Due to a combination of factors, the Trembling Giant, sometimes called Pando, which is latin for “I spread,” appears to be dying. Sadly, quaking aspen forests are dying off across the western United States, but scientists are trying to save them. More via an interesting article by John Hollenhorst at ksl.com:
Utah scientists are trying to organize an emergency rescue effort to save the largest living thing ever discovered anywhere on Earth.
It’s known as Pando — a single organism, living in central Utah, that some scientists say could also be the world’s oldest living thing. But Pando is dying and may have only a few more years of glory.
Pando consists of grove of quaking aspen trees spanning 106 acres in the Fishlake National Forest near Fish Lake. Scientists call it an aspen clone, which is essentially a single plant comprised of thousands of trees, connected by underground roots.
. . .
In the 1970s, scientists tentatively mapped Pando’s boundaries. More recently, Utah State University geneticist Karen Mock wondered if Pando’s reputation as the world’s largest known organism was overblown.
“So we set out to either confirm or deny that,” Mock says.
She took DNA samples from 209 trees, mostly within that boundary. Her testing verified what was long suspected.
“Genetically, in fact, Pando is one enormous clone over 100 acres,” Mock says, “probably over 47,000 individual trees.”
In all, Pando weighs about 13 million pounds, which makes it by far the most massive organism ever found.
“There may well be some larger clones than Pando out there,” Mock says, “but it’s the largest organism that’s been described [by scientists].”
As Pando’s fame spread, the U.S. Postal Service honored the Utah curiosity as one of “40 Wonders of America.” A postage stamp issued in 2006 surely sets some sort of a record for making something very small out of something very big.
But now Pando is in serious trouble, according to ecologist Paul Rogers of Utah State University.
“I would call it a crisis, yes,” Rogers says.
When he visited Pando two years ago, the clone seemed reasonably healthy. But when he went back with a team of forestry experts three weeks ago, he was shocked.
“We’re looking at a situation where the whole clone could crash pretty quickly here, within the next few years,” Rogers says.
The bark of Pando’s mature trees shows they’re dying from drought and beetles. That’s typical of aspen stands throughout the West and, by itself, is not especially worrisome. But disturbingly, small trees and sprouts have vanished from the area spanned by Pando.
“There was no regeneration and there was no mid-story tree,” Rogers says. “So if you might think of those as the young ones and the juveniles, there’s no young ones to replace those dying trees. So this set off alarm bells.”
Rogers says there is an overabundance of deer and elk in the area and he believes the wildlife is feeding on the young sprouts. He also says a small amount of livestock grazing in the area is playing a minor role.
Rogers wants emergency action to fence out the deer and elk. Some government agencies are looking into it, but that strategy is sure to be controversial. Fences would have to be quite high to be effective in holding out deer, and at least one rancher also has grazing rights in the area.
Another complication is that recreationists may have concerns about a high fence in such a scenic area. A U.S. Forest Service campground adjacent to Fish Lake is actually within Pando’s biological boundaries.
Rogers says a fence would be effective, though. A small portion of Pando — less than 10 percent — is already fenced. That part of the clone is thriving and regenerating.
If Pando does die out or becomes sharply reduced in size, it would be particularly poignant because of the clone’s presumed age. Pando is conceivably the oldest living thing ever studied.
The removal of wolves or key predators from certain landscapes may explain why the aspen is declining. More on this theory via an excellent article by Pete Aleshire at the Payson Roundup:
Aspen have declined by 50 percent in Colorado, 60 percent in Utah and 95 percent in Arizona, according to a recently published study by researchers from the Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station. Study plots in many areas have shown a 50 percent decline in recent decades, with most of the stands giving way to thick forests of pines.
. . .
Aspen experts blame a variety of other factors as well. For instance, deer and elk love to browse on aspen seedlings. So some researchers think the explosion of the elk populations in the Southwest in the past 50 years may have also pushed the aspen toward extinction.
That theory took a hit recently when researchers in Yellowstone found to their surprise that the growing number of wolves in the park hadn’t helped out the dwindling aspen.
The U.S. Geological Survey researchers concluded that the decline of aspen in Yellowstone did coincide with the population explosion in the elk herds after the removal of the wolves in the 1890s. However, none of the dwindling aspen stands had staged a comeback after wolves returned — reducing the number of elk by 40 percent.
Only fences that kept elk out altogether allowed some of the aspen stands to start producing sprouts from those buried roots that grew into new trees. The researchers concluded that rising elk numbers played the key role in the decline of the aspen, but the wolves haven’t eliminated enough elk yet to make a difference.
Another study implicated drought, rising temperatures and a host of plant pests and diseases unleashed by the trends. One careful study in southwestern Colorado published in Forest Ecology and Management documented the loss of 10 percent of the aspen in one area in less than two years. The study found that a plant canker and three types of beetles played a role in killing off the biggest trees at a dismaying rate. The aspen on south-facing slopes at lower elevations suffered the greatest loss, which implicated the effects of drought and rising temperatures.
A new species of mouse lemur — Microcebus gerpi or the Gerp’s mouse lemur — has been described from Madagascar. Researchers discovered the new species during biodiversity surveys in the Sahafina Forest. The discovery highlights the importance of surveying unprotected and unexplored forests. Also, the discovery underscores the need to conserve Madagascar’s remaining forests, which are threatened by slash-and-burn agriculture (or tavy in Malagasy) and illegal logging. More via Science Daily:
