Ten years ago Hurricane Isabelle roared through Virginia, leaving a new landscape in her wake.\u00a0 Behind our house, Isabelle uprooted hundreds of mature trees.\u00a0 In some places, they fell like dominoes, each leafy giant toppling the next.<\/p>\n
But in the aftermath of destruction has come regeneration.\u00a0 The rebirth began immediately after the storm, and continues to this day.<\/p>\n
The storm left hundreds of shallow depressions where tree roots once gripped the soil.\u00a0 Leaves wilted and died on the carcasses of fallen trees.\u00a0 Large sections of the forest canopy were ripped open, flooding the forest floor with sunlight.<\/p>\n
The depressions left by the uprooted trees filled with rainwater, silt and humus .\u00a0 They became shallow vernal pools, green with algae after the spring rains.\u00a0 Insect larvae and tadpoles swarmed in the nutrient-rich water.\u00a0 The following spring, nights were full of croaking, peeping mating calls.\u00a0 These pools, filled with rotting leaves, are now becoming mossy bogs.<\/p>\n
Isabelle made a feast for creatures that feed on dead and dying trees.\u00a0 Termites and fungi are gradually returning their nutrients to the soil.\u00a0 In ten more years, the great oaks will be crumbly brown dirt.\u00a0 Meanwhile, the rotting wood houses millions of ants, beetles and pillbugs, and the occasional raccoon or chipmunk.<\/p>\n
Where the canopy was torn away, the forest floor received direct sunlight for the first time in many years.\u00a0 The contrast between these clearings and sections of forest where the canopy remained intact is striking.\u00a0 Only a few low plants manage to survive under the shade of the standing trees.\u00a0 But in the clearings, a profusion of plants now reach upward, gathering as much light as they can.<\/p>\n
The low-growing grasses and broadleaf weeds that first colonized the clearings have already been overtaken by taller plants.\u00a0 The sunny spots are full of blackberry vines, sassafras saplings and pokeweed.\u00a0 Wild scuppernong and poison ivy climb upward, seeking their share of the light.\u00a0 Thousands of young tulip poplars strain towards the light like refugees clamoring for bowls of rice.\u00a0 Some of the young trees are already fifteen feet tall.\u00a0 Their race upward is a matter of survival.\u00a0 Only a tiny fraction of the plants in these thickets will survive long enough to flower and produce seeds.\u00a0 The others, shaded by faster competitors, will die without reproducing.<\/p>\n
The profusion of new plants supports new fauna as well.\u00a0 Squirrels and turkeys will have fewer acorns to gather through the next several decades.\u00a0 But deer thrive on the abundance of tender new vegetation.\u00a0 Populations of insects that feed on the young plants\u00a0 have exploded.\u00a0 Fuzzy white scale insects and aphids crowd their growing tips.\u00a0 Caterpillars graze on the foliage.\u00a0 There seem to be more lightning bugs sparkling in the summer darkness than there have been for years.<\/p>\n
Predators that feed on the burgeoning insect population are more numerous too.\u00a0 The clearings are busy with hunting wasps, yellowjackets and spiders.\u00a0 Insect-eating songbirds seem to be thriving.\u00a0 At twilight, squadrons of bats dart back and forth hunting nocturnal insects.<\/p>\n
The riotous new growth reminds us of just how amazingly resilient life is, even in the face of disaster.\u00a0 As the environment changes, some creatures disappear.\u00a0 But others arrive to exploit niches created by the new conditions.\u00a0 This resilience is reassuring, as we look at the discouraging signs of our own presence on Earth.<\/p>\n
Humans are remarkably adaptable.\u00a0 We\u2019ve established ourselves almost everywhere on Earth, from tropic heat to arctic ice, from dripping rainforests to parched deserts.\u00a0 And as we populated the world, we\u2019ve consumed more and more resources, prompting the extinction of other species great and small.\u00a0 Humanity has roared across the face of the planet like a hurricane.<\/p>\n
No creature deliberately sets about to eliminate the resources it needs to survive, of course.\u00a0 But it\u2019s the nature of every species to exploit its environment and reproduce more of its own kind.\u00a0 Nature put limits on such expansion, however.\u00a0 Algal blooms offer a clear example:\u00a0 When there\u2019s an abundance of nutrients\u2014nitrates and phosphates–in a body of water, the algae population can explode.\u00a0 The single-celled phytoplankton divide and re-divide.\u00a0 But eventually, doomed by their own success, they deplete their food supply.\u00a0 The population crashes.\u00a0 Dead algae sink to the bottom, consuming the water\u2019s oxygen as they decay.<\/p>\n
As our human population pushes against the limits of Earth\u2019s resources, it\u2019s easy to envision our own species heading for such a crash.\u00a0 We\u2019re awfully ingenious, so technology may be able to stave off disaster for some time yet.\u00a0 And we do have the benefit of intellectual understanding.\u00a0 We may yet have time to develop the wisdom to curtail our exploitation of the environment.<\/p>\n
Even with zero population growth, it seems unlikely that our planet can sustain billions of humans through the coming centuries.\u00a0 Our own crash may come through famine, pandemic, war, climate change, some combination of those disasters, or by some new and as yet unforeseen catastrophe.\u00a0 Human population may not decrease to the point of extinction, but\u2014barring some extraordinary leap of technology yet to be imagined\u2014our population will probably contract to drastically smaller, sustainable numbers.<\/p>\n
Given that prospect, it\u2019s encouraging to watch what\u2019s happening in the woodland clearings left by Isabelle.\u00a0 In the aftermath of great destruction, living creatures of all kinds are repopulating and restoring the damaged environment.<\/p>\n
Like all species, Homo sapiens<\/i> is a transient phenomenon.\u00a0 But our exit from the planet will leave behind a living world.\u00a0 Life itself, in all its amazing diversity, has survived and prospered on Earth for three and a half billion years.\u00a0 From the perspective of that time scale, the span of human existence is just the faintest twinkle of a firefly.<\/p>\n
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copyright by Paul Fleisher 2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ten years ago Hurricane Isabelle roared through Virginia, leaving a new landscape in her wake.\u00a0 Behind our house, Isabelle uprooted hundreds of mature trees.\u00a0 In some places, they fell like dominoes, each leafy giant toppling the next. But in the aftermath of destruction has come regeneration.\u00a0 The rebirth began immediately after the storm, and continues …<\/p>\n