• March 21 – How to Formulate a Forest

Maybe the last time there was this much brainwork in North Alabama was when moonshiners and revenuers played their cat and mouse games in these steep coves.

Tony Hiss, the famous New York travel and conservation writer, started asking questions and taking notes as soon as he got off the plane in Huntsville. Back at the Finch cabin at Dutton, Patty Gowaty, the UCLA evolutionary biologist noted for her work on gender and sex in evolutionary processes, regaled and educated all afternoon with her stories of bluebirds and human social behavior. And that evening, in the flicker of the fire that was our only heat, UCLA distinguished prof Stephen Hubbell offered us a master class in his latest evolutionary theories, for which he was awarded the prestigious International Prize for Biology.

 

It was enough to sober a moonshiner.

It’s a lot to digest in one sitting, but Hubbell patiently outlined the mathematical evidence for biodiversity, plotted from tropical forest dynamics research centers around the globe. It’s a new way of understanding why tropical forests are so diverse, and offers dramatic new insight into the dynamics of common and rare species. It also may help us predict whether these species will survive or not. As Hubbell has noted, it’s a bit like the application of physics theory and mathematics to complex biological and ecosystem processes that are hard to document and describe.

 

The significance of those mathematical abstractions hit us in the face the next morning, when we first saw the bluebells and other wildflowers in bloom at Callaway Sinks, at the upper end of the Sharp Bingham preserve. Tony quit taking notes and stood spellbound. I think the only word that I heard leave his lips was “magical.”

 

Why the wildflowers and trees and shrubs –rare and common – are arranged so uniquely on the slopes of Paint Rock is a fitting challenge for all evolutionary theory. And that’s why Hubbell and team are here, to set up what is likely to become one of the world’s most important forest research plots.