Last Ditch Effort to Save an Ecosystem 40 Years Ago is A Shocking Success
After an eruption, scientists dropped gophers on the side of the volcano two decades ago, and in less than a day of digging they achieved incredible benefits still seen today.
Hiya!
Climate change brings monumental destruction, but we’re learning so much about Nature because of it. After all, it’s easier to understand an ecosystem when a link in its chain breaks and we experience the fallout — whether species extinction or natural disasters. After gaining this knowledge, we often turn to technology to restore Nature and fix our mistakes. I’m all for using modern technology to aid in the climate crisis, but sometimes, there’s a far simpler solution.
Such is the case for today’s topic. After a devastating volcanic eruption over forty years ago, scientists decided to let nature heal Nature. The outcome of their unorthodox experiment far surpassed expectations and continues to astound scientists over two decades later — showing once again that Nature is the master scientist, and we have much to learn.
Forty Years Ago
To understand how awesome today’s topic is, we gotta go back to March 20, 1980, when a 4.1 magnitude earthquake struck southern Washington State from beneath Mount St. Helens, one of over a dozen active volcanoes in the Cascade mountain range of the Pacific Northwest.
Almost exactly two months later, on May 18, 1980, another earthquake emanated from Mount St. Helens, except this one was a 5.1 magnitude and was followed by the collapse of nearly half the mountainside in an avalanche. Pumice and ash reached speeds of 300 mph (482 kph) and a blistering 660° F (350° C). The blast killed everything in a 200-square-mile (517-square-km) area. An ash plume grew to a staggering 10 miles (16 km) high within ten minutes.
The earthquakes and avalanche relieved enough pressure from the magma chambers below to trigger what’s still considered the most destructive volcanic event in the history of the United States. The eruption spread lava, debris, and 540 million tons of ash over 22,000 square miles (57,000 square km), reaching as far as the central United States.
I grew up, and still live, close enough to Mount St. Helens to see it in the distance during my commutes, and while I wasn’t alive when it erupted, my parents still have a mason jar of its ashes they collected from our backyard. Thankfully, my childhood home was far enough from the volcano to avoid its staggering destruction.
The Mount St. Helens eruption claimed 57 lives, destroyed around 200 houses, clogged shipping channels, and contaminated the lakes and creeks in the area. It also caused monumental ecological damage as lush forests of coniferous trees and several clear lakes covered the mountain before the blast. But the eruption flattened the forests, killed potentially hundreds of thousands of animals, and decimated local ecosystems.
It would have taken a substantial amount of time for the area to recover from the eruption’s destruction on its own, so scientists were eager to explore all options, even unorthodox ones, to speed the process along.
Then, in 1982, Michael Allen, a biologist at the University of California, Riverside, and other scientists visited Mount St. Helens and found only about a dozen plants surviving in areas that had been devastated by lava. Even the seeds birds dropped struggled to grow.
After their inspection, the scientists had a wild idea to airlift local gophers to the volcano and let them dig around for a bit. The idea may seem a bit random, but it wasn’t. Previous and modern research shows that gophers are ecosystem engineers and are described as animals that engage in simple “farming.”
So, by dropping local gophers onto the side of the volcano, the scientists hoped the animal’s lifestyle would help restore the ecosystem. Their natural digging behavior would churn and introduce air to the soil, while their defecation acts as a natural fertilizer. The combination brings in microorganisms, like bacteria and fungi, that promote nutrients in the soil and spur root production. Allen explained in a recent statement by the University of California, Riverside:
“They’re often considered pests, but we thought they would take old soil, move it to the surface, and that would be where recovery would occur.”
So, in 1983, Allen and James "Jim" A. MacMahon, an ecologist and Trustee Professor at Utah State University, gathered up some local northern pocket gophers, airlifted them to two enclosed pumice plots on Mount St. Helens, and set them free to dig around as much as their little gopher hearts wanted for a single day.
Allen explained in the University of California statement, "In the 1980s, we were just testing the short-term reaction.” A test that far exceeded expectations, as merely six years later, over 40,000 plants thrived in the two plots the gophers were in, while the land they didn’t dig remained practically barren.
The fact that Allen and his team’s experiment was a wild success and so quickly is remarkable, but no one imagined the benefits this single day of gopher digging could have in the longer term.
Modern Day
After revisiting the sight forty years later, Allen and a team of scientists published an article in Frontiers in Microbiomes on November 03, 2024, detailing what they found. As Allen told Jules Bernstein in a recent statement by the University of California, Riverside:
“Who would have predicted you could toss a gopher in for a day and see a residual effect 40 years later?”
He’s being modest.
The scientists discovered a striking contrast between the areas where the gophers dug two decades ago and where they didn’t — suggesting the gophers played a crucial role in restoring bacteria and fungi to the soil. Allen explained to Bernstein:
“With the exception of a few weeds, there is no way most plant roots are efficient enough to get all the nutrients and water they need by themselves. The fungi transport these things to the plant and get carbon they need for their own growth in exchange.”
Allen is referring to mycorrhizal fungi, which are vital for plant growth because they form symbiotic relationships with roots, allowing them access to more nutrients and helping protect them from disease.
The digging and toiling of the gophers achieved in a single day promoted the fungi’s growth by bringing fungal spores to the surface. Thanks to the gophers’ self-made fertilizer, they introduced new microbes to the dirt.
Additional Findings
Beyond the incredible residual benefits of releasing the gophers, Allen and his team observed another remarkable contrast involving mycorrhizal fungi restoring soil health.
See, Mount St. Helens had been covered with old-growth forests. The forests on one side of the volcano were blanketed with ash during the eruption, trapping solar radiation and making the pine, Douglas fir, and spruce trees overheat and drop their needles — which scientists worried would cause the forests to collapse.
Forty years later, however, Allen and his team found that the pine, Douglas fir, and spruce trees had their own mycorrhizal fungi. Emma Aronson, the paper’s co-author, explained the fungi’s importance to Bernstein:
“These trees have their own mycorrhizal fungi that picked up nutrients from the dropped needles and helped fuel rapid tree regrowth. The trees came back almost immediately in some places. It didn’t all die like everyone thought.”
Meanwhile, on the other side of the mountain, the scientists checked out an area that had been clearcut prior to the eruption. All the logging removed acres of trees, and no trees meant no needles to feed the soil fungi. Asonson told Bernstein:
“There still isn’t much of anything growing in the clearcut area. It was shocking looking at the old growth forest soil and comparing it to the dead area.”
The resounding success of Allen and his team’s gopher experiment and what they learned about the local old-growth forests identify a keystone player involved in healing destroyed earth — mycorrhizal fungi. Mia Maltz, a mycologist at the University of Connecticut, told Bernstein that one natural takeaway from this paper is that,
“[W]e cannot ignore the interdependence of all things in nature, especially the things we cannot see like microbes and fungi.”
Perspective Shift
Nature is the master scientist. Its ingenuity and efficiency surpasses our own, often serving as inspiration for any idea we mere mortals have — and they’re usually brilliantly simple. Allen and his team’s decision to use nature to heal Nature is a prime example.
Imagine if they’d released gophers to dig around all the devastated areas on Mount St. Helens. Maybe they should do it now to initiate the healing process for the rest of the mountain. Perhaps it should be repeated anywhere devastated land and burrowing animals exist. Seeing the positive effects continue to flourish decades later reminds us that, sometimes, the best solution is simple, maybe even a bit silly.
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Nature is smarter than we give it credit for 😉
https://open.substack.com/pub/heyslick/p/think-like-a-jaguar-speak-like-a?r=4t921
Fascinating!