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bradford | 1 year ago

It's a great site, but I don't think many of the listings could be properly categorized as old-growth. For example, I checked out a few samples:

"The oldest trees are estimated to be over 200 years old." https://www.oldgrowthforest.net/md-schoolhouse-woods

"The age of the oldest trees is not certain, but 100 rings have been counted on a downed loblolly pine and a downed chestnut oak. There is no old-growth forest in this park, however, the strong protections put in place on this forest ensure that it may recover in time." https://www.oldgrowthforest.net/va-james-river-park-system

(The exact definition of old-growth isn't agreed on, but I've seen some foresty documents in the PNW that demand tree age of 400+ years as a prerequisite for the old-growth categorization)

discuss

order

karaterobot|1 year ago

I had always thought of an old-growth forest as less defined by the age of the trees, and more by the lack of human management/disturbance. I think of old growth as being in comparison to a second-growth forest, which had been logged and replanted. I'm not a forestry scientist, just cobbling definitions together as I go. But it seems unfair to say you could never have an old growth forest of aspen—a species where individual trees only live about 100 years—if the forest itself had been untouched since the dawn of time.

throwup238|1 year ago

It's not about the age of the individual trees but the overall forest since it was last disturbed by humans (on a large scale like logging or agriculture).

Age matters because there are several "thresholds" during which the diversity of species significantly increases and that starts with the older trees falling and decomposing. The conifers in the PNW take anywhere from 50-150 years to decompose before they start breaking apart and littering the forest floor. Once the first generation of trees is broken up and spread around by the wildlife and the fungi species are fully established, the growth of third/fourth/fifth generation of trees and plants become a lot more vigorous. When the second and third generation of trees start falling, they end up creating the dense habitats that supports large food webs from the rodents on up. All the while, the tree roots pull nutrients from deeper and deeper in the earth, allowing the rain and cold to build up a layer of peat on the forest floor that cycles and stores the nutrients, improving the quality of the dirt.

It just takes a while for all these processes to build up.