The tree is broadly speaking bio-mass
zones. These are the stem, the crown, the detritus,
humus and the root associates.
Forests are dependent on a constant
input and output of nutrients, the tree has shed it’s
weight many times over to earth and air and has built
much of the soil it stands in where micro-organisms
fix the nutrients by interacting with the mosses, lichens,
fungi, ferns, the litter on the forest floor, the soil
and the breakdown of bed rock.
The living tree stands in
a zone of decomposition much of it transferred,
reborn, transported, acts as a filter system,
water production or is re-incarnated into
mosses, fungi, bacteria, insect life, birds
and mammals etc.
The zone of decomposition and nutrient
replacement is lost forever and the soil progressively
exhausted wherever plantations and mono-culture regrowth
replace complex native forests.
These processes essential
for maintaining high quality water productivity,
are lost forever where ever present forest management
practices or land clearing takes place.
Research has shown there can
be as much as 550 tonnes per hectare of logs
on the forest floor of old Ash or Wet Sclerophyll
forests.
