Obsession with Biodiversity is overshadowing loss of Bioabundance

Photo by Tibor Nagy 2014

 "...Even predators as small as spiders can have considerable impacts on not only plant diversity, but ecosystem processes as well..." May 7, 2017

This little guy in the upper lefthand corner is a Pisaurina mira nursery web spider. As you know, spiders prey on insects for their food and grasshoppers are part of that diet. Given their choice of various plants for food, grasshoppers will preferentially feed on some plants more than others. These researchers found that grasshoppers prefer to eat grasses, but when these nursery web spiders are present, they will switch to another field and change their diet to other plants like Goldenrods. The Goldenrod often dominate an area where they grow, but in the presence of invading hungry grasshoppers who start munching on these plants, they chew holes and open up their monoculture canopy, which allows other plants an opportunity to thrive there as well. So apparently spiders do play an important role in the biodiversity of many plant ecosystems. An article on this was published by the In Defense of Plants journal below.

"How Spiders Increase Plant Diversity"

Image - InDefenseofPlants.com

"It's the shift in diet itself that has ramifications throughout the entire ecosystem in question. Many goldenrod species are highly competitive when left to their own devices. If left untouched, abandoned fields can quickly become a monoculture of goldenrod. That is where the spiders come in. By causing a behavioral shift in their grasshopper prey, the spiders are having indirect effects on plant diversity in these habitats. Because grasshoppers spend more time feeding on goldenrods in the presence of spiders, they knock back some of the competitive advantages of these plants.   

The researchers found that when spiders were present, overall plant diversity increased. This is not because the spiders ate more grasshoppers. Instead, it's because the grasshoppers shifted to a diet of goldenrod, which knocked the goldenrod back just enough to allow other plants to establish. It's not just plant diversity that changed either. Spiders also caused an increase in both solar radiation and nitrogen reaching the soils!   

In knocking back the goldenrod, the habitat became slightly more open and patchy as various plant species of different shapes and sizes gradually established. This allowed more light to reach the soil, thus changing the environment for new seeds to germinate. Also, because goldenrod leaves tend to break down more slowly, they can have significant influences on nutrient cycles within the soil. As a more diverse set of plants establish in these field habitats, the type of leaf litter that falls to the ground changes as well. This resulted in an overall increase in the nitrogen supply to the soil, which also influences plant diversity.   

In total, the mere presence of spiders was enough to set in motion these top-down ecosystem effects. It's not that spiders eat more grasshoppers, it's that they are changing the behavior of grasshoppers in a way that results in a more diverse plant community overall. This is a radically different narrative than what has been observed with examples such as the reintroduction of wolves to the greater Yellowstone ecosystem yet the conclusions are very much the same. Predators have innumerable ecosystem benefits that we simply can't afford to ignore."

(Source)

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Great News for Biodiversity right ? 😍 Well not so fast! 😬

Three days later after I read that wonderful article from the folks at "In Defense of Plants," who wrote about how these fascinating  insect mechanism interactions which set off change reactions of events which leads to healthier biodiversity within plant community ecosystems, "Science Magazine," then comes out three days later with an article I had seen elsewhere about insect numbers disappearing. Now pay close attention, this was not about extinction, but population numbers dropping dramatically. This is something I've seriously wondered about with regards not only insects, but many lifeforms and even touched on this very subject once before in this post here where I noticed insect disappearances in my mother's yard where we do not used ANY harsh chemical pesticdes of any kind, including synthetic fertilizers. One outstanding strange thing that is now obvious is the total absence of the native red harvester ants in her backyard which is a third of an acre. Since I can remember as a kid since 1961, we always had 15 or 20 red harvester ant colonies for which my folks always tried to spray and eradicate with never any success. Prior to leaving the USA and moving here to Sweden in May 2006, there were only two actual colonies that I knew of. It caught my attention then and I went around and counted. Now there are none. There are also none across the street where there has always been a very wide dirt strip. Even up on Rattlesnake mountain at the end of the street I found none, only black harvester ants. But I also notived that the sow or pill bugs were very limited and even earwigs were gone. Again, we never spray with the synthetics:

Extinction Phenomena: Should We be looking under Boards and Rocks too ?

There are also other loss of living lifeforms I've wondered about over the last few years like mycorrhizal fungi. Many would think the microbiological world is safely tucked away in a hidden darkness and in numbers so incomprehensible that it would make it impossible for the microbiome to be harmed. Really ??? I also wrote another piece about the disappearance of a certain specific mycorrhizal fungi truffles I use to collect in and around Anza California where I use to live. For two decades every Spring  & Summer (after the first arrival of monsonnal thunderstorms) I would collect mature truffles for their spores to inoculate plants I grew on my acreage and restoration projects I involved myself with locally. Suddenly in 2001 I could no longer find them. I had also previously begun to notice pine and oak trees dying off in the same location before the fungi truffle disappearance. Now large numbers of those pines are gone except for a few and the oaks that still remain are sickly or dead, even Scrub Oaks. So I wrote about that experience as well:

What happens to Earth's Mycorrhizal Community when their Hosts fail above ground ?           

The two articles below is a bit more spooky. This has happened over time, but so slowly that most people "take no note." Wow, where have we heard that before ? This scenario reminds me of the story about the frog put in a pan of water where a low fire is slowly heating up the water. By the time the frog realizes what has happened it's too late. His goose is cooked. That's about where we are now and that is what the researchers are finding in the article below. It's not so much lack of biodiversity or extinction, but a huge loss of bioabundance.

Update - August 26, 2017

‘The windscreen phenomenon’ - why your car is no longer covered in dead insects 

photo By Amanda Thomas  (2005)

In the days gone by decades ago, normal windshileds (or windscreens) would have often appeared as the photo above. It require frequent stops (when bad enough) to use the window cleaning services at the closest petrol stop.

Photo By Paul Henderson (2013)

Yoday that has all changed. This photo above is becoming more common. The update above from Canada and Britain is interesting, but they are tending to blame more cars on the roads. Folks, there is more going on than more cars on the roads as the post below informs us. But it's an interesting read anyway.

PAUL VAN HOOF/MINDEN PICTURES

JEF MEUL/NIS/MINDEN Pictures/National Geographic Creative

Fireflies, like these shown above in a forest in the Netherlands, have disappeared from some areas in North America and Europe where they were once abundant. The photograph to the right shows Hover flies, which are often mistaken for bees or wasps, are important pollinators. Their numbers have also plummeted in the nature reserves of Germany. Now take very special note here, I said Nature Reserves, not urban landscapes or rural agricultural areas where you would expect such a scenario to be the cause. Sounds like designating something a National Monument is a wasted endeavour which only serves to sugar coat and smokescreen to the public that all is well in the world when all is not well. With all the angry eco-protest marches happening everywhere, we are forced to swallow a sort of religous blind faith-based chant which goes like, "There is peace, there is peace, when they is no peace." The article below starts off by telling a story of the good'ol days when you drove your car and masses of bugs covered the bumper, grill and especially windscreen (shield) of your automobile. For me the worst place for buggageddon was always driving down into the Imperial Valley's industrial agricultural landscape. The insaneness of having to periodically stop at a gas station and cleaning my windscreen a couple of times before I even arrived at my ultimate destination of El Centro was annoying. But now many have noticed the lack of bugs on the windscreen and so have I the last couple of times we have gone through there. So what gives ? What's changed ? That's the whole point of this article.

Where Have All the Insects Gone ? 

Of the scant records that do exist, many come from amateur naturalists, whether butterfly collectors or bird watchers. Now, a new set of long-term data is coming to light, this time from a dedicated group of mostly amateur entomologists who have tracked insect abundance at more than 100 nature reserves in western Europe since the 1980s.     

Over that time the group, the Krefeld Entomological Society, has seen the yearly insect catches fluctuate, as expected. But in 2013 they spotted something alarming. When they returned to one of their earliest trapping sites from 1989, the total mass of their catch had fallen by nearly 80%. Perhaps it was a particularly bad year, they thought, so they set up the traps again in 2014. The numbers were just as low. Through more direct comparisons, the group—which had preserved thousands of samples over 3 decades—found dramatic declines across more than a dozen other sites.

Many losses reverberate up the food chain. "If you're an insect-eating bird living in that area, four-fifths of your food is gone in the last quarter-century, which is staggering," says Dave Goulson, an ecologist at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom, who is working with the Krefeld group to analyze and publish some of the data. "One almost hopes that it's not representative—that it's some strange artifact."   

No one knows how broadly representative the data are of trends elsewhere. But the specificity of the observations offers a unique window into the state of some of the planet's less appreciated species. Germany's "Red List" of endangered insects doesn't look alarming at first glance, says Sorg, who curates the Krefeld society's extensive collection of insect specimens. Few species are listed as extinct because they are still found in one or two sites. But that obscures the fact that many have disappeared from large areas where they were once common. Across Germany, only three bumble bee species have vanished, but the Krefeld region has lost more than half the two dozen bumble bee species that society members documented early in the 20th century.  

Members of the Krefeld society have been observing, recording, and collecting insects from the region—and around the world—since 1905. Some of the roughly 50 members—including teachers, telecommunication technicians, and a book publisher—have become world experts on their favorite insects. Siegfried Cymorek, for instance, who was active in the society from the 1950s through the 1980s, never completed high school. He was drafted into the army as a teenager, and after the war he worked in the wood-protection division at a local chemical plant. But because of his extensive knowledge of wood-boring beetles, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1979. Over the years, members have written more than 2000 publications on insect taxonomy, ecology, and behavior. 

The society's headquarters is a former school in the center of Krefeld, an industrial town on the banks of the Rhine that was once famous for producing silk. Disused classrooms store more than a million insect specimens individually pinned and named in display cases. Most were collected nearby, but some come from more exotic locales. Among them are those from the collection of a local priest, an active member in the 1940s and 1950s, who persuaded colleagues at mission stations around the world to send him specimens. (The society's collection and archive are under historical preservation protection.)

Weighty disappearances 

The mass of insects collected by monitoring traps in the Orbroicher Bruch nature reserve in northwest Germany dropped by 78% in 24 years.

(GRAPHIC) G. GRULLÓN/SCIENCE; (DATA) M. SORG ET AL.,
MITTEILUNGEN AUS DEM ENTOMOLOGISCHEN VEREIN KREFELD
1, 1–5 (2013) © 2013 ENTOMOLOGISCHER VEREIN KREFELD

Tens of millions more insects float in carefully labeled bottles of alcohol—the yield from the society's monitoring projects in nature reserves around the region. The reserves, set aside for their local ecological value, are not pristine wilderness but "seminatural" habitats, such as former hay meadows, full of wildflowers, birds, small mammals—and insects. Some even include parts of agricultural fields, which farmers are free to farm with conventional methods. Heinz Schwan, a retired chemist and longtime society member who has weighed thousands of trap samples, says the society began collecting long-term records of insect abundance partly by chance. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, local authorities asked the group for help evaluating how different strategies for managing the reserves affected insect populations and diversity.     

The members monitored each site only once every few years, but they set up identical insect traps in the same place each time to ensure clean comparisons. Because commercially available traps vary in ways that affect the catch, the group makes their own. Named for the Swedish entomologist René Malaise, who developed the basic design in the 1930s, each trap resembles a floating tent. Black mesh fabric forms the base, topped by a tent of white fabric and, at the summit, a collection container—a plastic jar with an opening into another jar of alcohol. Insects trapped in the fabric fly up to the jar, where the vapors gradually inebriate them and they fall into the alcohol. The traps collect mainly species that fly a meter or so above the ground. For people who worry that the traps themselves might deplete insect populations, Sorg notes that each trap catches just a few grams per day—equivalent to the daily diet of a shrew.

Sorg says society members saved all the samples because even in the 1980s they recognized that each represented a snapshot of potentially intriguing insect populations. "We found it fascinating—despite the fact that in 1982 the term ‘biodiversity' barely existed," he says. Many samples have not yet been sorted and cataloged—a painstaking labor of love done with tweezers and a microscope. Nor have the group's full findings been published. But some of the data are emerging piecemeal in talks by society members and at a hearing at the German Bundestag, the national parliament, and they are unsettling.   

Beyond the striking drop in overall insect biomass, the data point to losses in overlooked groups for which almost no one has kept records. In the Krefeld data, hover flies—important pollinators often mistaken for bees—show a particularly steep decline. In 1989, the group's traps in one reserve collected 17,291 hover flies from 143 species. In 2014, at the same locations, they found only 2737 individuals from 104 species.   

Since their initial findings in 2013, the group has installed more traps each year. Working with researchers at several universities, society members are looking for correlations with weather, changes in vegetation, and other factors. No simple cause has yet emerged. Even in reserves where plant diversity and abundance have improved, Sorg says, "the insect numbers still plunged."    

A Weather Station for Biodiversity

Researchers in Germany hope to develop a set of automated sensors that will monitor the abundance and diversity of plants, animals, and fungi with the help of pattern recognition and DNA and chemical analysis.

V.ALTOUNIAN/SCIENCE

Changes in land use surrounding the reserves are probably playing a role. "We've lost huge amounts of habitat, which has certainly contributed to all these declines," Goulson says. "If we turn all the seminatural habitats to wheat and cornfields, then there will be virtually no life in those fields." As fields expand and hedgerows disappear, the isolated islands of habitat left can support fewer species. Increased fertilizer on remaining grazing lands favors grasses over the diverse wildflowers that many insects prefer. And when development replaces countryside, streets and buildings generate light pollution that leads nocturnal insects astray and interrupts their mating.   

Neonicotinoid pesticides, already implicated in the widespread crash of bee populations, are another prime suspect. Introduced in the 1980s, they are now the world's most popular insecticides, initially viewed as relatively benign because they are often applied directly to seeds rather than sprayed. But because they are water soluble, they don't stay put in the fields where they are used. Goulson and his colleagues reported in 2015 that nectar and pollen from wildflowers next to treated fields can have higher concentrations of neonicotinoids than the crop plants. Although initial safety studies showed that allowable levels of the compounds didn't kill honey bees directly, they do affect the insects' abilities to navigate and communicate, according to later research. Researchers found similar effects in wild solitary bees and bumble bees.  

Less is known about how those chemicals affect other insects, but new studies of parasitoid wasps suggest those effects could be significant. Those solitary wasps play multiple roles in ecosystems—as pollinators, predators of other insects, and prey for larger animals. A team from the University of Regensburg in Germany reported in Scientific Reports in February that exposing the wasp Nasonia vitripennis to just 1 nanogram of one common neonicotinoid cut mating rates by more than half and decreased females' ability to find hosts. "It's as if the [exposed] insect is dead" from a population point of view because it can't produce offspring, says Lars Krogmann, an entomologist at the Stuttgart Natural History Museum in Germany.   

No one can prove that the pesticides are to blame for the decline, however. "There is no data on insecticide levels, especially in nature reserves," Sorg says. The group has tried to find out what kinds of pesticides are used in fields near the reserves, but that has proved difficult, he says. "We simply don't know what the drivers are" in the Krefeld data, Goulson says. "It's not an experiment. It's an observation of this massive decline. The data themselves are strong. Understanding it and knowing what to do about it is difficult."  

© ENTOMOLOGISCHER VEREIN KREFELD

The factors causing trouble for the hover flies, moths, and bumble bees in Germany are probably at work elsewhere, if clean windshields are any indication. Since 1968, scientists at Rothamsted Research, an agricultural research center in Harpenden, U.K., have operated a system of suction traps—12-meter-long suction tubes pointing skyward. Set up in fields to monitor agricultural pests, the traps capture all manner of insects that happen to fly over them; they are "effectively upside-down Hoovers running 24/7, continually sampling the air for migrating insects," says James Bell, who heads the Rothamsted Insect Survey. 

Between 1970 and 2002, the biomass caught in the traps in southern England did not decline significantly. Catches in southern Scotland, however, declined by more than two-thirds during the same period. Bell notes that overall numbers in Scotland were much higher at the start of the study. "It might be that much of the [insect] abundance in southern England had already been lost" by 1970, he says, after the dramatic postwar changes in agriculture and land use.    

The stable catches in southern England are in part due to constant levels of pests such as aphids, which can thrive when their insect predators are removed. Such species can take advantage of a variety of environments, move large distances, and reproduce multiple times per year. Some can even benefit from pesticides because they reproduce quickly enough to develop resistance, whereas their predators decline. "So lots of insects will do great, but the insects that we love may not," Black says.   

Other, more visible creatures may be feeling the effects of the insect losses. Across North America and Europe, species of birds that eat flying insects, such as larks, swallows, and swifts, are in steep decline. Habitat loss certainly plays a role, Nocera says, "but the obvious factor that ties them all together is their diet."   

Some intriguing, although indirect, clues come from a rare ecological treasure: decades' worth of stratified bird droppings. Nocera and his colleagues have been probing disused chimneys across Canada in which chimney swifts have built their nests for generations. From the droppings, he and his colleagues can reconstruct the diets of the birds, which eat almost exclusively insects caught on the wing.   

The layers revealed a striking change in the birds' diets in the 1940s, around the time DDT was introduced. The proportion of beetle remains dropped off, suggesting the birds were eating smaller insects—and getting fewer calories per catch. The proportion of beetle parts increased slightly again after DDT was banned in the 1970s but never reached its earlier levels. The lack of direct data on insect populations is frustrating, Nocera says. "It's all correlative. We know that insect populations could have changed to create the population decline we have now. But we don't have the data, and we never will, because we can't go back in time."   

Sorg and Wägele agree. "We deeply regret that we did not set up more traps 20 or 30 years ago," Sorg says. He and other Krefeld society members are now working with Wägele's group to develop what they wish they had had earlier: a system of automated monitoring stations they hope will combine audio recordings, camera traps, pollen and spore filters, and automated insect traps into a "biodiversity weather station". Instead of tedious manual analysis, they hope to use automated sequencing and genetic barcoding to analyze the insect samples. Such data could help pinpoint what is causing the decline—and where efforts to reverse it might work best.   

Paying attention to what E. O. Wilson calls "the little things that run the world" is worthwhile, Sorg says. "We won't exterminate all insects. That's nonsense. Vertebrates would die out first. But we can cause massive damage to biodiversity—damage that harms us."

(Source: Sciencemag.org & Gretchen Vogel)

Update May 20, 2017: Sithsoniaan Tropical Research Institute

Credit: Chung Yun Tak

Credit: Saskya Van Nouhuys

I'm interjecting this tropical research report here because it is relevant to the importance of insecting leading the way ecosystems are sustained in balance. Using plasticine caterpillar models like this one in the photo above and at right at the Smithsonian's ForestGEO site of Tai Po Kau in Hong Kong, researchers discovered a global pattern of higher predation at low elevations and low latitudes. Clearly what we consider pest insects are those insects thaat eat plants we like in our landscapes, gardens and farms. But we should also acknowledge that there are beneficial natural components which eat such pests. First thing that comes to most people's minds are such predators as birds & anmals, but that is not what these researchers found. Insect predators are the most important abundant predators of pest insects in the wild as this study below found. So when loss of Bioabundance of predatory insects takes place, our goose is cooked and the only real winners in the perverted sense as all the Agro-Chemical & Biotech Industries. As sick & horrific as that sounds, it's nevertheless the  truth.

Predators are Real Lowlifes

Insects drove the trend, not mammals or birds. “As someone who has studied insect biodiversity in the tropics for most of my life, I wasn’t surprised that insects were responsible for most of the predation observed,” said Yves Basset, leader of the ForestGEO Arthropod Initiative at STRI.   

The team put out almost 3,000 model caterpillars for four to 18 days at 31 different sites from Australia to Greenland at different altitudes, from zero to 2,100 meters above sea level. Based on characteristic marks left by predators in the clay, they could tell whether the models were attacked by birds, mammals or insects.

http://www.stri.si.edu

This should be a wake up call, but most likely it will generally fall on deaf ears. Mere handfulls of interested ones will click "Like" on some Enviro-Facebook page, but mostly it will go unnoticed. The average human being hates bugs and buys into the industrial science marketing of  "An only good Bug is a dead Bug." Think back on those RAID commercials. Synthetic Pesticides are incapable of differienting between and good and bad insect. Most don't care. They want bugs gone. Seriously, walk down any Home Depot, Lowes, Hornbach, Bau Haus or other local hardware store and the only viable healthy garden solution they offer is a science-based synthetic toxic option. No instruction or education of ever building a biodiverse system in your garden thru biomimicry. There was a reference to E.O. Wilson at the end of the article. These days everyone seems to want to worship the ground that E.O. Wilson walks on as something hallowed. The 80+ E.O. Wilson, is a Harvard professor of evolutionary biology who made his celebrity claim to fame back in the 1970s with his study of social species in two books, The Insect Societies and Sociobiology. He is internationally acknowledged as "the father of sociobiology" and is the world's leading authority on ants. Hence I can understand why Gretchen Vogel who wrote the article referenced him in the last paragraph where she quotes him as saying "we must pay attention to the little things that run the world." Sure enough in his book, Diversity of Life, E.O. Wilson stated:

“Most life on land depends ultimately on one relationship: the mycorrhiza, the intimate and mutually dependent coexistence of fungi and the roots systems of plants.”

His point of course was that the importance of these beneficial fungi should not be underestimated. So okay, he has some good points on why our understanding of Nature's micro-world should be better. I totally agree. But then at other times he does an about face and turns right around and out of the other corner of his mouth tells the world that Industrial Agriculture's Biotech World is the only thing that can save Nature. In 2011 in an interview in "EarthSky Journal," E.O. Wilson said:

"And within science, this is going to be a century of biology. We are entering an age of synthesis. So many discoveries have been made in biology in the cell, at the molecular level, and on up to the development of organisms."

"And we need all the biology and all the advances we can find in agriculture, especially. We’re going to have to switch worldwide to dry land agriculture. We don’t have enough water in enough countries to feed all those people and to restore soil to arable condition. So this means that we have to have genetically modified organisms. I’d take that as a given. Some people don’t like the idea. But that’s one of those necessities brought about by the human condition."

Clearly the very thing Wilson here is advocating is the very thing that is killing biodiversity and bioabundance. E.O. Wilson like Bill Nye will never admit that because supporting biotech world is paramont in keeping hold of their science celebrity darling icon status. Bill Nye was once opposed to GMOs, but then one day Monsanto showed him the light. More than likely he was ushered into a back room and explained the facts of life by the good'ol boys club about what he should do to keep that status quo as a celebrity icon if he knew what was healthy for him. Both Wilson and Nye are also staunch advocates of the "Agrument from Poor Design" religious dogma. I use the term religious here because there is nothing scientific about it. It's done more harm to the natural world and held back real world sustainable eco-green technological innovation more than anything else. Both men are also part of the new secular attitude espoused earlier by Edward Abbey who believed mankind is worthless and desperately needs culling if not outright removal. Although both men do not see either of themselves as part of that problem. Nobody questions these science celebrity icons and they should. Unfortunately, E.O. Wilson's and Bill Nye’s intolerant worldview seems to be rubbing off and infecting many of today's Gen-X and Millennials (think of turmoil & uncertainty) which might explain some of the insane chaos which is a common component of today's world.

Well, getting back to insects and the two artcles. A couple years ago Germany (one of the biggest users of palm oil) expressed self-righteous indignation towards Indonesia for cutting down their country's rainforests and replacing them with palm oil plantations. The Indonesian leader also fired back exposing Germany for destroying 70% of Germany's original forests. Sure enough that is true. What forests that do exist have become industrial forestry plantations, with only those few scattered nature reserves which we spoke of earlier. This is also true of most of industrial Europe including Sweden. This may well account for the drop in not only insects, but also other wildlife. So blame cannot be put squarely on the shoulders of industrial science, but also these science celebrity icons whom they go to bed with figuratively speaking to promote their technology. For all the public shouting and fingerpointing these celebrities do at the average human being for not being eco-green, they themseves are the blind leading the blind. These icons need to be exposed for what they really are. As for the average person, follow the lead recommended by the first article from the "In Defense of Plants" people. Learn how nature works and biomimic that in your own landscape or garden. As far as the bigger picture, this world's leadership (irrespecitive of the ideological worldview) needs to be completely eradicated soon. If that doesn't happen, then nothing will be saved.

Update 2018 --->>> Anyone else noticing this too ??? 😲 

The Guardian: "Where have all our insects gone?" 

Now relax to eleven minutes of Insects and Birds in a Field on a Summer Day (Natural sound meditation)

Building Healthy Soils with not so primitive Biological Mechanical Components

File Under: Bad Religious Dogma - or would that be Fogma ?

What if Agriculture after World War II had the same blank Cheque funding for it's own 'Manhattan Project', instead of going down the Green Revolution path brought to us by today's Toxic Know-It-Alls ?

image: USBG.GOV

See this guy over here on the right ? He is Agricultural Ecologist, Dr Jerry Glover who with the help of photographer Jim Richardson of the National Geographic Society and Sculptor Steve Tobin known for his nature exhibits put together a beautiful underground visual of what root systems  in healthy pristine prairie soils actually look like. In so doing, they revealed an unknown hidden world and understanding of a complex root infrastructure that the average person above ground couldn't possibly otherwise visualize or imagine. But for the moment, I'd like to explain why most soils don't actually look like this in nature anymore. Mostly, the reason soils today are in poor condition has to do with the so-called scientific modern day enlightenment which has since 1914 -WWI (but especially since 1950), tried indoctrinate all of us into accepting how & why nature is so horribly flawed, badly designed, terribly inefficient and that only their technological innovations of this world's elites will save us from it's primitive foundations. But are the microbiological things of our natural world really all that primitive ? Interestingly other responsible scientific research is beginning to find out that this type of flawed worldview is itself untrue and in many cases caused irreparable damage in some areas. At the end of this post I'll talk a little more on the above exhibit. But here is a short introductory clip:

"Plant roots are vital components of the earth's ecosystem. They are necessary for all plant growth, including the production of food and nutrients for humans and many other organisms. However, as root systems are out off sight, their beauty and importance often go unnoticed. Exposed: The Secret Life of Roots showcases the presence and importance of roots through visually stunning root representations using the work of agricultural ecologist Dr. Jerry Glover, sculptor Steve Tobin, and photographer Jim Richardson."

(Source)

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So where did Humans go wrong when it comes to Soils & Land Management ?

Image typical of deep soil chiseling of Imperial Valley fields

(Imperial Valley Subsoil Chiseling)

For 20+ years I traveled from my mile high home in the San Jacinto Mountains above Palm Springs California all the way to Imperial Valley at least once a week, sometimes twice. Often while driving to work in early mornings in summer when I'd pass a field like the one above and world see the farmland subsoil deeply cut into and chiseled as the one above in the photograph. I'd also see parked next to the plowed field the very farm implement or deep plow apparatus responsible for the large gouges in the Earth sitting idle like the one at right here. The landscape down there is an ancient sea bed where the soils are a very fine almost clay-like in structure. Periodically if such deep tillage isn't undertaken, this ground remains hard packed like adobe. The water percolation is almost nil in worst case scenarios when they attempt to flood irrigate. Such deep tillage and later light tilling with smaller plows afterwards are necessary for the soils to restore back to that fluffiness of structure for not only better water percolation, but also crop plant root development. This Southern California valley is a major industrial farming area where a single corporate farm entity may may own land in the 1000s of acres. There is no life to these soils in the healthy microbiological sense. Such industrial farming strategies and practices are what destroy the soil microbial community. Advertisements from Tillage implement companies extol the wonders of their soil ripping products to their potential farmer customers by illustrating how they can prevent stagnant water build up from heavy storms or common flood irrigation practices which no longer percolate into impervious soils. But there is far more that keeps the soils lifeless other than constant regular tillage, that would be the overuse and abuse of synthetic chemicals. 

Image: Blue-Jet SubTiller advertisement

image: business recycling Australia

For decades the soils of this ancient lake bed of Imperial Valley on both sides of the border between the USA and Mexico have been drenched in synthetic fertilizers of all kinds. Herbicides, fungicides and insecticides applied either from the ground or the air also contribute to this damage. Taken altogether, these too kill the healthy soil biology as does excessive uses of plowing and other deep subsoil tillage. This is why these desert valley soils are mostly sterile and strictly mineral based in their structural make up and colour. Pick up a handful of Imperial Valley soil and you will not find any of the rich black soil common with most natural systems. Chemicals, like excessive plowing also help to favour noxious weeds by eliminating the very checks and balances nature has used for 1000s of years to keep weeds under control. Interestingly, all these industrial farm mismanagement practices are identical to other irresponsible land mismanagement practices used by the US Forest Service and Timber Industries. Take the photo  example below of this ridgeline in the Trabuco Ranger District of Cleveland National forest in the Santa Ana Mountains of Southern California which has been stripped of it's mycorrhizal hosts (chaparral) and completely replaced by weeds which thrive in a bacterial system of soil creation. Destroy above ground mycorrhizal hosts and you destroy the underground mycorrhizal grid and allow a bacterial system to replace it which favours weeds, particularly those weeds we call Ruderals. 

Image - Chaparral Institute

Image: Chaparral Institute

Somewhere back in the 1960s-70s, it was ignorantly assumed that stripping most all major ridgelines of their chaparral was a great idea for a major firebreak to control any future wildfire event. However, this replacing of the chaparral plant community (which is host to mycorrhizal fungi) by these regular control burns, vegetative mastication, synthetic chemicals, and/or bulldozing actually allowed a bacterial underground system to be created which favoured invasive grasses and other noxious weeds like cheatgrass, mustards, radishes, star thistle, etc. This turned out to be a huge backfiring mistake. Oddly enough those ignorant irresponsible practices are the exact mirror image of industrial farming methods which create far more problems than they were originally meant to solve. The result for the forestry was not stopping wildfire, but rather the creation of a mismanaged landscape scenario which actually fed worse wildfire condition scenarios than preventing them. If the idea was to slow down wildfires, the true reality resulted in speeding up their spread. From that point the domino effect gets worse. Take for example the usage of slurry type phosphate based fire retardants used in stopping fires. Would you believe this actually spreads Cheatgrass and other runderals ? Take a look below.

Photo by Jed Little

A year after the Fourth of July fire on Mount Jumbo, a long green line of cheatgrass is visible where fire retardant was dropped. The red slurry retardant allows some exotic weeds to replace native grasslands, according to preliminary results of a study by Salish Kootenai College and the University of Montana. Now read this portion I've quoted below from the online journal, The Missoulian:

"The study raises the possibility that the red slurry, while helping to slow a wildfire's advance, could ultimately worsen grassland fires by promoting the growth of cheatgrass, one of the most flammable invasive weeds in the West."

"According to preliminary results, the retardant's fertilizerlike nutrients significantly increased cheatgrass and tumbleweed mustard, both exotic annual species, at the expense of native perennial grasses on the mountainside."

"The invaders benefit from the jolt of nitrogen and phosphorous in the slurry, which native and exotic perennials largely ignore because they are accustomed to nutrient-poor soils. Cheatgrass and tumbleweed mustard didn't spread where the fire burned alone, but they exploded in areas that were burned and hit with retardant, the study found. The two invaders have spread from 51 percent to 88 percent on Mount Jumbo since the retardant was dropped, although two perennial invaders, spotted knapweed and Dalmation toadflax, decreased."

(Source - Missoulian)

I literally hate going for a hike and receiving the nasty end of an assault of stickers from walking through a mismanaged field infected by a  Cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) invasion. These stickers in boots and socks are so incredibly annoying that you need to stop periodically to take the boots off and clean both boots and socks to regain your sanity. They can also be dangerous to your pets and other domestic animals. If that is true, then it is also true that their overwhelming presence is not good for wildlife either. Now there were a couple of interesting things referenced in that article by the Missoulian. Notice that these annual plants [ruderals = Cheatgrass, Mustards, Radishes, Tumbleweeds, etc] thrive in a nutrient enriched soil from the presence of excessive amounts of synthetic inputs deliberately applied to soils [for whatever reason or purpose], while the perennials that were   referenced in the article like Spotted Knapweed & Dalmation Toadflax have actually decreased. So why was that ? Are not those two plants also noxious invasive weeds ? Yes they are, but they are not ruderals, they have mycorrhizal roots and mycorrhizal fungi will disconnect in the presence of excessive synthetic nutrient inputs. They are invasive weeds in the sense that they originate from eastern Europe and Asia. Minus the checks and balances from their former ecosystems they then thrive and spread in North America. But they are also mycorrhizal hosts. Clearly human ignorance which breeds irresponsible decision making in so many areas of life have snowballed to the present out of control domino effect we find ourselves in. We are battling Nature instead of working with nature for a solution with an elite few making a profit off the misery of others. Nature has always had the most efficient solutions for balance and high yield success through it's genetic programming for 10s of 1000s of years irrespective how anyone says it originally got that way. Now take a look at another area [land restoration projects] which once again illustrate the how the overuse or reliance on mechanized innovations and synthetic chemicals cause setbacks and delays in plant community restorations. This example below comes from the Coachella Valley which is also located in Southern California just north of Imperial Valley. About the year 2001 a report came out on the success of ridding a desert oasis area known as 1000 Palms of an invasive tree called Tamarisk which dried up the streams and ponds and ruined the environment for the native palms and other desert oasis plants and animals which depended upon them for food and shelter. There were several methods and techniques employed like bulldozing, synthetic Chemicals and old fashioned hand clearing. There were two outstanding references of an observation which serve to illustrate the two superior & inferior methods for success from a single sentence in that whole report at the bottom in the last paragraph that spoke volumes to me. As far as I know, I am the only one who has ever caught this important gem of an observation:

"Most areas were cut by hand, thereby selectively cutting out the tamarisk while leaving the native shrubs unharmed. Only a 7.5 acre (3 ha) section that was heavily infested (> 95%) was cleared using a bulldozer."

"In the 7.5 acres (3 ha) that was bulldozed, natives established much more slowly than in the hand-cleared areas."

(Source)

So two main techniques employed at this restoration site. One was the commonly used conventional mechanized version by way of large industrial piece of equipment we call a Bulldozer with rippers and the other was the use of volunteers to hand clearing and selectively cut out the cancerous invasive plants within the ecosystem and leaving only the healthy native ones. Okay I get the Bulldozer because it is fast and efficient at eradication and the clearing by hand takes recruiting otherwise busy volunteers and a lot of sweat. But okay so what ? It's the long term goal that we are looking at here if indeed there is a noble goal. One leaves a healthy intact mycorrhizal grid under the ground with cover and the other sterilizes the landscape as some sort of clean slate or blank canvas ready for natives to be replanted by spreading seed on the ground and raking it in to germinate and rebuild the ecosystem. One fixes the situation more permanently with little maintenance afterwards and the other being a quick fix will have to be revisited again and again, year after year and still not get it correct. I immediately recognized the differences and reasons for both success and failure [or delay]  because of my own practices on my acreage up in the San Jacinto Mountains which tower over the Coachella Valley. Prior to moving onto my land in 1985, the previous owner had cleared with Bulldozer two large patches of chaparral down to the clean decomposed granite. Other areas were cut and cleared by hand. In all those 20+ years of living there, the cleared areas by Bulldozer always experienced a fight with weeds and attempting to plant any chaparral natives back over the cleared patches of land was always a lengthy process with only a few ever making it. However, in Chaparral area where some places required removal by hand, the ground never suffered. In fact where I would remove a single shrub to make room for a tree seedling to be planted, establishment success was always 100% as opposed to maybe 20%-30% on the bare soils. The reason of course was that the new seedling was instantly inserted into a healthy mycorrhizal grid which hydrated and nourished the young delicate seedlings and the other area had no grid for successful tree establishment which left seedlings to their own struggle for survival, hence the highest failure rates. This was the same method I followed after helping my former landlord Ken Dawson of Terwilliger establish a forest in the chaparral a few years previous. His property was in the Terwilliger part of Anza Valley and considered at the edge of high desert. It was mostly Chaparral covered [Manzanita, Sugarbush & predominently Redshank or Ribbonwood]. 

image mine: 2013

Large specimens of all three chaparral species were left intact by use of a small scale one man backhoe [the size of a small garden Kubota tractor] which was expertly used to surgically remove any unwanted vegetation to allow space for bare root tree planting without damaging other healthy shrubs. All the San Bernardino National Forestry officials & the Nursery at L.A. Moran up at Davis where we purchased those bare root pines said it would never work, especially if we didn't strip clear the land bare from competing brush. The reality of course is that the responsible science-based research being done today has found that the "Survival of the Fittest" religious dogma no longer holds water. The truth is that in mycorrhizal networked ecosystems, there is a mutual cooperation of all the organisms to ensure the health and survival success of all the members of the plant community system.  The chaparral plant community also has some of the deepest plant roots known to bore through impossible soils. They perform an amazing biological function of physics called hydraulic lift and redistribution of soil moisture which I'll reference below. The ONLY time this is  found in conflict is when the wrong soil conditions allow ruderals to invade a mycorrhizal system which has been destroyed through bad land management. Tilling, synthetic inputs, excessive use of fire, and last but not least irresponsible overgrazing by domestic animals with no wild instinct smarts to move on all contribute to long term damage.

image: mine 2013

As you can see the Chaparral, in this case Redshank or Ribbonwood is still intact and thriving, yet so are the Jeffrey and Coulter Pines. The soils on this particular property are extremely shallow with many boulders and fractured rocky soils under the ground. Still the system is a giant success because of replicating nature, even if we didn't realize the full impact and knowledge at the time in what we had done. I later went back and inoculated some areas with an ecto-mycorrhizal fungi from Plant Health Care Inc called Tree Savor Injectable which contains only a single species of Pisolithus tinctorius, which is an ectomycorrhizal fungi. The needle holding capacity of most all those pine trees were 4 or five years which is excellent proof of the system's self-sustaining function even during this present west coast drought which has hit all of California. I'll post a link below in references.

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Collective Intelligent of the Enlightened Higher Lifeforms versus the Primitives ???  

Image Dr Wendy Taheri

So what is it exactly that is going on under the ground that makes these specific instances either a  success story or miserable failure ? It is the practices that either a landscaper, gardener, farmer or forester chooses to employ along with other methods of sound or irresponsible land maintenance. Many believe that the Scientific advances of our modern world are the only thing that will save mankind. But the exact opposite is true. Take for example the image at the right here of agricultural soil which has been worked decades utilizing all the modern day science-based tillage practices coupled with Synthetic inputs. The round spheres are fungal spores and these were culled from 25 grams of industrial agricultural soil. The photograph was taken by Dr Wendy Taheri who is a Research Microbiologist who today spends time educating and helping American Farmers who are hungering for a change. BTW, those tiny white round dots are not spores at all, but nematode eggs. Now compare that photo with the photograph below.

Image Dr Wendy Taheri

This photograph here at left is a mere one gram of healthy natural prairie soil as compared to the contrasting photo above which you may remember was 25 grams of industrial agricultural soil. Notice the difference in spore biodiversity count and the high density concentration ? This could also be illustrative of most any forest soil or holistically managed farm commercial soils where large diversity of perennial cover crops are used as hosts which encourages diverse numbers of these endo-mycorrhizal fungi. The above result is where no tillage was practiced and no chemical inputs were ever touching this soil. The bottom soil photograph is the result of supposedly primitive microbes [according to the religiously driven scientific dogma] and the top photograph is the result of science-based industrial agricultural practices of intensive plowing, synthetic chemical inputs [fertilizers, herbicides, fungicides & insecticides] and last but not least the GMO plants which are believed to be improvements on nature's flaws by the Biotechnology industry. All of these brought to us by superior higher collective human intelligence. I can only imagine that the ongoing choices by the majority of farmers, landscapers, foresters and the average home gardener is the imaginary misunderstanding & assumption that the holistic biomimetic practices are more work and sweat with little results to show for the hard work. The reality is that it's the exact opposite. To conclude, let's go back to Dr Jerry Glover's National Geographic Gallery.

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Now the Gallery below of the art show I opened up with Dr Jerry Glover and National Geographic

National Geographic & Dr Jerry Glover

Here, Dr. Jerry Glover works in a soil pit at the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas with a garden host fitted with a jet nozzle to expose what the rooting structure on two entirely different plants look like. On the left, we see the deeper roots of a perennial wheatgrass are displayed, while on the right we see the more shallow roots of an annual wheat are visible. Notice the side by side contrast below ? The exhibit theme was to demonstrate how the bulk of a prairie grass plant exists out of sight, with anywhere from eight to fourteen feet of roots extending down deep into the earth. Now why should any of that matter ? Besides being incredibly larger in size, these hidden root mass infrastructures accomplish a lot in storing carbon, nourishing soil, increasing bioproductivity, and preventing erosion.  Unfortunately, most of these productive, perennial grass functions of the past are more rare than they once were. This is because they have been replaced by ruderals (annuals) which live a mere few months (six months if lucky).

Common annual variety of annual Wheat here are contrasted next to perennial Wheatgrass. Notice perennials, which come back year after year have a root system which will grow to a depth of few meters, while the annual varieties perhaps a mere foot. This is also illustrative of all ruderals versus perennials in the wild setting. A farmer or rancher with a pasture of abundant diversity of perennials is going to weather the dry season or even drought much better than say those common western states pastures where short lived ruderals such as cheatgrass and other annuals [runderals] reign supreme. This is why many western rangelands and pasture can only have a limited use early in the year. What is most important to a pasture is having a large biodiversity of perennial plants dominating the vast area which encourages an underground  microbiological community of beneficial mycorrhizal fungi and healthy nitrogen fixing  bacteria to allow the soils to breathe. Any rainwater falling on such a landscape will fully percolate into the earth as opposed to running off. This is important to underground storage of water to be tapped into later in the dry season. In times of heavier rainy seasons, several meter deep root infrastructures may also facilitate a process called hydraulic descent which may also help restore underground aquifers and replenish natural springs. The other being hydraulic lift & redistribution, but more on that below. Again, these are also things which even many farmers who do practice  biodiverse perennial cover crops may be completely ignorant  themselves of the full line of services being accomplished by perennial plant root systems other than mere water percolation through healthy aggregated soil alone. More on that phenomena below. But here is a link to the root system galley:

(National Geographic Deep Root Gallery)

Now take as another example the common picturesque California Oak Savanna settings that are often romanticized in photos. 

Image - Mine (2013)

Santa Ysabel Open Space Preserve (Oak-Grassland Savanna)

This photo above is in my home San Diego County in Southern California. While it is picturesque, the historical view with these Englemann Oaks would have had low interior sagescrub or chaparral growing all around it as opposed to these nonnative grasses. These grasses were created by ranchers in the early years to raise cattle. But land management practices from northern Europe and back eastern United States just never worked out here in the west. Africa had the same problems with Europeans ignorant of local ecosystem functions imposed northern European land management practices with domestic livestock which had disastrous consequences. The Cheatgrass dominance in the west also has negative implications in the fight against climate change. Cheatgrass and other ruderals are the worst in terms of carbon sequestration. In 2006, researchers found (Here) that the invasion of cheatgrass in the West had turned some areas from carbon sinks to a net source of carbon. The invasion of cheatgrass and all nonnative ruderals altogether have released up to nearly nine million tons of carbon into the atmosphere and will likely release far more as time goes on. Throughout the California Savannas where Cheatgrass and other ruderals now dominate, many areas often burn annually and actually thrive as a result of this constant burning, whether prescribed, accidental or intentionally set fires. They also have a lousy shallow root system which means that far less carbon is stored in underground root systems than was once true of the native perennials like chaparral or even biodiverse species of prairie plants in true Savannas. There is something else the ruderals cannot assist in accomplishing and that is both hydraulic life & redistribution of water for the beneficial function of the entire system. Aside from the loss of a mycorrhizal grid underground network there is something else missing. These two subjects are mostly a mystery of sorts to most people, but they are important phenomena to have an understanding of if your farm, ranch landscape, gardening or habitat restoration project are to be a success. Admittedly, even scientists do not discuss much about the phenomena to the public in general.

Importance of Hydraulic Lift & Redistribution

This is one natural phenomena which most likely no longer functions properly if at all in most modern day farm pastures and Ranch grasslands and sadly there is not a lot of discussion about it. Those old growth plant root infrastructures provide an invaluable service in the summertime of hydraulic lift and redistribution of water resources from deep in the earth up to the surface layers. But only certain specific plants with the deepest root systems can perform this task of drawing up water, sending it laterally toward other plants by means of the mycorrhizal grid for the night time benefit of other shallower rooted plants. This is the reason some holistically maintained pastures, even in traditionally dry western geographies have a healthy green even during the dry season. The animated illustration below often used by Professor Todd Dawson reveals how the system actually functions.

But there is even more than hydraulic lift at play here. Some way somehow the water has to be driven deeper than mere soil percolation would allow. This is where an reverse in hydraulic function of root systems must come into play.

What has happened to Hydraulic Descent ???

I once read where researchers once discovered something interesting about the common Mesquite Tree of the deserts in the southwestern United States. When the tree is dormant and not visibly growing above ground during the winter rainy seasons, they perform a phenomena called hydraulic descent where their root systems collect as much surface rainwater percolation as possible and pump it deep into the earth. Now, Mesquite & other desert trees and shrubs have some of the deepest taproot systems known in the world. They can actually bore through the earth down to a depth of a couple hundred feet. Please take note of the animation above. What effect has the loss of this phenomena had on large aquifers and natural springs ? How much does such a phenomena have on actually benefiting groundwater recharge beyond helping pasture to maintain green ecosystem viability during the dry season ? What practical applications can be applied in biomimetic inspiration in creating technological innovations such as irrigation systems which save water as opposed to the present wastefulness we have now ? My reasons for bringing the subject of hydraulic lift - descent & redistribution into the discussion is that they cannot be ignored as a naturally occurring phenomena either in the wild, farming, landscaping & gardening. When w landscaper prepares a design on any new project, all such consideration of these remarkable mechanisms alone with the microbiological nanomachines we've looked at earlier should be considered for the long term viable life sustaining system you are wishing to establish. Same with the farm, ranch or habitat restoration. People need to think in terms of their projects being a living mutually cooperating biological machine. While it's wonderful that farmers, professional landscapers and your average home gardener are thinking in terms of practicing a holistic biological approach minus the chemicals, it's also important to widen out and have a peripheral view other other factors that provide checks and balances into the system. For example attracting the beneficial predators both large and small. I'll provide more links below in references. 

So let's recap what we know!

All plant ecosystems basically work and function identically with a little a little tweaking taken into account for climate and geography. The purpose (don't look at the term as a dirty word) of annuals is important in that when land is disturbed they quickly cover the ground. Most of their capabilities are offensive with very little resources being used in defenses against predators. Creating an abundance of seed to replicate themselves is what they do, but irresponsibly land manage and you provide an out of balance scenario for them to explode upon the landscape. All Tree, Shrub and Prairie systems are heavily mycorrhizal. Mycorrhizae in all systems of management dislike over fertility or nutrient abundance. Bacterial systems limit root infrastructure and in farming excessive synthetic nutrient inputs are nothing more than a numbers game where it is hoped that 20-30% sucks in somewhere around the plant. Because mycorrhizae is mostly absent from such systems, weeds (ruderals) thrive and more synthetic inputs are needed to rid the system of unwanted plants that nature would have otherwise kept in check. Excess synthetics end up percolating into the earth polluting groundwater or as runoff into aquatic systems during the heavy part of the rainy season creating further pollution and ecosystem disruption. All areas of human endeavour when it comes to plant system management like habitat restoration, forestry, farming, ranching, landscaping right down to home gardening either benefit or suffer depending on how closely you mirror your techniques to how nature really works. Tillage is also another limiting and damaging practice to mycorrhizal soil structure. Limiting tillage as much as possible will maintain this life sustaining system underground which in reality is not so primitive after all as science would have you believe. Take all of these micro-organisms away and see how time we higher lifeforms have left to live. If life truly is a mere mistaken bundle of compromises, then what the heck, maybe the Biotechs and Agro-Chemical companies are doing nothing wrong and we should just accept the consequences of putting our faith and trust in these toxic know-it-alls. 

In Conclusion: The Winners & Losers

New technological advances by mankind's Elites have seemingly made life easier for the rest of us when we only look at them from an on the surface viewpoint. These bio-innovations created in some high security lab however have put mankind and the natural world at risk. The fate of the world is being placed into the hands of unaccountable elites in bed with powerful political interests who speak from one side of their mouths of their products being the result of ethical responsibility while at the same time being obsessed with the pursuit of fame and personal enrichment out of the other side of their mouths. The problem is our messed up world is the result of a gross lack of Bioethics. These people know full well what their products are doing, but their strategy is to play the dumb card. When a newer consequence strikes, they simply create another synthetic solution to treat the symptoms while totally turning a blind eye to the cause. The pharmaceutical industry works the same way, but hey, are the also not related ? So from a short term monetary, fame, glitter and glory standpoint there are certainly those who appear to come of the winners. Farmers are also the real losers, not the agro-chemical corporations. If any farmer actually becomes truly informed, educated and understands that most of their success is in changing practices as opposed to spending vast amounts of money on synthetic inputs along with magic seeds, these giant corporate entities would fold. Can you now understand the reasons for vast amount of financial resources being funneled into these damage control public relations lobbying by corporate business interests ? The vast majority of other lifeforms including humans will also lose out in the end. I know of no real solution as far as implementing or reversing the damage done on a massive global scale. You all read the News lately, so you tell me. That doesn't mean the information and understanding on how to use the clean viable information doesn't exist. It does. But there always seems to be something powerfully negative out there to throw the proverbial wrench in the works. The best that can be done is for those few individuals who actually get it to make practical application of what they know to use out on the farm, ranch, landscape or garden and allow the light of success to do the talking for you.

 How long can people really keep trusting these fallible researchers to be bio-ethically responsible ? Ask yourself, what's been their track record thus far during this modern age of enlightenment ?

Some Further Reading References

http://www.californiachaparral.com/threatstochaparral.html

Dawson Property Forest Establishment 1983

Hydraulic Life & Redistribution - Hydraulic Descent

Roots: 'Hydraulic Lift and Redistribution'

Hydraulic Descent: An Ecosystem's Tool for Filling Vast Underground Reservoirs

Why Streams still flow in California's officially designated "Exceptional Drought" zone 

Deep Root Irrigation based on Hydraulics Behaviour in Ecosystems

Deep Irrigation Methods for Training Deeper Rooting networks

This area below will remain open for any updates to add

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