Redwood Reader

I have mentioned several times there was glomalin in the thinking behind the Gilham Butte Community Management Plan draft. It is difficult to see where this would be the case without understanding the nature of glomalin. Glomalin sheds light on a whole range of issues commonly dealt with by land managers and gives great power of analysis before actions are taken. It will appear anti-human but we are operating in ignorance. Once knowledge is widely available we will be able to make informed choices, lessen impacts and prepare for known results when we ignore or disregard those concepts. We now know the exact cost of mismanagement.
Glomalin is invisible and hard to detect but its impacts are everywhere. We easily see its effects when we squeeze a handful of topsoil. The soil sticks together and feels slightly damp. If you go down to a creek and grab a handful of sediment from a pool you find the material is lighter in color and has no stickiness to it at all. Glomalin is the key ingredient in clods and dirt bombs. If you take a handful of topsoil and bake it dry, it decomposes back into the sediment that constituted its origins. This, in a nut shell, demonstrates the properties of glomalin- dark coloration, stickiness, moisture holding and soil binding.
The vast majority of plants associate with mycorrhizzia fungi in a symbiotic exchange that benefits both parties. At this point it becomes useful to see the functioning forest as a city of individuals paying to build an infrastructure to support its diverse population at the present and with enough reserves to maintain itself through times of moderate stress. No individual can survive this process, it must be done as a team, which is why Douglas fir without mycorrhizzia are dead trees.
Let us say we are at a denuded site and are trying to bring it back faster than it will by itself. Morels are fruiting wherever the surface was turned and the mycelium interrupted. Seeds are falling from trees and blowing around from forbs, grasses and sub story plants along with molds, fungi spores and pollen. Soon seedlings are hooking up with rhizopogons in dense stands that immediately compete, drop needles and duff, and process enough soil to hold water through the annual dry season. The competition is stiff and there are losers all along the way from needles to branches to trees. That is the strategy for the builders of this city. The dead material creates the all important duff that protects subsoil processes and allows water infiltration into the root zone storage system. It also allows more light to the growing above-ground members that are the factories and farms of the city. The more photosynthetic product available n the system, the quicker it produces canopy and duff, which slow precipitation and direct it to the subsurface system, and the faster roots and fungi grow, expanding the biologically conditioned soil region. Each individual species is like a separate business depending on aspect, climate, soil and other conditions, but the currency is one, and all contribute to the overall health of the system, a biological Gross Domestic Product of carbon dioxide fixation and water retention. Fully functioning regions have nearly disappeared from industrial lands but are abundant in parks and to a lesser extent in private hands. We need new rules protecting against disturbing the forest floor.
The root zone is growing every day because the fungi are foraging throughout the soil zone depositing glomalin as they go. The more glomalin is deposited the more water the ground can absorb and hold into the next dry season, and allowing for summer stream flows. This then is the function of time in glomalin issues, because it is a buildup of bio-deposited material created by both tree and fungi with a rate of decay. The bigger the tree and root system, the more molecules of this that are produced and the healthier the forest system is.
The result of this is awareness of the impacts of human activity on natural systems. Keeping glomalin protections in the background as the essential condition maker for biological processes in the natural world colors or guides our thinking on vegetation management, access, roads, repairs, fire risk, thinning and TSI activities, invasive species, recreation opportunities, sediment and the stability of in stream projects based on upslope conditions. We find it an essential element in all planning for terrestrial natural resources.
It is often said it takes a thousand years to create an inch of topsoil, and that millions of tons blow away every day. It may be true it takes that long for complete mineralization of the duff layer, but soil is created in a few years by fungal deposition of glomalin. It blows away when the glomalin is destroyed or unprotected. Duff is created annually. The role of wood as a carbon source in the soil is overstated and is more important for bringing in decomposers that deposit glomalin from secondary sources rather than directly from photosynthetic products, increasing biodiversity and recycling nutrients for other inhabitants of the city. We can also see it will take a long time for those seven seedlings to evolve into a city because their rate of building has been hampered by lack of supply- of glomalin. They aren’t even planted as close as their direct seeded cousins that grow in dense thickets at first, the collective effect of many individuals restoring the system faster than any individual will be able to do for decades.
Many large restoration projects are being proposed around the state and across the West. All of these projects, from the lower Colorado to Owens River and the LA River as well as our own Eel and Mattole Rivers are being restored through purchase of property and riparian tree planting.. We have talked about all of the issues involved. We want big trees and removal of glomalin and/or water blocking structures whether pavement, roofing or structure, and the recognition watersheds need to function for rivers to be healthy, and that glomalin is the key ingredient in functional watersheds, and that watersheds need to be grown far from the riparian zone as well as in it to work correctly.