Losing Trees

Whether cut down purposefully, knocked down by a disturbance, slowly outcompeted or simply grown too old - trees inevitably are lost over time. But they are not gone. Fallen trees remain in the forest and slowly decompose into soil. Forests with thick soil tend to have greater resistance to disturbance and are often better at supporting growth of new trees!

Translation: "Important relationships and experiences stay with us. We can learn from mistakes and grow stronger from our loses." -TD

If your forest is full, the growth of stronger trees will inevitably weaken others. This is natural selection - the strongest survive.

Which trees are weakening?

These tend to be pioneer species that thrive on harsh conditions/disturbance and are not as well adapted to grow in a mature forest.

Weakening may first occur out-of-sight underground. With weak roots, the tree may become very sensitive to changing moisture conditions. Growth of leaves and trunk may be lessened creating greater pest susceptibility. Finally weak roots make this tree more likely to blow over in a storm.

What to do if one of your trees is slowly dying? Either:

1. SAVE THE TREE!!! Fertilize the weak tree and chop back competing trees. Note, fertilizer is expensive and may require continuous application. AND, chopping competitors may create longterm wounds in your forest. In many cases, saving the tree is not possible.

2. Accept the slow loss, be thankful, and use the gap to grow the remaining trees (RESISTANCE trajectory).

3. Plant new trees that can take the place of the dying tree (resilience trajectory); or, that are better adapted and force out the slowly dying tree faster (revolutionary trajectory).

A note on big dying trees:

Sometimes big trees can't keep up. They begin to rot from the inside and slowly give up limited resources to surrounding trees that are better adapted. These big dying trees can remain standing for years until they fall over - but even then they are not gone. Once on the ground they slowly decompose.

While this is inevitably a big change - forest can become more robust if better adapted trees were able to force out poorly adapted trees - thus the new ecosystem is stronger - in business this is disruptive innovation - it is disruptive! The decomposing tree will add carbon to the soil that allows new seedlings to more readily sprout.