If you are not familiar with the work of Dr. Suzanne Simard, it could reshape the way we think about forests and the larger natural world.
Let’s start with Darwin and the Theory of Evolution. For most of us, evolution has been portrayed as a giant competition for limited resources. Survival of the fittest means only the most effective competitors survive and reproduce, and only the fittest of their offspring do the same — natural selection. There’s a constant struggle that pits every member of a species against each other, and against the other organisms around them.
This emphasis on competition has been adapted/adopted into the doctrine of Social Darwinism — the idea that the rich getting richer, the powerful getting more power is a matter of natural law, and has been used a justification for laissez faire policies, imperialism, racism, eugenics, and so on.
Supposedly, if you are rich and powerful, that makes you ‘fitter’ than those who are not. It’s just the way things work. (Even if you are only rich and powerful because you got the ‘right’ parents in the birth lottery.) As it happens, there is no scientific basis for Social Darwinism, however convenient it may be for some to believe it. There’s also the problem that a species perfectly adapted to its environment will be so only as long as its environment does not change.
Natural selection is driven by competition for limited resources — but there’s more than one way to survive and thrive besides outright struggle. This is where the work of Suzanne Simard, PhD is leading to a reappraisal of how we think about forests and other natural communities. It seems Cooperation is also a survival strategy. The science of ecology easily encompasses it along with evolution.
Doctor Simard began her career working as a forester — guiding commercial logging companies in harvesting timber and replanting forests after clear cutting. Industry practice was (and still is to a large degree) based on the idea that the best way to get maximum yield from timber is to kill off all the non-commercially valuable species and plant only the ones that have market value. The idea is, removing the other plants allow the desired ones maximum access to the limited resources and result in maximum growth.
This conflicted with Simard’s own upbringing in a family that had made a living from the forests for generations with selective harvesting. Simard was confronted with a basic problem: the seedling trees that were being planted in clearcut and de-vegetated areas failed to thrive; many of them died.
Figuring out what was happening would lead to a life-long program of ground-breaking research challenging many of the assumptions behind forestry, with larger implications for biology — all the more resisted because she was also a woman in a field dominated by men. A quick summary of some of her findings:
- Trees are not isolated individuals simply competing against every other plant around them — the mainstream view.
- Trees are linked by networks of fungi growing between and into the roots of trees and other plants. They need these fungi to survive.
- These fungal networks allow trees to share information — chemical messages about stress, parasites, attacks, etc. that allow others in the network to respond. Mapped out, these look a lot like neural networks.
- The fungal networks also allow members to share water and nutrients in ways that can vary with the seasons and individual needs — and it happens between different species.
- These networks are complemented by information plants exchange by giving off volatile compounds in the air that can be picked up and absorbed by others.
- “Mother trees” — mature individuals — can selectively identify their own offspring to give them preferential help and pass on actions based on years of living experience, having survived droughts, disease, and other challenges.
- As they age they begin to do this at their own expense — and dying can take years.
- In effect, clear cutting every thing, including Mother Trees, is imposing wide scale amnesia among its other negative consequences.
Dr. Simard has worked primarily with forests, but her findings have broader implications and other researchers are extending them. If we are going to understand the natural world and act in ways that support it, we have to recognize it is not just a jumble of individual pieces in collision.
If you want to find out more about this, Dr. Simard has published a book that explains her findings in plain language while also serving as an autobiography. It’s an engrossing story. Finding the Mother Tree — Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest.
There’s an interview with her at NPR’s Fresh Air. 35 minutes.
There’s a Ted Talk as well — a 12 minute listen.
Bonus Reading
This is something that doesn’t just apply to trees. Sara Robinson writing at Orcinus posted about basic systems theory that dovetails with what Simard has found.
Kauffman’s Rule #1: Everything is connected to everything else. Real life is lived in a complex world system where all the subsystems overlap and affect each other. The common mistake is to deal with one subsystem in isolation, as if it didn't connect with anything else. This almost always backfires as other subsystems respond in unanticipated ways.
The idea that Darwin’s Theory of Evolution boils down to “Every man for himself” has always been oversimplistic.
Kauffman’s Rule #25. Competition is often cooperation in disguise. A chess player may push himself to the limit in his desire to defeat his opponent, and yet be very upset if he finds out that his opponent deliberately let him win. What appears to be a fierce competition on one level is actually part of a larger system in which both players cooperate in a ritual that gives both of them pleasure. Not "doing your best" is a violation of that cooperative agreement. Similarly, the competitions between two lawyers in a courtroom is an essential part of a larger process in which lawyers, judge, and jury cooperate in a search for just answers. Businesses cooperate to keep the economy running efficiently by competing with each other in the marketplace. Political parties cooperate in running a democracy by competing with each other at the polls. And so on.
Industrial forestry that seeks to ‘maximize’ growth and push for ‘efficiency’ is all about increasing profit, not good management — and is self-defeating.
Kauffman’s Rule #5 Nature knows best. Natural ecosystems have evolved over millions of years, and everything in them has a role to play. Be very suspicious of any proposal to alter or eliminate an apparently "useless" part of the system. If it looks useless, that just means that you don't understand its function, and the risk of doing harm is that much greater. When in doubt, be careful, and always try to find a "natural" solution to a problem if at all possible.
Kauffman’s Rule #19. Sloppy systems are often better. Diverse, decentralized systems often seem disorganized and wasteful, but they are almost always more stable, flexible, and efficient than "neater" systems. In Boulding's terms (#17), highly adaptable systems look sloppy compared to systems that are well-adapted to a specific situation, but the sloppy-looking systems are the ones that will survive. In addition, systems which are loose enough to tolerate moderate fluctuations in things like population levels, food supply, or prices, are more efficient than systems which waste energy and resources on tighter controls.
Extra Bonus Reading
The late science fiction author James H. Schmitz wrote a number of stories in which ecology played a particular part of the story line. Balanced Ecology is a 1965 short story about a forest in which the interrelated roles of all the species within it anticipates the kinds of relationships Simard has uncovered — and takes the neural net idea a lot farther...