Windstorm brings new growth to Britannia Woods
Despite all the damage last week’s windstorm did, it is already a force for regeneration in the area it hit hardest — Britannia.
This summer, the Citizen covered the slow migration of a white pine forest in the Britannia Woods from one side of Mud Lake to the other.
Ecologist Dan Brunton, who did that study, went back this week and found the storm has accelerated this movement. It is also flooding the forest with sunlight that will speed new growth.
The young pine forest east of Mud Lake “was virtually untouched,” he writes in an email.
“Lots of downed limbs, of course ... but only a very few downed pine trees (I only saw one). You’d be hard-pressed to know there was a recent major storm event here unless you were specifically looking for evidence. These younger, more densely packed, more flexible individuals could go with the flow for the most part.”
“It’s a very different story west of the lake in the old pines, of course. The core impact area of the blowdown (as we called such storms in Algonquin Park back in the day) is localized to a strip about 150-175 metres long and about 50 m wide, at the southwest corner of the lake.
“This area looks like Pork Chop Hill, with the majority of large pines — several dozen at least, along with a scattering of Burr Oak and Red Maple trees — broken off or uprooted. Uprooting is frequent here, reflecting the impact of the most intense wind. The very shallow, rain-soaked soil allowed the widespread roots to be pried off the bedrock quite easily.”
Old pines to the north in a hardwood forest were also toppled. They were higher than the surrounding
The bottom line is that even such a rare event as the Big Storm is really not a big deal ecologically.
maples. “Giant sails, in other words, to catch the gusts in a storm like this,” he says.
“So where’s it all going? Good places — or at least, ecologically appropriate ones,” he writes.
“Woodpeckers, jays and scrub birds are already moving into the downed crowns to take advantage of newly available food and shelter. They would not have been seen in these spots even two weeks ago. This activity will accelerate going into the winter and will continue for years.
“The young maple trees already in place and growing up below the pines in the core impact area were largely unimpacted — save those individuals that a big pine tree trunk fell on! — and will now have a tremendous growth spurt, competing amongst each other over the next 15 to 20 years for the newly available sunlight and canopy dominance. The exposed earth on and about upturned tree roots will serve as nurseries for numerous tree seedlings and other plants.
“There will be more overall biodiversity in the impacted areas as all the edges and openings and new vegetation layers are taken advantage of by birds, amphibians, mammals, insects and other invertebrates. The old pine forest west of Mud Lake will become the new maple forest a few decades earlier than it was (already) on track to do.
“The bottom line is that even such a rare event as the Big Storm is really not a big deal ecologically. ... So while the impact is certainly catastrophic for many individual natural features and shocking to human witnesses, it is not a catastrophe for the habitat or even the Mud Lake area. Indeed, such storms have long been known to contribute significantly to forest renewal and diversity across eastern North America.”