Sierra Club April 9th Speakers’ Series - Jon Clark
Mount. St. Helens: Altering More than the Landscape
On May 18th, 1980 Mount St. Helens altered the landscape of southern Washington. A massive volcanic eruption stripped once dense forest areas to nothing. This reset the successional clock and provided scientists the perfect backdrop for studying the earliest stages of forest development. Up to that point forest succession was believed to be a predictable series of events in a deterministic process. Since the eruption, the study of these processes has created a new visualization of succession and triggered a paradigm shift from that of a prescribed process to one of stochasticity. This new understanding of primary succession is now being applied to other restorative efforts of devastated landscapes in hopes of arresting ecosystem degradation and reducing the loss of biodiversity. The research at Mount St. Helens demonstrates the tremendous value in long term studies when trying to decipher complex community interactions.
Last August Jon had the opportunity to visit Mount. St. Helens National Volcanic Monument and was amazed at how much evidence of the 1980 event was still dominating the landscape. He will be sharing a collection of photos from last summer’s trip as well as from other visits of colleague/mentor, Kurt Schulz, has made since the eruption. He will also discuss how ecologists viewed succession before the eruption and how these ideas have been revised and, in some cases, surrendered.
Jon Clark, an Alton native and Vice Chair of the PPG, has an M.S. in Biology with a concentration in plant ecology from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Jon works in the Department of Biological Sciences at SIUE and is also a part time instructor in the Biology Department at Lewis and Clark Community College
Come join us on April 9, 2018, from 7:30 – 9 PM at the Old Bakery Beer Company, Alton, at 400 Landmarks Blvd. 62002. Come early, around 6:00 PM, for dinner and meet the Speaker. Contact: Chris Krusa on 410-490-5024 if questions.
