Science Diaries: Okefenokee – Living Landscape
Music; Ambience: birds, wildfire fire, brush
Campbell: “This is one of the few places that you can actually observe geological processes at work over the course of a single lifetime.”
JM: At its very foundation, Georgia’s Okefenokee swamp is made out of peat, an accumulation of decayed organic matter. And with changes in plant life and an occasional wildfire, the landscape here can undergo rapid transformations. Welcome to Pulse of the Planet’s Science Diaries, a glimpse of the world of science from the inside. Naturalist Chip Campbell has been observing Okefenokee’s growth patterns for decades.
“When I was younger, the swamp was more open because of the fire that had burned so intensively across the swamp in 1954 and 1955. I’m 49 years old, and I’ve seen in my own lifetime the understory get much thicker. I have seen a tremendous growth of bay forest. Those growing seasons, there’s a direct relationship between the vegetation and the formation of this peat. It accumulates about an inch or two a century.”
And in the dynamics of the swamp, fires can play a major role.
[brush fire]
“Here in the last few years, we’ve had some big burns, and I’ve actually had the opportunity to observe how that really does set those successional processes back. And at a chemical level, you can see how the swamp responds to that nutrient release and that tremendous infusion of potash.
Potash is the ash from the fire: the wood ash, the leaf ash that is created, literally, by the tons in a major burn. One benefit from potash is that it lowers the acidity of swamp water, which can lead to thriving populations of fish. Pulse of the Planet’s Science Diaries are made possible by the National Science Foundation. I’m Jim Metzner.