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A NEW WORLD Mount. St. Helens Pathways Spring '98 by Stacy Hall Environmental Science Professor Edward Rykiel is trying to put together a complex puzzle that may take years if not decades to solve. The WSU Tri-Cities professor is studying the ability of nature to heal itself. Rykiel has spent the last four years researching what is known as the Pumice Plain at Mount St. Helens. Before the eruption on May 18, 1980, the Pumice Plain area was a dense silver fir forest on the banks of Spirit Lake. Now it is an area as large as the city of Pullman covered with up to 30 meters of pumice, a rock that can float and is similar to blown glass. During the eruption, a landslide wiped out the forest sending it literally under Spirit Lake. Then lava at 600 degrees centigrade and infused with gasses flowed over the lost forest creating the Pumice Plain. Rykiel wants to know if the Pumice Plain is capable of ecological recovery without the help of man. "I want to understand how much humans have to do at the site of a catastrophic disturbance before nature restores itself," says Rykiel. "We don't have a good answer to that right now." The Pumice Plain entices Rykiel because of its uniqueness. Very few areas on earth exist where there is no ecological legacy at all. The super heated lava from Mount St. Helens destroyed all living things in its path. "One of the things we're looking at is the theory in ecology of primary succession," Rykiel says. "Primary succession illustrates how ecosystems develop when there is no legacy on the site and everything has to come from the outside," says Rykiel. "The Pumice Plain is a site where there has been deliberate effort to allow it to recover naturally so we have a reference point to use in terms of ecological restoration." Rykiel's research includes looking at what role nutrients, nitrogen, animals and man play in the recovery of an ecosystem. "In terms of application, it gives us information about what nutrient levels are required and how animals will effect recovery which most ecological recovery projects totally ignore." The Pumice Plain is still a desolate landscape to the casual observer. But a closer look will reveal to the observer blue flowers called lupines, several species of trees, and other vegetation. The wintergreen or alpine lupine was the first sign of life on the Pumice Plain two and a half years after the eruption. No one knows how the lupine seeds got there. "The system can only develop by things falling out of the sky or being transported to the site by animals," says Rykiel. He suspects a bird dropped the seeds. Last summer Rykiel did a survey of trees on the Pumice Plain. He found five species of conifers. While none of the trees is very big Rykiel says there is a potential for about 20,000 to 40,000 conifer seedlings scattered on the Pumice Plane. "Our natural inclination is when there's a natural disturbance we rush in to fix it and we don't let nature take its course," Rykiel says. "Do we have to make a big investment in time, money and people to restore a site or is it naturally going to recover on its own if we're just patient?" Patience and time are what it will take for Rykiel to solve this complex puzzle. |
