When it comes to restoring ecosystems to optimize sequestration we have many teachings from the past, but we need new teachings as well. As in we need to do more than just restoring the food chain and creating better habitat for indicator species which are chosen because they are good indicators of an ecosystem’s overall health.
There’s many definitions for the word aggregate, a still yet clearly defined ecological definition has many aspects, such as all the different shapes and sizes of a landscape. From the biggest tree, to the bedrock, down to fallen leaves and even the tiniest fungal spores and bacteria in fertile soil, an ecologically healthy landscape, or even just the garden in your backyard can be indicated by how diverse these aggregates are.
Visit the garden of a master gardener and you’ll discover that there’s many different trees and plants with unique leafs and shapes growing rapidly despite being in crowded conditions.
What tends to make a master gardener’s work so beautiful is how many different vegetation types are crowded together, which can sometimes boost growth rates because there’s so much competition for space and light and the gardener is always intervening to make sure nothing gets crowded out and nothing gets too dominant. A similar method in ecological restoration is known as the Miyawaki Method which densely plants near a hundred species of trees and plants to restore barren landscapes.
As for gradient, much like flat earthers and vacant lots that have been graded flat and cleared of everything except invasive european grasses and blackberries that are mowed every year, a lack of a diversity of gradients is an indicator of a lack of ecological and intellectual health.
In much the same way a bonsai tree is the miniature form of a giant ancient tree, so too small patches of wild places naturally have miniature mountain ranges with essential micro-climates for ecological diversity to thrive.
Not only is this the natural state of the planet’s surface that’s shaped by erosion and uplifitng, but on a more micro scale undisturbed forests create a long history of trees living and dying and forming nurse logs and holes from upturned root balls. This diversity of gradient is essential to creating an abundance of wet and dry areas, as well as sunny and shady areas of slopes that face in many different directions relative to the passing of the sun at different angles each season.
The philosophy of having a vibrant diversity of gradients in your landscape restoration effort can be applied to not just the physical shapes and sizes of surfaces, but also at great depth there is microscopic levels of physiological gradients in the most complex aspect of a healthy forest, which is soil ecology.
As master composters teach, there is a gradient for soil diversity and the higher up the plant succession ladder you go, the greater the land’s ability to generate more biomass per acre in ways that are more diverse and thus more resilient and adaptable to a rapidly changing climate. There’s far too much to say about this particular subject, but the details of the below image will be covered extensively in future chapters.
