Interesting things happen in the forest all the time. Whether we hear the tree fall or not, we can look around to deduce what has happened. I know a little bit about this, for example, stumps that indicate logging or root-dishes from a tree that has fallen over, but (professor) Tom Wessels goes far beyond my poor abilities to extract key events from subtle clues. He includes obvious clues such as stone fences running through the woods to more subtle clues such as the flatness of the area in the forest (or not). Fires, farming, hurricanes, logging, disease, snowstorms - each leaves different imprints on the land and on the trees that survive the event. With careful observations and deductions, he can even give rough time estimates for the event, some of which can correlate back to recorded history (e.g., "the hurricane of 1857" and such). I am going to read his book and see what I can deduce about the forests in this area. His work seems to be primarily on the forests of New England, so I will have to do some adaptations for the forests of the Pacific Northwest. Should be fun.
Forest Forensics, or Reading the Forest: Episode 1, Episode 2, and Episode 3
He has books, too.
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