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Post by oldbeav on Apr 25, 2024 19:20:55 GMT -8
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Post by ag87 on Apr 25, 2024 19:30:19 GMT -8
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Post by seastape on May 14, 2024 19:13:50 GMT -8
I'm reading the Simard book. It's slow going because the science is beyond me and I have to stop to look things up to ensure that I have at least some understanding of what she is saying. The book is part memoir, part science, and a little bit of scientific politics thrown in. It sometimes reads like a druid wrote a book about the science of tree communications.
I talked to my daughter about it. My daughter is a freshman in high school biology and regularly gets 100% on her tests. She didn't recognize some of the terms, but she is being taught that some fungi and some mushrooms serve as communication networks for trees, alerting each other to dangers such as pests and drought, as well as acting as an interchange network, trading water and nutrients between plants and trees. The book is fascinating, and my daughter has confirmed that she is learning ideas that are the same or similar to what I have found in Simard's book.
I looked at the index and saw that Dr. Simard discusses her experience of getting her master's degree at Oregon State. I haven't gotten to that point yet, but I'm a-fearin' that she may not have positive things to say. I'm not trying to start a political argument here, I'm really not, but I recall that about 10-15 years ago a grad student at OSU wrote a master's thesis that posited that forests grow back faster and stronger if they are left alone rather than being replanted by lumber/paper companies. The OSU forestry department blew up at the suggestion and there were accusations that the OSU forestry department was in bed with big lumber.
Early in the book, Simard discusses her work with a lumber company (and the fact that her family has been working mainly as lumberjacks in British Columbia since the early 1900s) and that she has a lot of disagreement logging and replanting practices that were in use by big timber at the time of her early work, somewhere around 1982, when she was in her early 20s. I am guessing that she may butt heads with OSU in the later portion of the book.
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