I drove a ATV through this deciduous forest in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest in Wisconsin, on a visit to my aunt in 2021. Forests provide essential provisioning, regulating, supporting and cultural services. Some areas of this forest are used for logging.
Plants absorb light energy & transform it into useful energy (food), meanwhile shading the ground and cooling Earth's surface.
Forest Fires and
Loss of Biodiversity
Natural wildfires are actually normal in the taiga. Forest fires occur because: the summers in the taiga are quite warm and dry; there is a thick carpet of pine needle litter which is perfect tinder to help start a fire; occasional summer storms generate lightning strikes; coniferous trees contain a sticky resin, which burns easily. Such fires actually create biodiversity. This is because certain animals where the forest is newly burned, which different species live in areas that have not burned for hundreds of years. This is the result of the process of secondary succession: the burning of biomass introduces organic matter in soil and increases fertility. Although the productive season is brief, the forest is able to “bounce back” quickly because soil is already present. Fire also exterminates tree-killing insects, which helps conserve habitat and biological diversity.
However, wildfires in the taiga have increased since the 1990s. It is thought that this is due to global warming, bringing warmer and drier summers. They are becoming larger and more frequent, without giving the forest time to recover. This means that only fire-tolerant trees will begin to dominate, reducing biodiversity. Plants that aren’t fire-tolerant, and the animals that feed on them, would decline.
(David Nieper Academy, 2018)
Pests, Diseases and Loss of Biodiversity
The taiga has fungus and mold species that damage conifers’ needles, trunks and roots, and insects also eat their pine cones, needles and young shoots. In addition, new pests and new diseases have spread to the taiga more recently. An example of a pest is the silkworm, which spread into eastern Siberia from Mongolia in the early 2000s. At this time, the taiga forest had been weakened by forest fires and drought, and the silkworm finished many trees off. BBC NEWS | Silkworm threatening forest
In North America, ‘plagues’ of spruce-bark beetles have killed large numbers of taiga trees. Over 6 million acres of Alaska’s forest show signs of spruce-bark beetle activity! Finally, an example of a disease is the white pine blister rust. This is a fungal disease that attacks white pine trees.
(David Nieper Academy, 2018)
