British Columbia’s RainforestBritish Columbia’s coastal temperate rainforest is characterised by som

British Columbia’s RainforestBritish Columbia’s coastal temperate rainforest is characterised by some of the oldest and largest trees on Earth, the most common of which include Sitka spruce, red cedar, and Douglas fir. Trees can tower up to 300 feet and grow for more than 1,500 years. The biological abundance of British Columbia’s coastal rainforests are the result of over 10,000 years of evolution that began when the glaciers of the Pleistocene epoch melted. This forest used to stretch continuously along the coast from California to Alaska. Today, nearly 60 per cent of the world’s coastal temperate rainforests have been logged or developed. The Great Rainforest represents one-quarter of what remains.The North Pacific Ocean is a huge area, about 85 million sq/km (33 million square miles), with a shoreline stretching north from the islands of Japan, along the Russian Far East coast, across the Bering Sea to Alaska and down the west coast of North America to Californiaa distance of over 15,000 km (10,000 miles). Here there is a unique relationship between ocean and land. It is a relationship that is advanced by the Pacific salmon, whose life cycle is one of the defining characteristics of this amazing part of the planet.Lying in the northern hemisphere between the 49 and 60 degrees north, the temperate rainforest is smack in the middle of the Earth’s northern temperate zone. Most of the forest is in the boundaries of Canada, but it extends into the southern coast of the Alaska panhandle before petering out near the border with the Yukon Territories. As it stretches north, it begins to be compromised by more arctic conditionscolder temperatures, less sunlight, and shorter growing seasons. The forest itself is teeming with life. Although the rainforests at temperate latitudes do not have the great diversity of life that is found in their tropical counterparts, the massive nature of the trees here and their physical size and number combine to tip the balance of life per square metre in favour of temperate rainforests.The understorey comprises mainly of shrubs, ferns, and mosses. Flowering herbs and grass that need more sunlight just can’t compete under the darkness of the forest canopy. The forest floor is carpeted in moss. Stream sides and damp areas host ferns and wherever breaks in the canopy allow sunlight inalong streams or rocky openingsshrubs such as salmon berry, rose, blueberry, elderberry, mountain ash, and devil’s club provide important summer food for the grizzly and black bears.Not all the plant life in the forest grows on the ground. The tress themselves carry heavy loads of mosses, ferns, and even some shrubs and small trees. An old Sitka spruce can carry several hundred kilograms of plant life on its broad trunk and branches. And when an old tree falls in the forest its broken body provides a good rooting environment for new ones. The soil in the forest can be quite barren and washed of nutrients and minerals, so a seed from a nearby tree will find more to sustain it on the fallen trunk of one of its neighbours than on the forest floor. These fallen giants are known as nursery logs and several trees may grow along their length as they decay and are absorbed back into the soil.Centuries ago, the temperate rainforests would have extended many hundreds of kilometres further south into the continental United States. Along the coastline of Washington, Oregon, and into northern California the pristine relationship between salmon and forest would have continued but for the influence of man. But the great coastal forests are largely gone, consumed by the voracious appetites of the timber industry and the salmon runs so overfished that they are a shadow of what they once were.Today the heart of the Great Forest is along the British Columbia coast from Vancouver all the way to the Alaska border and beyond, an area roughly 800 km by 150 km (500 by 100 miles) that includes thousands of islands and a massive mountain chain broken by hundreds of fjords and inlets to produce a coastline more than 100 times longer than its actual length. Here the Coast Mountains reach down to sea. Steep, granite-sided fjords cut deep into them. Large rivers and watersheds reach 20, 30, 50 km (12, 18, 30 mils) inland. In the valley bottoms of the larger river systems, the forest grows to its maximum size. This is where you find the giantsSitka spruce 2m (6ft 6 in) in diameter and hundreds of years old; ancient red cedar, many still bearing scars from their use by native people centuries ago; and western hemlock and yellow cedar 45m (150 ft) and taller.~JMImage credit http://bit.ly/1KSt1EG. Accessed on 08/10/16More Info:Canada’s Coastal Rainforests: http://bit.ly/2dEyHIXBC’s Coastal Forests: http://bit.ly/2e2c3t7http://bit.ly/2dMgKHWCanada Parks Rainforest Habitats: http://bit.ly/2dHnuYuThe Incomappleux Documentary - British Coloumbia’s Inland Rainforest. Full Documentary. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Vnm4k4O9iI -- source link

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