Emily Sutherlin- 12/3/24 Forest Restoration

Caleb Redick on ecological restoration and forestry. He has been working in forestry for eight years. We simplify the landscape when people try to drain the land and kill the organisms living there. You can get wood, crops, and hunting in forestry to make money. But they are oversimplifying by using a tractor over the land when that is not what is best, and complexity is lost. Sometimes, you add species to the system to help restore peace and eliminate disturbance. Ecosystem integrity and network theory says, "Networks become more stable when they have more connectivity, and this complexity and stability increases with time” (C. Redick, slide 4). Why can’t we just let nature take over and recover independently? Because forest restoration is a way for people to help the ecosystem recover. A disturbance lowers species richness and carbon cycling. Forest restoration helps the environment to recover from the disturbance (forest fire, drought, acid rain). “Natual disturbances can result in dynamic equilibrium, communities develop and replace each other after a disturbance, some can arrest this succession and create an alternative stable states”(C. Redick, slide 7); if large enough like a meteor, like what killed the dinosaurs. For example, deer don't have predators, and fewer people hurt deer. The deer love corn fields, so deep populations are increasing, and the forest can not handle that many deer.

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