Ecological Responses at Mount St. Helens Revisited 35 years after the 1980 Eruption

About this book

Ecological Responses at Mount St. Helens builds on existing work exploring succession, disturbance ecology, and the interface between geophysical and biological systems in the aftermath of the 1980 eruptions of Mount St. Helens. The eruption was dramatic both in the spatial extent of impacts and the range of volcanic disturbance types and intensities. Complex geophysical forces created unparalleled opportunities to study initial ecological responses and long-term succession processes that occur in response to a major contemporary eruption across a great diversity of ecosystems – lowland to alpine forests, meadows, lakes, streams, and rivers. These factors make Mount St. Helens an extremely rich environment for learning about the ecology of volcanic areas and, more generally, about ecosystem response to major disturbance of many types, including land management. Lessons about ecological recovery at Mount St. Helens are shaping thought about succession, disturbance ecology, ecosystem management, and landscape ecology.

In the first five years after the eruption several syntheses documented the numerous, intensive studies of ecological recovery. The 2005 volume Ecological Responses to the 1980 Eruption of Mount St. Helens was the first ecological synthesis since 1987 of the scores of ecological studies underway in the area. More than half of the world's published studies on plant and animal responses to volcanic eruptions have taken place at Mount St. Helens. The 25-year synthesis, which generally included investigations (i.e., data) from 1980-2000, made it possible to more thoroughly analyze initial stages of ecological responses and to test the validity of early interpretations and the duration of early phenomena. And 35 years after the eruption, it is time for many of the scientists working in the first three-decade, post-eruption period to pass the science baton to the next generation of scientists to work at Mount St. Helens, and a synthesis at this time of transfer of responsibility to a younger cohort of scientists will be an enormous asset to the continuation of work at the volcano.

Contents

Prologue. To Mount St. Helens; John Daniel
Preface; Charles M. Crisafulli and Virginia H. Dale

Chapter 1. Ecological Responses to the 1980 Eruption of Mount St. Helens: Key Lessons and Remaining Questions; Virginia H. Dale and Charles M. Crisafulli
Chapter 2. Sediment Erosion and Delivery from Toutle River Basin After the 1980 Eruption of Mount St. Helens: A 30-year Perspective; Jon J. Major, Adam R. Mosbrucker, and Kurt R. Spicer
Chapter 3. Geomorphic Response of the Muddy River Basin to the 1980 Eruptions of Mount St. Helens, 1980-2000; Thomas E. Lisle, Jon J. Major, and Jasper H. Hardison
Chapter 4. The New Spirit Lake: Changes to Hydrology, Nutrient Cycling and Biological Productivity;  James E. Gawel, Charles M. Crisafulli, and Rich Miller
Chapter 5. Soil Carbon and Nitrogen, and Evidence for Formation of Glomalin, a Recalcitrant Pool of Soil Organic matter, in Developing Mount St. Helens Pyroclastic Substrates; Jonathan J. Halvorson, Kristine A. Nichols, and Charles M. Crisafulli
Chapter 6. Forest Understory Buried by Volcanic Tephra: Inertia, Resilience, and the Pattern of Community Redevelopment; Donald B. Zobel and Joseph A. Antos
Chapter 7. Primary Succession on Mount St. Helens: Rates, Determinism, and Alternative States; Roger del Moral and Jonathan H. Titus
Chapter 8. Plant Succession on the Mount St. Helens Debris-Avalanche Deposit and the Role of Non-native Species; Virginia H. Dale and Elsie M. Denton
Chapter 9. The Spread of Exotic Plant Species at Mount St. Helens: the Roles of a Road, Disturbance Type, and Post-Disturbance Management; Lindsey L. Karr, Charles M. Crisafulli, and Jeffrey J. Gerwing
Chapter 10. Lichen Community Development along a Volcanic Disturbance Gradient at Mount St. Helens; Peter R. Nelson, Bruce McCune, Tim Wheeler, Linda H. Geiser, and Charles M. Crisafulli
Chapter 11. Succession and Mycorrhizae on Mount St. Helens; Michael F. Allen, Matthew R. O'Neill, Charles M. Crisafulli, and James A. MacMahon
Chapter 12. Primary Succession on the Mount St. Helens Volcano: Ground Beetle (Coleoptera: Carabidae) Community Assembly and Species Turnover, 1980-2010; Robert R. Parmenter, Charles M. Crisafulli, Tara E. Blackman, Cheryl A. Parmenter, Gary L. Parsons, Danny Shpeley, and James A. MacMahon
Chapter 13. Diversity of Large-Bodied Macroinvertebrates in Ponds Created on the Debris-Avalanche Deposit Following the 1980 Eruption of Mount St. Helens; Shannon M. Claeson, Charles M. Crisafulli, William J. Gerth
Chapter 14. Characteristics of a New Rainbow Trout Population: Spirit Lake, Mount St. Helens Volcano, 2000-2015; Tara E. Blackman, Charles M. Crisafulli, and Shannon M. Claeson
Chapter 15. Mammal Community Assembly during Primary Succession on the Pumice Plain at the Mount St. Helens Volcano, 1983-2015;  Charles M. Crisafulli, Robert R. Parmenter, Tara E. Blackman, and James A. MacMahon
Chapter 16. Volcano Ecology: State of the Field and Contributions of Mount St. Helens Research; Frederick J. Swanson and Charles M. Crisafulli

Coda. Another Weather;  Ursula K. Le Guin
Coda. Pearly Everlasting;  Gary Snyder

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Biography

Charles M. Crisafulli is a Research Ecologist with the USDA, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station. His primary research focuses on initial and longer-term ecological responses of organisms, in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, following explosive volcanism. From 1980 to present (2017) he has worked at Mount St. Helens and since 2008 he has annually conducted field research at several other contemporary eruption sites in Patagonia, Chile. His primary research themes are processes of succession and assembly of biological communities, and chiefly focus on small mammals, birds, amphibians and arthropods. He is currently engaged in expanding and testing the generality of lessons drawn from Mount St. Helens to volcanoes in other regions of the world such as South America, Asia, and Alaska, and more broadly to developing a global volcano ecology database to access the current state of the field and to develop science strategies for the future related to investigations of volcanically disturbed ecosystems.

Virginia H. Dale is a Corporate Fellow at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in east Tennessee. She was on the first team of biologists who entered the Red Zone at Mount St. Helens after the 1980 eruption and has been studying vegetation reestablishment there ever since. Her primary research interests are disturbance ecology, plant succession, land-use change, sustainability, and environmental decision making. She has served on national scientific advisory boards for five agencies of the United States and several committees of the National Academies of Science. She was among the members of the international science community that contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Scientific Assessment that in 2007 received the Nobel Peace Prize. In 2013, she was recognized with the Distinguished Landscape Ecologist award by the United States Regional Association of the International Association for Landscape Ecology. Her current interest is in understanding risk and resilience in a changing world.