Week Three- Field Trip to Olympic National Park

Our weekend trip to Olympic National Park was a really fun and educational experience. Old growth forest was really incredible to get to see, and exploring the intertidal region of Salt Creek was excellent as well. While on this trip I thought a lot about how crazy it is that these different ecosystems we saw work so perfectly. Each organism has a job and without it, the system can fall apart (as I will touch on later). I am lucky to have gone on such an exciting trip with a great group of naturalists!
While exploring the the trails around Nature Bridge, I learned about competition between trees and plants in the old growth forest. Plants and trees in that area are all competing for light, nutrients, and water, which is why you see such a diversity of plants because each is designed to harvest one of those in different ways. A specific way I saw competition was by epiphytic ferns growing on trees so that they could try and harvest more light. In addition to competition, I also noticed some patterns of disturbance. Some trees had been damaged by fire, which severely harmed much of their trunk. Amazingly, these trees survived the fires and damage and are still able to grow and heal themselves. However, it is likely that other species that were near the tree at the time of the fire were not able to survive, and after the fire new species (perhaps a nitrogen fixing red alder?) likely would have colonized the area.

You can see where the inside of the tree has extensive fire damage.

Predation was not as clear to me in the old growth forest, however an example of this might be different species of dear eating the ferns, wildflowers, and other plants that live in the area. 

In the rocky/intertidal region of Salt Creek, I saw competition between the goose barnacles and mussels. Both of these species need to be able to root themselves to the rocks, so these species are competing for space. 

Here you can see goose barnacles (bottom left) amongst the many mussels.

While I do not have any evidence of clear disturbance documented, I think a fairly common example that would be found in that region would be when sea lions come on shore. They could easily detach any barnacles or mussels as well as sea stars that were stuck onto the rocks, leaving behind bare spaces. Predation was also something I was not able to document, but one example of predation would be sea lions eating mussels or sea urchins. A ripple effect related to this could possibly account for the vast amount of mussels that I saw; while exploring Salt Creek, I only saw two sea lions. If the population of sea lions is very low, and seal lions eat mussels (otters would also eat mussels, and we did not see any otters) then it would cause the population of mussels to go way up, as there are very few predators eating them, which we saw by the vast amount of mussels we were walking across. Mussels eat plankton, and since the population of mussels is so high, they would be consuming huge amounts of plankton, which would potentially harm any other species who need to feed on the plankton as well. Another example of this could be that there are not otters at salt creek, but otters eat sea urchins. Thus, without its natural predator, the population of sea urchins would rise. Sea urchins eat kelp, and with such large numbers of sea urchins, this would significantly reduce kelp populations.  

Walking on what seemed like a bed of mussels. 

Not a good picture at all, but the head of a sea lion poking out of the water.

Additionally, while hiking the trails around Lake Crescent, I was able to compare the vegetation on the west facing slope (Storm King) and the east facing slope (Marymere Falls). I was able to notice many differences, mainly I think due to different amounts of moisture and sunlight. On the Marymere side, I noticed many ferns and moss- moss was covering nearly all of the trees and snags and ferns blanketed the forest floor. In addition I noticed this side seemed to be predominantly douglas fir trees, although there was a variety of trees on both sides. This side was also just generally darker. On both sides we noticed a lot of western red cedar. 

Mossy trees. 

A view of the water fall with all the ferns growing around it. 

On the Storm King side, we noticed many more wildflowers including chocolate lilies, succulents, and trillium. We also saw some really cool madrones that had peeling red bark.This side also seemed to be more shrubby rather than having moss and ferns and this side seemed to have more salal (at least I noticed it more on this side). We hypothesized this could be due to this side receiving more light which would aid wildflowers in photosynthesis as they can't reach the light above the canopy like large trees can. Some of the trees, especially as we got higher up, seemed to be more bare as well (as in having less leaves). We also noticed a large erratic just before starting this trail (this is irrelevant to the vegetation, but interesting nonetheless).  

Peeling madrone bark. 

Chocolate lilies. 

Succulents.

Trillium. 

Below is the photo I drew of the landscape of Lake Crescent. This lake was carved by a glacier from the Frasier Lobe. You can see the "U" shape of the valley carved by the glacier. It used to flow into the Elwha river until a landslide thousands of years ago isolated it from the river. The lake is so blue and clear because nothing can really live in it due to poor nitrogen and other nutrient levels, but also due to the barrier caused by the landslide. It was a really cool experience for me to sit and look out at the lake and think about how it was formed and what it looked like before. Its really hard to imagine the way that it used to look, almost hard to believe!