Radiolab - Forests on Forests

Episode Date: February 4, 2022

For much of history, tree canopies were pretty much completely ignored by science. It was as if researchers said collectively, "It's just going to be empty up there, and we've got our hands full studying the trees down here! So why bother?!" But then, around the mid-1980s, a few ecologists around the world got curious and started making their way up into the treetops using any means necessary (ropes, cranes, hot air dirigibles) to document all they could find. It didn't take long for them to realize not only was the forest canopy not empty, it was absolutely filled to the brim with life. You've heard of treehouses? How about tree gardens?!  This week we journey up into the sky and discover Forests above the forest. We learn about the secret powers of these sky gardens from ecologist Korena Mafune, and we follow Nalini Nadkarni as she makes a ground-breaking discovery that changes how we understand what trees are capable of.  P.S. This episode is a layer cake of arboreal surprises (including the reappearance of a certain retired host).  A few visual tre(e)ats:  We first learned about the magical world of the canopy from this beautiful video from Michael Werner, Joe Hanson, and the PBS Overview team. It features Korena Mafune’s research up in the treetops, as well as the people who have dedicated their lives to saving what’s left of the old growth forests. We highly recommend checking it out! And, if you’re hankering to go climb a tree after this episode, you might enjoy browsing Hallie Bateman’s wonderfully illustrated guide to the best climbing trees in NYC for a little inspiration.Support Radiolab by becoming a member today at Radiolab.org/donate.Radiolab is on YouTube! Catch up with new episodes and hear classics from our archive. Plus, find other cool things we did in the past — like miniseries, music videos, short films and animations, behind-the-scenes features, Radiolab live shows, and more. Take a look, explore and subscribe!  

Oh wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. You're listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab. From WNYC. You're listening. Wow.

Yeah, there's three feet. Because they were wondering when they were going to go to the moon. They wondered how much dust would be on the surface of the moon. And they were worried. I once wrote when they were going to go to the moon They wondered how much dust would be on the surface of the moon and they were worried I once wrote letters back and forth to Neil Armstrong So the things that he told me it was like they really weren't at all sure how much dust There was on the moon and whether it was you know variable so you'd be I'm Lillip. I'm Latif. This is radio lab

Yeah, and you it would take your weight and then you'd walk three steps forward You'll be up to your knees and this of course is none other than crully the crawl Grab a crawl watch. So I don't know why you didn't walk around more. I mean you like you went to another Celestial body the first producer anime you and called him up a few weeks back to talk not about the moon actually Although with Robert you never really know where your conversations are gonna go And we can call them off a few weeks back to talk not about the moon actually, although with Robert, you never really know where your conversations are going to go. But they talked and said about a new kind of world that was discovered right here in the forests of planet Earth.

Okay, we're ready. We're at the long last ready to begin. Okay. Okay, so one of the first things I ever did when I got to Radio Lab was work on a show of yours called Tree to Shining Tree. I don't remember how long ago we did that. That was like three years ago or something. It was 2016. Isn't that wild? I know. And for those of you who haven't heard the episode, you should go listen. It's amazing. But just a tiny recap here, it was all about the network that exists under the forest floor.

This whole other world right beneath my feet. This network is this deeply complex inter-oven mat of tree roots and these mushroom threads, these fungi, connecting all of these trees together and helping them share resources. Here from that episode is Ecologist Suzanne Samard. and helping them share resources. How about the forest that exists underneath the forest? Here from that episode is Ecologist Suzanne Samard. The tree that were the biggest and the oldest were the most highly connected. So we've identified these as hubs in the network. It's just this incredible communications network that people had no idea about in the past because we couldn't didn't know how to look

Anyway, that episode is awesome. We learn about all this magical stuff that is happening right beneath our feet in the forest But for this episode I wanted to call you because I recently learned about this new layer to the story. Okay. So in tree to shining tree, we look down under the ground. Right. Where do you think we should look now? Well, I guess I'd be inclined if there was more news I'd do more down. I think.

Well, how about, okay, how about instead of looking down, we peer into a type of down that is in the up. Oh, okay. And to take us there, all righty, forest royalty. I've read that you are known as the Queen of the Canopy. Is that true? Is that true? Is that true? Where did that come from? I have no idea where that came from.

I've also been called the Mother of the Fars Canopy. And now that I'm 67 years old, I think it's gonna be sort of the Dowager Queen or the Grandmother Fars Canopy. What about the end? This is ecologist Nalini Nadkarni, who like a lot of kids spent a large part of her childhood up in trees.

You know, you grab a branch, you put your leg over it, and suddenly you're up in the tree tops. And for me, it was like kind of my place I had this sort of chaotic large family, you know I'd come home from school with chores and homework But the tree tops of these eight maple trees that lined my parents driveway were kind of my refuge She'd spend whole afternoons up there just sitting and wondering and look at the leaves and I go like Why is this branch have much yellow or leaves

than that branch, which has a very good question. And it's like, well, what is going on? What is this branch independence? Or, you know, I'd watch squirrels jumping from one tree to another and just think, God, you know, where do they go? And what if I attached a spool of thread to the back of one of them?

And I could trace where they go. So, but it was a place for my imagination to sort of run wild. Nellini grew up and followed that imagination to study ecology in grad school. This was back in the early 1980s and I was just starting out and I came to my graduate committee and I said, I know what I want to do with a rest of my career. I want to study the first canopy and they said,

well, that's kind of like tarzan and Jane stuff. You know, with so many questions to ask and answer on the forest floor, why do you have to go into the canopy? At the time, canopies were just basically not studied. They were hard to get up into and there didn't seem to be a lot of point. The scientific thinking was, there's just not a lot going on up there. But there was something about the canopy that I kind of just had this intuition That it's not enough to just stand on the ground and look up

And so with some modified mountain climbing equipment she began to climb these giant old-growth trees in the Olympic rainforests of Western Washington, which is what's called a temperate rainforest You know these places where in the morning, the fog from the Pacific Ocean comes rolling in. And the tree just gets in every morning bath of just pure mace. Yeah, the tree just goes... Yeah. So, Nillini climbs up into the canopy of this giant big leaf maple tree. And I throw my leg over a branch and I'm sitting up there and I'm anchored with my rope. And I'm looking around. I just see this enormous three-dimensional panoply

of moving leaves and moving twigs. The branch she's sitting on, as well as all the branches surrounding her, are covered in the super thick layer of this amazing growth of mosses and lichens and ferns. Kind of like the tree is wearing this very unruly green shake carpet. You get the sense of being in a place

that looks very simple from the forest floor, but is actually this kaleidoscope of life. Her job up there was to take samples of the moss that was growing on these branches. I had to cut off chunks of it. So using some clippers, she'd be able to cut down into that moss on the branch she's sitting on.

And as I peeled back those mats of mosses beneath instead of just bare branch, I saw that there was all the soil up there. This branch has a foot of soil piled up on it. Soil that formed over many, many years of mosses and leaves dying and decomposing right there on the branch. It's so weird because you're sitting up there in the canopy like a hundred feet above the ground. And then you're digging your fingers into the soil

that could be the soil that's, you know, in your backyard garden for the forgiveness sake. You could imagine getting your gardening gloves out and planting rows of tulips, a hundred feet in the air. They're like invertebrates in it, there were earthworms in it. Treeworms? Yes, that is so weird.

I know, I know. Even the stars of the old episode, the fun guy were there. Really, so the mushrooms have climbed up the tree as well. This sort of thing. They're sharing resources, they're helping the tiny plants up there communicate with one another.

The same as on the forest floor. It's almost like she stumbled into a perfect miniature of the forest floor she had just climbed up away from. And straddling a branch way up high in the air, she's like, huh, well that's cool! This was in the 80s and since then there have been so many more, well that's cool, because more and more scientists have been accessing this new world using cranes and ropes or building platforms or my favorite way up into a tree is this French guy, François Salle, who pioneered the use of the dirigible to access the canopy.

Oh wow. There's incredible pictures of these. So it's a balloon trip? It's a balloon that floats. Yeah, that floats over the tops of this green ocean, just kissing the tops of the trees and the scientists can just gently lean and trim this and that. Anyway, so one way or another, all of the world

scientists began getting themselves up into trees and documenting what they saw there. And some of the coolest discoveries were found on the west coast in the old growth, Redwood Forests. And oh my gosh, these giants were found to be holding these pockets of soil up to three feet deep. And growing in this soil were flowers, berry bushes, mosses, lichens. They found salamanders living hundreds of feet in the air who spend their entire lives never touching the ground.

I'm waiting. I'm waiting if you say a small deer or something like that, something very weird. I mean, I don't have a small deer for you, but I do have something that I find totally bizarre, which is that up in Redwoods, scientists have found these tiny aquatic creatures. An aquatic creature? It's aquatic, yeah, it's like the shrimp lake. They found a fish?

Pretty much it's like the shrimp-like thing, a species of something called the copapod copapods which is actually this whole subclass of creatures. They're the most abundant animal in the ocean and a huge part of the diet of baline whales. This thing is like swimming around in these mossy mats and no one knows how it got there. in these mossy mats and no one knows how it got there. Anyway, these tree canopies that up into the mid 80s, everyone thought were just pretty much empty. Not only are they not empty, they actually hold about 50% of all terrestrial life on the planet. 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50% 50 is 50% 50, 50, 50, 50, 50. Yeah.

Wow, that's a weird note. That you're saying 50% is up in the air somewhere? Yeah, up in the air, up in trees. Whoa. Which, you know, sounds kind of unbelievable. But when you think of places like the Amazon, all those bugs, birds, plants, animals, it adds up. And most of this life has made a home in these canopy soils.

What soil on the tree branches? I was like, When a collegeist Karina Maffune learned about these canopy soils. I, I felt, I fell in love. I was like, okay, there's like a forest, in a forest, on a forest.

I need to research this. And you told me that thinking about these canopy soils, like these tiny, perfect replicas of the forest floor below, wasn't quite right, thinking about these canopy soils like these tiny, perfect replicas of the forest floor below wasn't quite right because these canopy soils, they have something that the forest wants. Huh, well what would that be? Well, back when she was a grad student

in the Washington Olympic Peninsula, Kareena collected soil samples from the forest floor throughout the year. And she noticed that in the spring Olympic Peninsula, Krenet collected soil samples from the forest floor throughout the year. And you notice that in the spring growing season, there are as many nutrients available. Specifically, there was a lack of phosphorus and nitrogen, two important things that every plant in the spring time wants to help them, you know, put forth new leaves,

help them grow. And those are rare plants love that. Right, yeah. And in contrast to the last episode where we talked about trees cooperating with each other. All these trees, all these trees that were of totally different species were sharing their food underground. Like if you put kareena told me that in that same sharing forest when resources are scarce. There's a ton of competition on the forest. For trees have roots grafted together, there's micro-risal networks, you know, that are spanning across.

There's this big battle to, you know, uptake nutrients. But Kareena had also taken samples of the canopy soils, and she saw that during these times of scarcity below, these canopy soils had so much more nitrogen and phosphorus available for plant uptake compared to their forest for counter parts. Meaning that this soil for a plant was crem de la crem. It's just amazing. Downstairs, there's shortage. Upstairs, there's abundance. When it's crumbs down below, up in the sky,

held aloft above the plebeian masses, is like a Thanksgiving dinner. And when Karina learned this, she thought, I don't know, what do these can be soils mean? Because they're not just hanging out there. They're not just there for it a reason, right? She's right, they're not. These Guy Gardens, they get even better.

Better at what? Hmm? Better at what? Well, let's just say, they're not alone up there. What's that? What's about to happen? Well, I'm going to tell you. Alrighty. Right after this short break. Lillie, let the radio lab back Annie and Robert, where we were just about to learn the true superpower of those

gardens in the sky. Right. So, to understand this wizardry, we need to go back to Nellini. Find with me. And this amazing discovery that she made. Okay. So, I remember sitting on this tree. She's back up in a tree in the Washington Rainforest, digging around in this canopy soil, and

I began seeing these root systems that were running up and down the branches of these trees. They didn't look like they belonged to moss or ferns or any other plant you could see up there. And there were fine roots all the way up to some of them were the diameter of my wrist. I mean these were gigantic roots. And I thought, well that's weird. What are these roots doing here? So I began just tracing the roots that I was finding. Like you took hold of one root in your hand instead of like wet, exactly like a string.

Exactly. Like it's like following a string. Exactly. She gently excavates this root, scooting along the branch, as she uncovers it. I was tied in so I could sort of swing around and move from one branch to another. I had my water bottle with me so then whenever it was began difficult to sort of

unstick the root, I could just throw a little water on it, keep going, keep following it. It was like, I don't know, it was like being a detective. Well, what did you think it was going to leap to? I had no idea. I thought, well, maybe there's some sort of vascular plant that I'm not aware of that's here, but I don't think so. So then she follows the root all the way back to its beginning. And oh my gosh! Its origin was a dead end in the tree itself. What? The big tree, the one Nellinean sitting in, is growing roots from its branch and snaking

underneath these mats of soil, of canopy soil. Let me think about this somehow. It realizes that it could find soil high up somewhere like me. And so it just takes its roots and its roots travel up and go, whoop to the left, say, let's root not only where we normally root down there, but let's root up here. Yes. Whoa.

So things that you thought were below can move above way above high above you. Yes. Whoa. So things that you thought were below can move above, way above, high above you. Yes. It was a real revelation. And Karina thinks that it's during a drought or during spring growing season when resources in the forest floor are scarce, that these big trees... That's why they can top into their canopy soils. It's like they're like, hey, there's a bunch of really great stuff here to suck on. So why don't you put out a

root out here? And that's exactly what these trees do. I kind of always compare it to like a secret cabinet that has all the good snacks in it. It's like if you're teaching a preschool, it's like, well, all of the school children are fighting over the snacks and fighting over these resources. You just go into your, you know, can't if you so well cause it and you got your good snacks up there. Because we're looking for those special minerals

like the phosphorus and stuff and that's where we can find it. Right, and it's finding it in its hat. You're finding it in its hat. That's a nice Louis pudding, yes. Yeah. That's a nice Louis way of putting it. Yes. That's a lovely way of putting it. The expression I'm going to eat in my hat has now got a whole new meaning.

Oh yes! Robert! I love that. Yeah. One thing that both Karina and Milini told me is that this is a new field. There is just so many things to be found high above the forest for. For instance, Karina told me sometimes there are actual trees growing up there. And I've seen like a five foot spruce growing out of a nook and a pisoil.

Wow. And you'll see a lot of like baby maples growing up in the old maple, so it's like a little nursery. Wait, second, I mean, there's a tree growing on the tree? That's right. On the branch. In the soil on the branch. Oh. And who knows?

Maybe as more people study the canopy, we'll find little trees on those trees. And maybe there will be little trees on those trees on those trees. Yeah, it's fractal, like little plants off the ground and then the other damage, the moss, which is little plants on top of little plants. So there's like there's little layers and layers and layers of life and the more you go up, the more the layers you will find. That's very cool.

Thank you, Annie McEwan, for reporting and producing that gorgeous episode and leaving us with that image of not turtles all the way down, but trees all the way up. This episode was reported and produced by Annie McEwen, special thanks to Kiyomi Taguchi, Michelle Ma and Nina Ernest, a huge thank you to Michael Werner and Joe Hanson and the team at PBS Overview. They tipped us off about Karina's research. They were the ones who got us excited about Canterbury's oil in the first place. You can actually see all that gorgeous shag carpeting in the forest. In their beautiful video, vivid color, the video features Karina and other people who have

dedicated their lives to saving with left of the old growth forests. You can check that out on our website or on theirs. So thank you to them. And special thanks, of course, to the many ringed tree trunk that is Robert Krawich coming back on the show to talk trees with us. Thank you for doing that, Robert, we love you. That guy's all bark, no bite.

You know what I mean? That's why I like him. All right, Latif, before we go, go, go for real real real real. For folks who maybe enjoyed this story of a mystery tree, I thought they might also enjoy to know that there is a new series coming out about a mystery meat. The mystery meat. It's fam. So I just want to take a quick moment here to let you know that our friends over at the experiment have just dropped a three-part series on spam. Oh, I just think I've been craving

without even knowing that I was craving. I wasn't. I actually had quite an aversion initially when they told me they were working on this. Not a spam fan over here, but I am a fan of what the experiment people have to. So it turns out the reporter and producer Gabrielle Burbe went on this journey to kind of uncover why her grandpa

who grew up in the Philippines had such an attachment to spam. She thought it would be a cute little one-off episode. And at the beginning, she ends up taking this kind of wondrous, willy-won guttors through the spam museum, which is down the road from the spam factory. And she ends up encountering all of these institutionalized spam puns, which I think you'll really enjoy. And just to give you a preview, just play you a quick bit of that. I'm the Spam Manager. Sable Lord, the Spam Anagir.

Okay. So everything was spam we make, we have fun with. We have spam ambassadors who help us here off the museum. We've got 20 of them, and then I'm this fan manager. And then we really encourage people when they leave the museum to have a spam-tastic day, we serve spampels, which are just a little piece of spam on it with a pretzel.

But the more and more she got into her reporting, this thing kept coming up about a strike, a strike at the spam factory that kind of changed not just the course of this town, but sort of the labor movement in America. And the more she tried to get people to talk about it, no one would talk. Thank you. So when I say people don't talk about the strike, I mean like to this day, they don't talk about the strike. I believe people don't believe you better believe people don't want to talk about it. There are still people who are not speaking to each other. It was like the elephant in the room, nobody really talked about it.

We don't talk about these things. We don't talk about things that are difficult or cause pain. The strike tore this town apart. I need two brothers who were just fighting in for many years to not talk to one another. Because to cross that picket line was the worst. Families and friendships were torn apart. They were not speaking and did not speak for years. Parents, children, children, parents.

This is a dark stain on the town. But it was horrible. You can feel the trauma of this strike. It didn't destroy Austin, but it did change it forever. It is part of the creation myth of that town. You know, if there's a defining moment for the town, it's this. Everybody's got something ugly in their past that defines them, whether we want it to or not. And there are a lot of things you can say about Batman, but at some point you're going to have to talk about the Joker. And I don't think you can talk about Austin

without talking about the Joker, which is this strike. And anyway, it is a surprisingly beautiful and weirdly relevant series. So we just wanted to give folks a little preview and let them know to go check it out on the experiment. It's called Spam. How the American Dream got canned. Got canned?

OK, let's, yeah. I for one, I'm excited to unroll the tin and see what's in there. OK, great. OK. Go check it out. You can find it on the experiment wherever you get podcasts. Spam.

How the American Dream got can. Radio Lab was created by Jada Bumrod and is edited by Soren Wheeler, Lulumiller and Lottipnasser, our co-hosts. Susie Lektemberg is our executive producer. Dylan Kefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, Rachel Q.Sick, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz-Cutieris,

Sindrniana Sombendum, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwan, Alex Niesen, Saur-Kari, Arianan Wack, Pat Walters, and Mali Webster. With help from Carolyn Makasker and Sarah Sandbach, our fact-checkers are Dan Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Adam Shippell. This is Amanda Darby, calling from Rockville, Maryland. Radio Lab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org

Science reporting on Radio Lab is supported in part by Science Sandbox, a Simon's Foundation initiative dedicated to engaging everyone with the process of science. Box, a Simon's Foundation initiative dedicated to engaging everyone with the process of science.