Saturday, September 11, 2010

Maquipucuna

As we step off the bus overlooking the Maquipucuna Cloud Forest our professor explains why it is named as such. He describes that the forest has the ability to extract the water from the clouds that remain at tree level. I thought I pretty much understood the concept but will never forget my observations of it while walking through the forest. Along the trails it was obvious that plenty of water was around. A hand placed on a leaf or on a tree would return damp with water. By my second day in this environment I couldn’t help but feel like the forest was treating me as it would a cloud. It hurt to smell the many different scents of plants and animals because my nose was so dry. My skin was begging for hydration, And no matter how much water I drank or how much I was surrounded by it I felt like it was constantly in a negative flow from my body.
This being my first real experience in a rainforest I was completely overwhelmed by the complexity of biodiversity. My eyes were on overload. The quantity of life I could not compare to anything I have ever experienced. There was almost no section of the forest unoccupied by some form of life. And the quantity of life which grew on other plants, epiphytes, blew my mind. In Alaska I am surrounded by huge expanses of green and water, but when I compare it to the green of the rainforest time and again I am thrown back by the simplicity of Alaska. This observation made me philosophize about the importance of numbers. Ecuador without a doubt holds the gold medal for biodiversity and if all we are worried about are numbers why shouldn’t oil companies plow over Alaska and extract every last drop of oil? Having said this I still value the Alaskan forests the same. Although I can count the different shades of green without the use of my toes I feel the forest plays its own equally important role. It will be important to explore exactly what role it plays and the importance of this role in order to preserve forests around the world lacking in biodiversity compared to the tropical rainforests.
As I mentioned earlier the amount of epiphytes was mind blowing in this type of forest. Epiphytes make their home on other plant forms such as trees, vines, and roots. The difference between a epiphyte and a parasite is the fact that an epiphyte does not take anything from the host plant. It merely uses it as a place to reside. On this trip we divided into smaller groups that way each group could look closer at a certain aspect of the montane forest. The group looking at epiphytes found that they grew on almost every type of tree present in the forest although it seemed they had more difficulty growing on trees with smooth surfaces. One could look in any direction and count hundreds of epiphytes. Up until this point I couldn’t fathom how this relationship worked, but it was obvious by the number of them present that it indeed was a successful relationship.
My group had the privilege of looking at the soil of this forest. After looking at the soil that all these different plants live on I developed an even greater respect for the montane forest. The amount of fertile soil is very very low. I was surprised that anything could really grow on it. The layers are divided up into several layers. The first layer is the leaf litter, about two inches. This relatively low amount of leaf litter can be linked back to the high rates of decomposition. Next came a layer of thin roots which acted as a net for holding in the next layer. The layer of ‘fertile soil’ was anywhere from 6 to 8 inches. Below this layer was a clay like substance. This layer is almost impossible to grow things on. We learned that when agriculture is put on this land it rids the soil of the root layer holding the fertile soil in making it almost impossible to grow anything after the agriculture is pulled out.