turn feed birds and other small forest creatures. Dr. Reimchen's team found insects with more than half their nitrogen coming from an ocean source, and a greater abundance and variety of both insects and plants near salmon bearing
October's Pacific rains create prime spawning conditions for wild Pacific salmon. It's also a banner month for the towering trees of British Columbia's coastal temperate rainforests. However, you might be surprised that it's the salmon, not the rain, that make it such a great month for the trees.
This story of salmon, bears and trees illustrates the interconnected web of life, and has aptly spawned the name "The Pacific salmon forest".
Right now, millions of chum, …show more content…
Tom Reimchen of the University of Victoria, tracked uptake of nitrogen from salmon in coastal forests. They did this by following the nitrogen isotope 15, which is found almost exclusively in marine environments. It turns out that the great trees of coastal temperate rainforests—such as Douglas fir, Sitka spruce, western hemlock and western red cedar—owe a good deal of their girth to the tsunami of nutrients carried from the ocean by salmon, then into the forest by the bears. In rivers with robust salmon populations, Reimchen's team discovered peak years where individual Sitka spruce derived 80 per cent of their nitrogen from the isotope found in ocean-going salmon.
Just like there's more to the birds and the bees than what they do with flowers, there's much more to this story, too. Millions of insects also eat the leftover salmon, bolstering invertebrate populations, which in turn feed birds and other small forest creatures. Dr. Reimchen's team found insects with more than half their nitrogen coming from an ocean source, and a greater abundance and variety of both insects and plants near salmon bearing