Marilyn Vogel: Hello everybody.
Marilyn Vogel: Maryland vogel and i'm here to kick off this field trip or the southeastern sectional meeting of the geological society of America, and we always start on time so we're going to.
Marilyn Vogel: get going, here we have a lot to show.
Marilyn Vogel: So.
Marilyn Vogel: Let me just share first some slides.
Marilyn Vogel: about the field trip.
Marilyn Vogel: And can everybody see this okay everybody on here see this okay.
RISE- Audrey Heun GSA: looks good yes okay.
Yes.
Marilyn Vogel: Alright, so.
Marilyn Vogel: here's our field trip.
Marilyn Vogel: we're going to be looking at the confluence of plants and rocks you're in this very specific to this very specific geographic location.
Marilyn Vogel: i'm in the geo GEO sciences department here and then my collaborators Patrick Thompson who's on the on the zoom is the curator there, he is waving at the Davis arboretum and then.
Marilyn Vogel: we've got know jaan and he's our you'll see our unrepentant botanist i'm so he's an undergraduate here at auburn and just like.
Marilyn Vogel: His name suggests, he had to go out into the field today last night he just texted us it's like i've got to go look at plants tomorrow so but he's you'll you'll see a lot of him.
Marilyn Vogel: Okay, so one thing I want to point out here is this red hills azalea we'll be hearing more about that in part two of this field trip and the red hills azalea.
Marilyn Vogel: is also a little reminder for me to just say this is in draft form you'll hopefully see like this has been quite a process and it continues to be in process.
Marilyn Vogel: So we were just talking before about there might be a few little kerfuffle and I feel like I put this the wrong image for the red hills azalea in the movie or something but that's what it really looks like and there's a few other boo boos so we your patient yeah Hello.
Marilyn Vogel: yeah.
Hazel Gordon: you're breaking up on the Internet.
Hazel Gordon: Okay, quite hear you too well.
Okay.
Marilyn Vogel: let's see.
Marilyn Vogel: Does that better.
Marilyn Vogel: Hello audio is coming through fine okay.
Marilyn Vogel: alright.
Marilyn Vogel: So originally we had wanted to do this as just a walking tour and in person walking tour of the arboretum you.
Marilyn Vogel: walk across from the hotel and conference Center and you would see Patrick there because I would have emailed him and made arrangements and he would give you this amazing tour.
Marilyn Vogel: of our amazing biodiversity here in Alabama and be very inspiring but then we got put all online so that's our story.
Marilyn Vogel: And three parts that we're going to go over here are going to start with, part one where we meet this famous author who's written a lot about.
Marilyn Vogel: Alabama biodiversity he's got a new book coming out too soon same as Scott Duncan.
Marilyn Vogel: So we're going to go ahead and play this and if you go into the chat and you would like to watch this in a high def form, you can follow that vimeo link, but for the time being.
Marilyn Vogel: we're going to we're going to show it on quick time okay um.
Marilyn Vogel: So without further ado.
conservancy and a biological data repository organization called nature serve produced a report called precious heritage, the status of biodiversity in the United States.
authored by Bruce Stein link whitner and Jonathan Adams precious heritage was a comparative census the over 200,000 eukaryotic species known to be native to the United States.
The main message of the report was that, in spite of the US is exceptional levels of biodiversity, many organisms are coming under threat of extinction.
Precious heritage was followed, two years later, in 2002 by a similar report called states of the Union ranking america's biodiversity.
referred to as the Stein report this record parsed quantitative information from precious heritage into a set of state level rankings.
The findings of this Stein report were somewhat surprising, the yellow hammer state ranked fourth in overall diversity Alabama also ranked highly in terms of loss of biodiversity.
Alabama is neither an island, like Hawaii nor a particularly large state like California or Texas even back as far as Charles Darwin.
biologist have understood that islands and other areas that become geographically isolated over long periods of time tend to develop high levels of biodiversity.
Biodiversity tends to vary with latitude and, specifically, it increases with decreasing latitude.
States like California, which spanned nearly 10 degrees of latitude will also exhibit high levels of biodiversity.
It is well known, and an axiomatic fact that everything in Texas is big including, it would seem numbers of native species.
Unlike Texas in California, which ranked second and third in terms of total land area Alabama ranks 30th in terms of total land area.
So why does Alabama rank so highly in terms of biodiversity, our Scott Duncan is a professor at Birmingham southern College and the author of the book southern wonder Alabama surprising biodiversity.
Dr Duncan joined us via zoom to explain why Alabama ranks so highly in biodiversity yeah so there's there's four different factors home the fastest one to.
disperse with here is or dispense with here is the political back when the Mississippi territory, which was a combination of Alabama and Mississippi were.
became part of the United States that spanned five degrees of latitude from the coast, all the way up to the Tennessee Valley, and that was a lot of land and it covered a lot of territory that has a lot of species in it and that's a major reason.
Another reason, of course, is climate.
Alabama gets lots of sunlight lots of heat with that sunlight and of course lots of water, so all of this is governed by our climate factors.
We are in a lower latitude zone, so we have long growing seasons and a lot of intense sunlight that brings a lot of energy for photosynthesis.
And we also as folks that are familiar with the region know we get a lot of rain.
and basically that's a great combination that if you're a gardener and that's what you want sunlight and rain and that's what we have lots of here in the southeast and Alabama, in particular, the reason that Alabama is an anomaly, has to do with the Gulf of Mexico.
The currents in the Gulf bring hot tropical water through the yucatan streets straight up through the Gulf of Mexico and and land that water right on our doorstep.
Just south of the coastline and that's happening all year long, and so we get a lot of warm tropical waters delivered to the state's doorstep, that means a lot of heat is delivered to the.
To the continent as winds bring that that air off the ocean off the Gulf of Mexico and onto the continent, but it also brings in more importantly brings a lot of humidity.
it's estimated that about 50% of all the rainfall in the eastern United States is water that just recently evaporated off the Gulf of Mexico.
And the other 50% is water that had come from the Gulf of Mexico sometime before and it's being recycled so it's the Gulf of Mexico, which is the reason why.
Alabama and the southeast have such a wet climate another piece of the climate explanation for why Alabama has so many species is definitely involving fire.
Fire is most people think of fire as something that is foreign or alien or dangerous for natural ecosystems and certainly it can be when we humans have.
messed around with the landscape, such that fire can't behave in the ways that it has in the past.
In the southeast fire has played a role for a very long time, because the southeast get so much lightning and those most lightning strikes do not cause fire.
But back in the day when the landscape was well connected ecosystems were all integrated with one another one lightning strike could start a fire in one place, and then that fire would burn for days and days, sometimes months and spread over a large area and, as a consequence.
Much of the state of Alabama was in the surrounding states in the southeast were any location was getting burned regularly.
Some estimates are that, like along the Gulf coast that's the fire return interval interval is less than two years, about a year and a half, on average.
In places like where I live here in Birmingham up in the mountains.
it's estimated to be some were between seven and 10 years we don't see those patterns anymore, this is based on the evidence that we have of how things were like before we really started heavily manipulating the landscape so fire plays a key role in all of this for sure.
So climate as we were talking about is really important, but there's a lot of evidence that there's something else going on, and as you guys probably know it's geology.
Alabama has a hybrid terrain of mountain landscapes interior plateau and coastal plain five physical graphic regions collide here and each one of those regions has.
Different landscapes, with different types of rocks and soil is at the surface.
And each of those rock types or soil types sustain different species of plants and with different species of plants, you get different species of animals, so we have layers upon layers of diversity in the Alabama landscape.
There are places, for example, right here in Birmingham were on a 15 minute hike we can be in completely different types of forest where there's the this the tree species turnover is nearly 100%.
And that's because of different bedrock types at the surface.
So when you come when you combine when you look at that beautiful map of alabama's geology and you see all those colors.
You can also think of those colors representing different suites of ecosystems, each of which has their own unique signature in terms of combinations of species.
So that's so far we've got we've got three factors we've talked about so far to explain why Alabama has so many species political.
Climate in geology the last one that sort of ties it all together is the state's evolutionary slash geologic history, we have a very rich evolutionary past that has favored a lot of species evolution.
there's also some more recent events that are really important so, for example, during the pleistocene when most of the species that are around today we're already in existence during the pleistocene Alabama was spared, as well as other states in the southeast we were spared from glaciation.
And our ecosystems did not survive and in the way that they were before the place to seem they change they morphed but species were able to eke out some way of surviving forest, for example, retreated into.
More sheltered environments like river valleys and mountain codes and things like that you had an expansion of because it gets colder it also gets dryer.
And we had an expansion of prairie and also savannah, which is of course prairie with with scattering of trees.
And that's what was most of the Alabama landscape back at that time, if we go back deeper in time, the most important reason for why Alabama has so many species, to begin with.
What explains where they all came from, has to do with the appalachian mountains, the southern appalachian mountains fractured the Alabama landscape into.
Multiple discrete or semi discrete large and very different watersheds and each of these watersheds became something like an evolutionary factory that was cranking out on new fresh water aquatic species and as a result of this Alabama has over 300 species of freshwater fishes.
Over 180 freshwater muscles over 200 freshwater snail species nearly 100 crayfish species 175 dragonflies and damselfly species.
Over 30 species of non marine freshwater turtles and over 20 species of frogs So these are, this is a lot of numbers, a lot to keep track of their.
So here's what you all you have to remember, which is that, for these groups organisms these freshwater animals.
Alabama is the number one state in the US not number five but number one, there are many more stories that can be told about how the geology has influenced the species that we have here in the state today but.
The appalachian mountains and the pleistocene I think figure pretty prominently.
The yeah I love that 30 species of turtles take take back what I said about no animals, I know I love turtle.
Either some unique factors contributing to alabama's plant diversity.
yeah so alabama's plant biodiversity is really pretty interesting we are number one in the US in a global hotspot for carnivorous plants So be careful when you're out there in the woods carnivorous plants are like.
Especially on the coastal plain are like in a lot of the wetlands that are down there and there's many different species from pitcher plants to sunday's.
To all sorts of crazy other plants that people that most folks have never heard of before.
I think I tallied up over 30 some odd carnivorous plant species in the state when I was doing the research for southern wonder.
If you zoom out and look at all of alabama's native plant diversity we ranked number nine in the US, so not super high.
But when you look just at the eastern United States were ranked number three in the East, so we do pretty well in the East, one of the reason is that Western states.
have a lot of island effects by their mountain ranges so their mountain ranges function like islands and plant species over evolutionary time get isolated in mountain chains and then they diversify and so you wind up having those.
Those mountainous regions in the in the western us sort of functioning like species factories, like our watersheds do here in the east in the southeast and so that's that's why i'm Alabama doesn't rain rain quite so highly in terms of the plants.
But we still have a lot of bragging rights when it comes to plants and that has everything to do with our geology.
Because of variation in the physical landscape, we have 64 types of terrestrial ecosystems in Alabama.
We have those include 25 different types of forests and woodlands So these are ecosystems dominated by tree.
species and we've got 11 types of wetlands in the state and seven different types of glades and prairies so Alabama is very rich, with different ecosystems that are shaped by the plants they're here and, in turn, they are shaped by the directly by the geology.
When I was doing my research for southern wonder I kept circling back to one particular ecosystem.
That I actually when I first moved to Alabama started doing research, I did work in, and that was the key Tony dolomite glades.
In glades in general really helped me understand how the landscape in Alabama has changed over time.
So we get these weird situations where you'd have like a rare glade species that was just found in one glade area.
Nowhere else in the entire known universe, and then, sometimes in other glades you'd have a rare species that was found there.
And in several other glades but those glades were separated by dozens to hundreds of miles and that begs the question how did that pattern come about how could you have a little plant who seeds do not get dispersed very far.
wind up being in these little clusters that are hundreds of miles apart in across the southeastern us, they obviously could not have evolved separately and become identical.
That just didn't make sense and so something else was at play and so that led me into understanding more about our geologic history.
And, and how these glade environments, which do not have trees and our prairie environments and our barren environments, which are sort of like 50% grasses and 50% wildflower so somewhat barons are how they're all sort of related to another based on our geologic past so.
To understand this a little bit more, you need to know that the plants that grow in these weird environments.
They need lots of sunlight, they are really bad at competing with other plans they're excellent, however, at surviving and really harsh conditions, and that has been their their ticket to survival.
You leave a glade and go into the forest and it's dark and shady and those little plants could never survive in an environment like that, but out in the sunny rock outcrops they're able to do just fine and.
Because Alabama in has so many different types of rocks exposed at the surface we've got lots of different types of these glade environments.
We have sandstone glades we've got limestone glades we've got Granite glades we've got the yellowstone or dolomite glades we've even got Shell barons down on the coastal plain were old fossilized shells are exposed at the surface and support.
Rare plan communities, so all of this begs the question where did all this come from where do these species come from so.
Earlier we were talking about during the pleistocene how conditions were colder and dryer and during those times the forest retreated we think of forest as being the dominant ecosystem here in the southeast and there's some truth to that, however, during the pleistocene.
Forest were in the minority in terms of their their coverage over the landscape, what happened as we emerged out of the the pleistocene.
Is it conditions started become warmer and they got wetter because things are warming up the hydrological cycle speeds up more rainfall and so forth, and that was what forests needed to expand.
And as the forest expanded it started pushing the sun loving plants that had been doing well during these times into those positions in the landscape, where trees struggle to survive.
So that's one piece of the puzzle for explaining why you've got these rare glade and prairie species in these little outcrops throughout Alabama and the rest of the SE but there was another factor that influences the terrain that we know in Alabama today, a factor that.
What became a new force on the landscape, at the end of the place to seen and that of course we're humans.
The first Americans arrived in the southeast sometime between 15 and 30,000 years ago the stories still being written on that.
But by the end of the pleistocene humans were everywhere in the southeastern landscape and Native Americans were actively managing the landscape it wasn't a it wasn't the wilds.
Where you know, a squirrel could cross from the Atlantic coast, all the way to the Mississippi river without touching the ground or anything like that, no, no, no, no, the landscape was being actively managed the Mississippi and Indian culture.
Had cleared vast amounts of forest alone or.
or floodplains for maze agriculture in the in the upper woodlands trees were selectively.
felled to favor those trees that provided the hard masks that the native Americans survived on during the winter, so the the acorns and the hickory nuts in the chestnuts, and so forth.
So all that to say that the landscape was under very active management and one of the most important tools for Native Americans was fire.
fires were used to to provide better hunting grounds because the fresh plants that grow up after a fire attract the wildlife that they would hunt.
The fire was used for Defense you don't want a lot of brush around your village where your enemies can sneak up on you fires were used to clear land for agriculture.
So all that and more was the reasons why fire was a tool and so fires, of course, can be difficult to control, and they would burn through the landscape.
And, as a consequence, those those plants that love all that sun the grasses and the wild flowers that had done so well during the pleistocene.
They were able to stick it out pretty well as the pleistocene came to an end, because of the presence of fire on the landscape.
Of course, all that changed during and after the native American genocide in the eastern us fire was used by the first European settlers and some of the early Americans.
They were used fire to manage the landscape for mostly for grazing but very quickly that was that became out of favor and as a consequence that Eastern forests sort of.
expanded from their strongholds and the landscape that within probably yeah easily within a century of.
jamestown around 16 1016 916 10 when we had the first English settlement within a century of there.
The eastern landscape was closed up with forest and that became the cultural.
The cultural memory of what the landscape was like, which is of course a fallacy, the original landscape was so much different than it is today.
Then, then we think of it today, so a combination of geology and, of course, human intervention dating back thousands of years, is why we have the species still around today that are surviving on these rock outcrops and so forth.
Okay, great.
Marilyn Vogel: Okay, so we hope everybody likes Aaron Copeland there at the end.
Marilyn Vogel: Were there any questions about that before we get to Part two
Marilyn Vogel: Okay well feel free to chime in on the chat if you do have questions and.
Marilyn Vogel: Next up, we have a very special treat for you.
Marilyn Vogel: We have.
Okay.
Marilyn Vogel: Let me just make this quick announcement, we had a part one, be of this field trip and for time reasons we're going to just kind of put that in the archive will make this available either publicly or through GSA.
Marilyn Vogel: But this gentleman Dr binya odhiambo from the University of South Africa, talks about how we can use do botany and especially in mineral exploration into places that are heavily forested and also he talks a lot about remote sensing.
Marilyn Vogel: But we wanted this is such a beautiful day today, we wanted to make sure that we didn't you know spend all day looking at zoom so you know access that, if that is within your area of interest but next we're going to have part two.
Marilyn Vogel: Where we go on a virtual tour of the auburn arboretum with Patrick Thompson the curator Patrick is really more than a curator he's just a steward of all sorts in in the land, both here in auburn and and in Alabama at large we'll see he has a lot of activities.
Marilyn Vogel: This is his truck.
Marilyn Vogel: native plants are not optional So if you see that truck you know that Patrick is nearby and he's on this on he's on this, so if you have any questions, especially about Alabama flora.
Marilyn Vogel: This is your chance, so you can see him in the chat there but.
Along with Alabama a&m tuskegee university's auburn is a land grant institution, this means it is founded and funded by the moral act of 1862 in 1890.
As part of the reconstruction, the X funded historically black colleges and attempted to rebuild southern communities.
A darker side of the moral X was that funding for institutions came from removal of native Americans from their ancestral lands.
physically auburn rests on the ancestral lands of the choctaw Indians, it was funded by the sale of lands forcibly acquired from native tribes much further afield.
A new GIs project by the high country news suggests that auburn funding came from lands forcibly acquired from native peoples in California Kansas Colorado and other states.
Land grant universities are explicitly charter to serve their statewide communities as such auburn has a number of facilities and units that serve as both academic resources and public spaces.
The Donald at Davis arboretum at auburn is probably best thought of as a bridge between the auburn community and the natural world.
As we will see later in part three of this virtual field trip the arboretum is a hotbed of botanical advocacy an active investigation into some of alabama's rarest plants.
As a teaching and curatorial resource the arboretum is laid out to roughly match alabama's bio geographic provinces.
Plants and features in the north resemble the geography of the north of the state and so on, down to the south, where we found some of alabama's rare coastal communities and sandy GEO morphic features.
Patrick Thompson is the curator of the Davis arboretum born and raised on the slopes of sheets mountain just south of Birmingham Thompson wears many hats from scientists to landscaper to elementary school field trip wrangler.
In part two of Alabama GEO botany for rock jocks Thompson takes us on a climatically and geologically theme tour of the arboretum In it we learn about how climate GEO morphology and substrate types help create some of alabama's extraordinary plant biodiversity.
auburn and the arboretum rest on a regional feature referred to as the fall line.
The following separates older paleozoic appalachian features hills and mountains and locally Crystal and basement rocks from younger mesozoic sedimentary cover.
geologically speaking this feature formed at least 100 million years ago, if not before.
auburn and it's arena may have looked like a sandy beach with hi Crystal and mountains rising in the background older buildings and landscaping in the area, often use rock from local corey so we find evidence of these past features in strange new confirmations.
hi i'm Patrick Thompson curator here at Davis our freedom and auburn university and we're a 14 acres collection of plants native to Alabama and Jason states so we've got plants in the ground oriented in the same way, you find them in the state of Alabama at the north end of the arboretum.
So one of the beautiful things that we can do, laying out our plants like that is highlight them with various aspects of our geology.
stone is a great compliment to plant in any garden, and in our garden here and East Alabama the rocks that we are.
Most likely to use are the ones that are close to us and so sometimes when there's construction in town people get in touch with us over the geology department.
and bring to our attention things like wonderful chunks of my cases she's the night that was on a construction site just north of town, we were able to get like 15 tons of abroad and so now it's a prominent part of our display here the arboretum and another great local rock we have.
The salt and we've got this great rust colored rind on it, and we can show kids and talk to you about the iron content we have other pieces that are packed up and where you can see, the structure inside the rock.
And so, incorporating the stone elements with the plant elements really adds to the whole experience of moving through the state of Alabama so today we're going to do that through the arboretum and see some other parts of Alabama as we get.
Like the fossil record ecosystems often contain evidence of past conditions species disperse or migrate into an area due to beneficial conditions and then becomes settled, or sometimes stranded in that area.
Somebody diversity is this a legacy of the past, the pleistocene epoch encompasses the last 2.6 million years of earth history.
During this time homo sapiens migrated out of Africa and populated every continent, except for Antarctica.
During the places seen a northerly ice cap referred to as the laurentide ice sheet expanded and contracted over Canada and parts of the Midwest and northeastern United States.
The southeastern United States was spared from glaciation and served as a vast biological refuge.
Plants and animals migrated south to weather thousands of years of cold temperature and ice covered conditions to the north.
Even today we find many southern species like cougar and deer that are basically cold weather transplants, the plant Kingdom also bears witness to these past climatic events.
we're rolling hills tree.
and offer the best of both worlds.
In the same way you do in a larger sense in the state of Alabama we have things from.
The North eastern region of the US that reach their certain extent down here at the south end of the appalachians and.
during periods of glaciation they would have been completely absent from the northern parts of the continent, and so a lot of species will run down the coast.
And survive here in Alabama like this Canadian hemlock that will then be able to repopulate as the glaciers are treated.
And so that happened a few times, with a few species that are easy to point out.
And unfortunately until we get that time machine we can't really see what those communities look like, but we do have a fossil record and remaining plants that we can look at it show us what used to be here and now.
Here the trillium garden, we have a collection of plants from across the state, instead of a habitat that occurs in the state, and so one reason that we brought these things together here, so you can see, the big variety within the chili.
And there was a professor curator of the herbarium actually named john freeman and john freeman described about one eighth of the trillium species in the world.
Okay, and so it's such a challenging group to work with, especially in this area that he even named this one, the deceiving trillium surely i'm recipients.
And so, surely him a lily with things in groups of three so we've got three leaves three staples and then three pedals and then the internal flower structure also set up in threes but john freeman.
Huge huge name the trillium world also built the herbarium here at auburn university.
Really cool special plans and 40 species in the world 25 of them occur and Alabama Jason states, and is there any reason they're so common in Alabama.
yeah.
i'll address that ready yeah so the trilliums are another one of the plants that comes down and has found the greatest genetic and species diversity in the southeast but.
during periods of glaciation while they're all clustered here we get many of those species that occur up north, but also the ones that occur further south so again it's that.
Situation of Alabama geology and the compounding pressures of glaciation where you get a few species that have been able to run back up the east coast and cover Canada and areas like that, but then they're also pushed back down to North Alabama over and over and over.
So some of the species can't make it far north again, and they are stuck here, but there are others that run up and down the east coast over a long history.
plant species can limit their size, in response to limiting conditions, this results in genetic characteristics of dwarfism.
The oak tree species quirkiest point nine is a dwarf oak only found in Alabama and Texas this contiguous ranges like this one are considered enigmatic.
The points okay as it's called also has a very limited distribution in Alabama it is found in only six or seven counties.
botanist tended to find areas that share related flora and fauna as eco regions in this case the bones or occupies an eco region, referred to as the Southern sandstone ridges.
These features form primarily within carboniferous or pennsylvanian units referred to as the pottsville formation, the pottsville consists of conglomerates and students and shields complexity deformed as part of the valley enrich province.
Here we are at one of our sandstone outcrop displays very have some of the door folks of Alabama and.
Alabama sandstone markers point on is here, but so as the Georgia.
georgiana and both of these species are well adapted to live in small pockets on rock out crops or other species just can't make.
The Georgia we grow on brandon outcrops and sandstone outcrops and in both of those environments, you have this really dwarfed habit.
Because of the lack of prizes for you there's just not enough room for rooms, to support a big tree, and so, while this is adapted to live here and other trees aren't.
It gets out competed in the deep woods, but i'm gonna go look at a sample of the species and you'll see what I can do, and has its roots in.
So here we are.
In the southern part of the arboretum standing with the largest documented Georgia in the state of Alabama.
Now.
helikon the outcrops where this species grows, naturally.
It is a slow grower and they can reach.
hundreds of years and be much smaller than this, but when you take it out of its natural habitat and it doesn't have the competition other species like Northern ran over.
100 feet tall this tree.
Now.
it's not huge for an oak tree but it's huge for a door phone and so by giving this a nice deep coastal plain soil to sink its roots into we were able to grow state champion Georgia joke between 1985 and now.
And all because no competition, competition and the deep soil opportunity so on the rock outcrops those roots just can't go deep enough to get this bigger it'll fall apart, but here it can stay stay.
Even our stepping stone that here in our paths have exciting stories to tell and so we've got the ripple mark, so we can imagine water moving across a sandy beach or something, but they can also see little Beatles.
running across this prehistoric substrate.
getting their little story locked him forever.
hi one of my favorite times of the rain was really good and fresh rocks so we're going to be able to use these rods to recreate one of the most special habitats and Alabama telling the glades outcrops.
So we're going to start by stacking needs to form a Crevasse garden and that's going to flow into an open gravelly scree.
And then that will continue out into the lower wetter areas that would represent the banks of the River and then that will in turn.
flow into a group down here for willow and Bob plants and some other things that will take advantage of the water as it moves through this sloping system come back and see it sometime.
in nature and in life transitions or transitional areas are very important alabama's fall line is a transition that creates many unique opportunities for both flora and fauna.
Along the fall line we find scarce outcrops of a rare cambrian unit, the ketones dolomite the ketones dolomite occurs in an area that is marginal to the coastal plain.
As such, it is subject to hydrological conditions and fire regimes that have thinned out competitors and made water plentiful for millions of years.
These conditions have allowed a unique flora to evolve and populate a small area these plants was tolerate the elevated magnesium compositions in soils created by the dolomite the flora are so unique they even have their own U haul truck.
got you behind the scenes here at the Davis arboretum to show you a safe guarding bed, where we drew things like the federally endangered Alabama pitcher plant.
Green mountain picture plans, but also an entire ecosystem in one bed So these are plants from the.
tone of dolomite limestone glades in VIP county Alabama where nine new species were described from just a 400 acre area in the late 90s.
And this was heralded as the greatest botanical discovery in North America, of the 20th century okay and.
Some super rare things are growing in here they grow nowhere else in the world, a lot of them are single site endemics that occurred just on those big county blades.
And so we've got crushed oyster shells on a sloping bed of sand that we've done everything we can to get Bob plants at one end.
And these dry things like this cactus at the other, and then you know, we have some success and we get really excited when something like the Morris barbers button, this is a candidate for listing under the endangered species act.
grows flowers sent seeds and then we're really moving forward with our understanding of how to go these things, and where do they grow.
A seed into the limestone gravel.
Around the box that we made so plants know where they want to grow.
Things from limestone outcrops grow in limestone gravel so that's like one of the rarest plants in the world right there just growing in the driveway they're one of the rarest plants in the world okay.
don't step on it no man.
we're in the southern half of the arboretum and as soon as you come out past the halfway point.
you've noticed that the landscape gets a lot flatter, and that is why the coast.
Here in the loveliest village on the plains, but if you go north of town you're in the beat right away, so this is the fall we're looking north.
Where the rock stars, but if you go south.
The proof is in the soil, you can get a coastal plain soil sample and one under the arboretum and a pete months oh sample at the end.
We are in real life on the fall on.
together.
Really really cool.
slow the exciting groups of plants that you'll find here in Alabama these deciduous is alias so there's about 20 species in the world and.
15 of them live right here in Alabama and Georgia we're still just coming to terms with how much diversity, there is, there is a species that gets over 20 feet tall described in 2011.
The red hills is alien runs all through the red hills of South Alabama and up the chattahoochee basin to one county away from where we're sitting right now, at a major college.
20 foot tall dahlias of colors like this go on described.
it's part of the wonder of Alabama wonder how we've got so much diversity can't even acknowledge and sometimes.
Pretty amazing.
We have a fantastic diversity of plants here in the state of Alabama.
One thing we don't need is non native invasive species coming in and distracting important aspects of our ecology like pollinators right so.
Our native plums evolved here over hundreds of thousands, millions of years if you go far enough back and in the spring time.
They have a bloom progression where they don't overlap each other too bad so, for example, last week, this Mexican blom was in full bloom and it should have been covered in pollinators which would have given us plenty of plums come summertime.
You can see here a week later, the American plum coming into full blown now right behind that we would have the chickasaw plum.
munson plum and then finally hog plum on down the other end of the arboretum Oh, with a staggered bloom time over several weeks.
But instead if you're an Alabama you might have seen Bradford pears taking over all types of abandoned roadside habitats, probably still blooming in people's yards, but those are taking the pollinators away from our native species that feed our native animals.
So.
We have a great example of how nature has a complex system set up that we've disrupted by bringing in non native species.
Unfortunate unfortunate for these plums and for the box turtles turkeys foxes possums and raccoons everybody likes to eat plums even people, young people like to eat so.
you're never going to get to eat that bread prepare it just doesn't have.
To smell good to a now.
yeah.
we're here at the southern end of the arboretum and then.
Probably pretty obvious to you, since we've reached the land of sand dunes CEOs and this fans no offense that you have to use to keep everything from washing out to see so we really try to get people feeling of moving throughout them from north, south not too many rocks at the beach.
At least not very big ones.
But if you're into small rocks we got them for you.
Marilyn Vogel: Okay.
Marilyn Vogel: That was part two.
Marilyn Vogel: think we have a few little reductions in the comments by the way, but does anybody have any questions or comments.
Marilyn Vogel: Okay.
Marilyn Vogel: well.
Marilyn Vogel: We are up to the third segment that we're going to show.
Marilyn Vogel: I was so while I pull it up, I was just at the plant sale this morning buying my native azalea and someone was asking Patrick a question about Bradford pears like should they plant Brett Bradford pairs so.
Marilyn Vogel: he's laughing about that Okay, so the next segment, we have is.
Marilyn Vogel: With our other contributor, Mr Noah jaan and, as I mentioned before he could not be here because this is a incredibly critical time every year, and when these very ephemeral flowers appear.
Marilyn Vogel: And so we're going to revisit some of the things we've talked about for, especially the ketones Dolomites and.
Marilyn Vogel: So we we just there was so much so many places we went we couldn't even include them all, so this video goes on a little bit longer and sort of ends abruptly, but it will touch on a lot of the things we've talked about so far so.
No jaan attend auburn university, where he will soon complete a double major in biology and one of auburn's newest programs earth system science.
Like many students at auburn Mr yan is the first in his family to attend College as a teenager growing up in mailing Alabama Yun was hired by local nursery that sold and unusual range of native cultivars.
from his job and a grandmother I miss Brenda leathers of oneonta Alabama yon has developed an unusual depth of knowledge regarding Alabama floor.
As an undergraduate he has won a range of scholarships and even research grants from major botanical institutions with these he conducts research on carnivorous plants and ferns endemic to Alabama.
In this part three of Alabama botany for rock jocks we visit four sites in Alabama to learn about succulents ferns flowers and other plants that grow under unique geologically constrained conditions.
In this video the student becomes the teacher, as Mr yon guides us around the Cumberland plateau and valley and rich provinces of Alabama.
So we are looking at the Granite or pine pine it's more for smalley is in the castle AC family which.
home to a lot of seedlings and secular type plans things like that, and so this this plan is this weird little bumpy bumpy read individual right here in this pool.
And we're up in North Alabama on the Cumberland plateau this is Heinz wrote out crap it's a preserve is owned by state of Alabama and they just purchased in the past 10 years to protect this is really, really valuable habitat so we're on top of paleozoic sandstone.
swanee conglomerate sister uppermost unit on lookout mountain of this Pennsylvania sandstone and, yes, we have this nice open barons type habitat behind us and within these pools.
Lives this very specialized la for pilot plant and so it's, it is a winter annual this apparently here it's out in February and.
Just start it's probably in the middle of its growth there's life cycle little flower by late April early May and then set seed and.
completely disappeared by the summer and so after after gets kind of the opposite of stratification where excuse me, the cold period, it needs a hot be really, really drying harsh.
And after introduced that in the winter it'll it'll germinate continue on doing his thing, and so it doesn't, just like the water it likes the whole climatic picture wow.
cool quite resilient plan to see all aspects and, but while during this growing cycle currencies in the winter, most of the time these pools are full of water.
pretty good.
And yeah these pools are anywhere from you know just a couple of millimeters of water to do a couple of centimeters yeah so.
So we have this outcrop system right now and.
You know these these out of space on their plant communities to have likely been around for quite a while, otherwise we wouldn't have specifically that species, I mean this is the only outcrop.
from at least 20 miles.
You don't really spread that quickly.
Have that mechanism itself by Aaron thing.
So we have you know this barons right here, with just.
plain rock whatever he has an equal chance of your side and have upslope and so.
heterogeneous in nature.
So parts of the outcrop really more resistant to.
The Pennsylvania and pottsville formation crops out in northern Alabama and makes up a significant area of this state's sandstone ridges physio graphic province.
Here it is shown in light blue colors the pottsville itself extends still further north, all the way to Pennsylvania.
a map of the Pennsylvania in pottsville from its type locality in pottsville Pennsylvania shows that this unit represents a massive classic wet or pile of sediments swept down from the vertiginous appalachian mountains.
The peaks of those Nuba mountains were being thrust upward as part of the allegheny and rajini within the gondwana supercontinent.
During this time Alabama hosted high mountain ranges to the East, which swept down to abroad coastal plain facing a northwesterly ocean.
Later events would a route to form and thrust the pottsville sand stones upwards, as part of this southern appalachians here much later on, they would become specialized habitat for one of the rarest tree species in the world quercus boynton I.
Alright, so for every different part of the outcrop and.
we're still at times wrote out crap this is north.
West western edge of lookout mountain swanee conglomerate that we're standing on that's that's the unit that this paleozoic.
Possible formation and.
So just another another facet of it's remarkable flora is the point.
This is, this is it right here we have a dead Virginia pine behind the thought about that.
But this is Brown.
shrubbery looking thing that's that's the point and.
So this is one of the rare stokes in the world it's endemic just to a small sliver of the Cumberland plateau and Alabama our biggest.
Value endemic to just four or five counties in the north central part of the state and nowhere else and why does it live here yeah, so it is a very has a specific application, and so it only grows in association with.
and
White there's a major key break.
This is the broad category.
pointed in the have uranus hairs on the.
wideouts do not.
And so features.
it's not in the winter.
So, has a full head of hair this time of year, even though it's late February.
The major.
feature.
Which is.
This far from coast to coast all species down in Florida panhandle.
Those can be stolen their.
patches.
enough.
It will have its main trunk like this, you got some more behind us, but then there will be shorter runners.
hard to find.
about this tall and.
Part of that adaptation to this outcrop Community if the main trunk dies if there's fear stochastic event, where the drought, fire.
And it killed the main leader, the smaller stolen a lot of.
Its thought that you know some of these main trunks that we still see here over 100 years old, dated but the individual janet's themselves are.
very likely.
exceedingly old.
quite an interesting feature that.
And then, in terms of overall habitat, so we have this Virginia pine right here it's dead and.
This is kind of a great example to use to show the reinforcing nature these outcrop communities, and so they.
Fire did play a role in keeping these habitats open but.
Processes keeping these things exposed.
As a result, is very hard to Community so that's why we have more for that specialize in these pools of water but wherever you get little lenses of shallow soil.
woody species.
is a great example of that they can grow directly on the outcrop.
about this.
Or you can have.
Total edges of.
pine is a no go to the Virginia pie, it lacks the specific adaptations.
Probably.
Obviously didn't fare well probably had a big drought, we did have a drought.
5.0 specializes in this habitat where as.
Part of that active selection it's a continual process.
same thing with really anywhere on.
Things like white or red X trying to come in and say why does.
The day to lack the specific adaptations having very shallow rooms that are able to have the surface area runners allowed.
Allow things like.
Can you talk just real briefly then about what's going on at auburn with the boynton So yes, so as a result of this.
One of the rare species will kind of goes hand in hand, so so these outcrop communities.
This is kind of an anomalous one where.
You don't Have a nice vista that we can overlook at the side of the mountain, but a lot of the sides for voiceover career rich line where there is exposed.
People like to build their house and so as a result.
habitat for this or.
decreasing and so it's been escalated and that there were only 300 mature reproducing individuals who were setting acorns.
For the entire species, and so this past year.
We have done a.
census in partnership with.
us.
going through our entire range of.
Very large.
50 miles long.
and doing a complete census.
And while we're doing that collecting.
Scientific vouchers smithsonian.
documentation.
Safeguarding.
Separate.
These specific lines for each site will be preserved Davis arboretum Huntsville the.
arboretum in Chicago.
we're spreading them around.
And all sorts.
And so I was the results of our census quite quite 30,000 it's still very, very small number.
But it's better than.
Oh wow oh yeah like I felt.
better than it looks.
Just like this.
expound yeah, so we are, we are here at cherokee rocket village wrong the eastern face of lookout mountain.
On the 500 foot drop, on the other side of the.
Mountain.
And we are in Swanton conglomerate so we'll get a close up of the actual rocking a bit.
But we're in this big would you say 60 foot deep Fisher provides us.
An amazing amazing place.
i've ever been to another place like this now.
The answer the theory is about how this is born is swanee so that the pit the pottsville guru Swami conglomerate Warrenpoint.
I believe it jumps down into Pennington but that's that's not possible.
anyway.
Moral the story, though, is you have this swanee conglomerate this which is this we're standing on top of an underground layer shale is in between swanee and Warrenpoint and.
lookout mountain, along with Sam out and its neighbor is a sin vital mountain and directly dipping down and the theory is that this upper member of the pottsville.
is slowly slipping on that layer of shale, because it has reduce friction and of course we're also it's cleaning outside to just because we're on the edge.
Most of these folders and actually shoot nowadays, which is pretty interesting.
And so, as a result, you get some of these big crevasses to just set up, of course, is popular with climbers and things like that and it's very it's almost like a pseudo came out that is very.
Very thermal regulated down here is a nice 60 degree air though it's probably 75 of us and very damn.
Is darker times.
very, very amazing place.
yeah at this point, no sees a plant that might be a rare endangered species for a hybrid or it may be an invasive.
or it may be a plant used in the ancient times.
One never knows.
And then, our term cells are redefining.
But anyway, so firms are the different so instead of being concentrated in one of the cycles, or what happened there.
Were.
Most firms really spores the spores land somewhere germinate and.
germinated to come unified will be a real small single cell thing that's doesn't have any vascular tissue.
And, and then another nearby give you five will fertilize it after that fusion happens Fermanagh of this work.
differently and so.
The problem with these is they are stuck and that could be unified face so they can't.
They really can't even produce sporadic.
And so they've had to adapt by a sexually reproducing important these large can unify colonies and what's really hard is.
The leading theory on So this is the appalachian shoestring firm the legal theory on them is.
That.
They used to be able to produce for fights but they lost that during the pleistocene.
And we kind of can.
armchair hypothesize just by looking at the range so so the other criteria that are naked selfies we have material from inner folio and by Harry later they both pretty sport.
And it's called a shoestring fair because it matures four or five will come on the rock and it will hang down like little looks like a shoestring then.
The state.
And so the first people thought okay well during the pleistocene we have the ice sheets come down it lost that ability to restore fights then well.
that's not true because there's colonies of this thing up in New York and it can't get around it was stuck in this phase it can move around locally, but it's not going to.
hop over to the nearest mount or jump the state line kind of thing it's it's effectively stuck and so that's it's under a lot of really interesting research trying to figure out like the hormonal mechanisms that keep it locked into that Community phase, why can't produce.
More fights and they're looking at.
The campus.
And so.
This being here is likely.
As a regional speech that it probably enjoyed it was much more common during the.
The following.
Year after.
year the Holocene policy yeah.
Probably more widespread, just like it's to relatives within the things started to pull back down and kind of sit.
Was needing a more fair regulated environment that wasn't stochastic nature.
found refuge here because it's very insular type habitat where you're getting this constant temperature regulation.
never seen it.
In Jackson county Alabama.
A private.
reserve is owned by the southeastern paper.
hey.
Hello everybody, we are we're in big county now kind of hopping across the state and got a pretty neat rock out crowd behind us.
So these are the big county ketones dolomite glade and for starters, so we keep using this term glade and rock outcrop interchangeable interchangeably.
So rock out crops are going to be particular formation there's not a lot of vegetation growing on them versus glades what you're going to be think the formal definition is opening in the woods.
And so we call these more limestone cedar glee glee properly.
Because they are, they have quite a few herbaceous components to all sorts of.
Things like that growing on the rock whereas if you give them more Granite Community or a Samsung Community something.
That.
you're gonna have.
The cracks.
We are on a carpet at.
cedar trees behind me that's always a good good sign that you're on something that has quite a bit calcium, and so this is keep telling the dolomite and it's it's a cambrian age dolomite.
And oddly enough, and and we don't really know.
What processes are causing these outcrops to kind of be scattered about and the Kaaba little cahaba river valley so we're we have the little copper river just right behind us can't hear it from here, but.
anyways, this is the hotspot form right here kind of little things in the River are all over the place and we'll we'll head over behind us in a little while to learn.
Quite quite a few.
Big folders of dolomite it's a very pure.
Pure pure form of golden light and so as a result, these outcrops have been around quite a long time and.
And so they've been around long enough to where there have been nine endemic species described and so it's quite an interesting story so Jim allison he was a botanist from Georgia dnr he back in the early 90s him and I believe, a professor from Stanford university, they were.
kayaking little cahaba just for fun day trip I think they were looking for a couple of things and dip county just you know growing up growing along river, including cobb lilies and.
Things like that, and so they pulled over and saw these these rock outcrops from the river and there's actually one right down here that that butts up against the little cahaba, and so they stopped started looking around well being botanist they can't help it look at the plants and.
They started to not know what things were and they started asking questions going, what is this i've never seen this before, have you well known either right and.
So I started researching it they found it on that day, quite a few distinct things they're going, this is a species hands down what's going on here.
So it took quite a number of years to complete this large work, but it was the vascular floor of the katana don't like.
It was published in I believe 9192 something like that right around there and it was the botanical fine of the century, for for the Eastern us, I mean nothing like this has ever been known about I mean you know cedar cedar glade communities in any carbonate.
By nature you're going to have high rates of minimalism on this carbonates communities, compared to you know your rock outcrop communities granted sandstone more fell sick things that.
more of an acidic type component those those aren't really going to have.
endemics per se they're gonna have specialists that will kind of do or die morfa l for pine or a couple others, but these things this this calcium in the soil, these magnesium.
They that's going to create quite a few special conditions that they have to adapt to and so all the endemics on these glades properly are magnesium specialists and the return of dolomite it's unusually pure.
And and it's it's interesting, you can you go to neighboring outcrop or neighboring glade communities on.
Our argument is above ketone of dolomite briar field goal in mind it's also cambrian and there's different composition and none of the endemics that group on the katona are on the briar field which is, I think it's crazy because it's we're all you know within.
So you're like you check the local Dolomites and it's not even close right they don't like that dolomite know what everyone's this dilemma want this to my face.
And all these endemics I mean this is the seat of by diverse plant biodiversity in Alabama they.
It just blows my mind how.
How many over over 100 rare threatened track endangered monitored species in this kind of.
I guess you know the the outcrop stretches only about the outcrop band stretches only about 10 miles and length and this is why it's about five sorry, one and a half miles and with, and you know we have about 30 outcrops within that band.
And within that area just extraordinary plant about diversity unparalleled in the state and.
Just just amazing and we're in a remote part of Alabama big county it's I think our biggest.
Marilyn Vogel: Okay yeah so.
Marilyn Vogel: We it looks like we're just about Tom time.
Marilyn Vogel: And I just wanted to add one thing about that last that last part three, it was that Patrick Thompson.
Marilyn Vogel: was really instrumental in getting the Heinz road outcrop which had the l 14 and the quirkiest point nine on it.
Marilyn Vogel: protected in the state of Alabama, which is a non trivial accomplishment, and so we were able to shoot that because patrick's work and his advocacy and and so on, and that's the sort of thing that he's doing all the time, so.
Marilyn Vogel: we're really glad he exists.
Marilyn Vogel: So was there any questions or any follow up did anybody want to.
Marilyn Vogel: You guys learned something.
Marilyn Vogel: Okay well yeah feel free to touch base with us outside of this and, like I said today's a beautiful day, this is really the best time of year and Alabama.
Marilyn Vogel: So I we're all going to go outside and do other things, so thank you everybody for coming, thank you for tech support thanks a lot audrey.
RISE- Audrey Heun GSA: Thank you, great job.
Marilyn Vogel: yeah thanks.
Marilyn Vogel: All right.
RISE- Audrey Heun GSA: Talk to you later.
Marilyn Vogel: bye yeah. Marilyn Vogel: bye yeah.