There you go.

These were surrounded by its young, but they were cut down even as grove to eventually move on, with none to take his place.

A mixed forest that once stood here like what you see behind it is in the process of being replaced with a plantation of pine trees.

Well, this meets the criteria of sustainable forest management.

This forest has suffered an incredible loss.

The Aspen is one of the most important trees that we have in North America.

The virtue of the food and habitat it provides.

The Aspen supports an astounding array of wildlife.

Thanks to its unique properties, it can keep landscapes cool waters flowing all the while sequestering record breaking amounts of carbon dioxide and holding wild fares.

Obey the aspen can provide enormous benefits to our society and our environment.

We can't read these benefits of keep eliminating them.

So I grew up in a small community in central interior British Columbia called Punch.

And as I grew up, these trees grew up as well.

Prolifically.

It always amazed me.

How quickly is trees grew?

I'm sure It amazes a lot of Forrester's, too, but not in the same good way.

Along with a cottonwood, the Aspen grows the most amount of woody tissue of any plant at least a lot of time in our forests.

They also seem to spring out of nowhere, perhaps from one of the tiny countless seeds that they send forth every year.

But the aspen rarely reproduces from seed.

More typically, it grows from this amazing underground root system that can spread for many acres and could be thousands of years old.

This is one of the first things we should really valuable to Aspen.

And that's the stability provided by this root system, not only physically, as these roots are thought to hold soil together, which can reduce erosion and blow down, but also in the ecological sense of providing continuity.

As long as we don't interfere with his root system, it can survive catastrophic disturbances.

Climatic disruptions.

As a sort of subterranean seed bank, they can maintain a specific ecosystem on a site for hundreds of thousands of years.

Like this forest in Fish Lake, Utah has a name.

It's called Pando, and every tree that you see here is genetically identical and grows from a single aspirin root mass.

He called this group of trees a clone, and usually they're a lot smaller and you can identify them yourself.

This time you're an autumn, but I seen the differences in time when they turn yellow or lose their leaves.

Some made loser leaves a week earlier than the group decide it's You can tell that these two groups are genetically distinct clones, so Pando is the largest clone yet identified.

It's about 43 Hector's 106 acres, and it's estimated to be between 50 and 80,000 years old.

So this makes a low the old Aspen forest, the oldest and largest organism on the planet.

When you look up a hillside, you see a group of aspen trees.

It's not just Amir group of trees.

You're seeing the terrestrial existence of this ancient underground organism recharging its root system while it's Kim before it gets replaced by Conifers.

That's how this root system survives.

It's one of the first trees to grow back after disturbance, like logging or fire, because it's being there all along.

It's not invasive, and it's not a weed, and it's not some kind of unexpected shift in the forest type.

The boreal forest in the interior forest is a fluid, dynamic place, and these different forest types, they trade places with each other.

Over time, the Conifers will out compete, the aspens, a disturbance, look her and the cycle continues.

This is called the ongoing cycle of secession in our forests.

I called the stage of the forest the unwanted for us, because the standard practice is to eliminate these species as rapidly as possible and return at once again to Conifer trees.

Different ways to do this.

But a common way around here is through aerial applications of herbicide to kill the aspens, and this is making our forests hotter.

It's making him dryer, making a more flammable as making them last biodiverse were maladaptive or for us to the very climatic and biodiversity challenges that lie ahead.

So I consider myself lucky to have grown up amongst the Aspen.

I've watched the various animals that driving these ecosystems the moose, the deer, the bears, songbirds, woodpeckers and even domesticated cattle.

The association between Aspen and Wildlife is apparently universal.

All across North America, important game birds like rough gross are statistically linked to the presence of Aspen for us as far away as Wisconsin.

Roseman Pojar discovered that the Aspen forests in her study area in a Skinner region had 225% higher bird densities than the pine model culture in her study area, the highest ungulates densities I've seen recorded in western Canada, an Elk Island National Park east of Hamilton, that forest is 97% aspen.

The richness of this fauna and he's Aspen for us is a very basic product of the forests architecture, and this has to do with the inherent efficiency of aspen trees.

As I mentioned, they grow the most amount of woody tissue and, at least amount time, have any tree in a forest.

But even so, they don't shade out all the light due to various adaptations like photosynthetic bark, which does actually a very large share of the trees.

Overall photosynthetic legwork and the trembling leaves, which are thought toe turbo charged photosynthesis.

The aspen tree makes do with less, much more light is able to filter through a mature aspen canopy relative to that of a mature Conifer canopy.

This creates the conditions for rich multi leered on her story of plants.

Studies from across western Canada have shown this understory planned community can support between 203 100% Maur ruminants.

It's not only this understory plant community that's a great provider of food in the forest.

The tree itself from its photosynthetic bark, which is rich in carbohydrates to the nutritious buds that form in the fall only to burst forth in appetizing leaf in the spring.

The trees a literal food basket.

So Dr Roy Ray at the university, northern British Columbia, discovered that moves preferred aspen bark for their winter food above all other species in a study area, including willow and red.

Does your dog would the ladder, which Islam being considered the favorite food of moose?

Pando, The old Aspen forest in Utah, is suffering because the deer and elk or eating every last little young Aspen shoot cattle will do the same thing.

Bears will climb into the tops of aspen trees in the spring teeth, the buds and beaver elite aspen year round.

The relationship between Beaver and Aspen is really important, and aspen is considered the highest quality beaver habitat available, not only for food but for building stuff.

Speaking of building things, birds also love Aspen to make their cavity nests.

Cathie Martin from Euro Sea Bridge, Columbia, discovered at 95% of all cavity nests, were in aspen trees, even though the aspen trees were only a small part of the forest, 15%.

It's only her news about the global declines and biodiversity.

We really need to check out our own record on this issue.

We have rules and regulations that legally require exclusion of aspen forests from participating in regeneration of our forests.

By suppressing the species, we threaten a long term viability of this root system.

The potential loss of these trees threatens the habitat of iconic Canadian animals, from moose to beaver to gross many in between.

So if our goal is to enhance the richness of life in our forests and we really need to advocate for the Aspen, we share responsibility to reverse this global decline.

We also share a responsibility to help make our forests the best fighters of climate change that they could be so aspen trees sequester more carbon, they can stop more wildfires.

And I have a couple of other really cool features that maketh, um, essential in this regard.

So one of them is the fact that aspen trees aren't as dark toned is Conifer trees, and, as we all know, a darker object in the sun will be hotter to the touch.

Then something is lighter and studies across the boreal forest.

We've discovered that aspen trees reflect 80% more sunlight and Conifer trees in the summertime and winter time.

They'll reflect about 60% more sunlight.

So that means every time that we get rid of Aspen, trees were making our planets sorry, our landscape and our planet into that much bigger of a heat sink.

While aspen are reflecting heat and solar radiation, they're attracting moisture and water.

This is most apparent in wintertime, and if you go hiking through announcement for us to almost the snow is a lot deeper in the aspen for us than a Conifer forest.

Not having leaves much more precipitation, snowfall is able to accumulate on the forest floor.

Where's Anaconda for?

For us?

Much more of it gets hung up in the needles where it then evaporates sublimate ce rather or blown away tone studies done.

We've discovered that Aspen forests will allow almost over three times as much snowfall to develop on the forest floor.

So this really helps recharge the moisture heading into summer time and even in summer time.

The Aspen allows more moisture to the forest floor in the soil and aspen for us being hired.

Micro fun guy Having more organic material, lower acidity and higher nitrogen is a more effective sponge and holds on to more water for longer.

This is apparently true of distant US forests in general throughout the Northern Hemisphere, and his wonderful book, The Hidden Life of Trees.

Peter of Ole been talks about this with respect to beech forests in Germany and how much more moisture they maintain compared to the spruce plantations in a study area.

In a study carried out in the Appalachian Mountains when he replaced a decision, this forest with a white pine plantation the stream flows declined by 20%.

So if we can expect to have more droughts in the future or more uncertain weather patterns, having more disingenuous on her landscape can help maintain stream flows.

This can assist migrating salmon and other creatures of our water ships.

They don't do this only directly through those methods I've just identified, but also indirectly through supporting Beaver, whose water conserving dams Aspen are often responsible for you often hear, asked, been criticized for taking over the wet, fertile areas of the forest.

But in many respects, this is unfair.

It's not so much that they're taking you sites over, it's that they've created them and they're maintaining them.

Ron Ignace of the speech is An Indian band, recently said that the aspirin and the birches are the irrigators of the mountains.

That's exactly what they are.

So this all ties into why the Aspen tree is so much more effective at withstanding wildfire than the treaty, the forest types that we replace them with so gathering more moisture throughout the year and having more water content in the trees, tissue or not having flammable resins.

The aspens were much more difficult to light on fire, and the old days trappers would know this, and they would if they had the opportunity in the wisdom they build their cabin in Aspen, stand knowing that in the event of a wildfire they won't get burnt out.

But this is now backed up empirically, over a 36 year period, Dr Steve Coming discovered that pine forest burnt 840% more.

An aspen forests in northern Alberta and black spruce was even more Flamel.

So to put that in a different metric, for every 100 units of pine you lose to fire.

You'd only lose 12 units of Aspen, assuming they're equally distributed on the landscape.

This ties into I aspen are so much more effective that sequestering carbon not only can they stabilize this carbon that all forests sequester in the face of wildfire by reducing wildfire, but they can also sequester more carbon just by nature of their sheer efficiency.

Rapid growth.

Summarizing Forest Carbon Sequestration Studies from across North America An article in the Forest Ecology Management Journal notes that the highest living and above ground carbon stocks we're always observed in single species.

Aspen stands in all the literature that I've reviewed, the only ecosystem in our forest that is more efficient and better.

It's spring carbon or Pete box systems.

So we have to ask yourselves, why is this forest unwanted?

Why are we excluding us for us from participating?

This cycle is being going on for millions of years.

They support so much life they can reduce forest fires that can sequester more carbon there, just the tree that we need at this point in time.

So on what basis are they considered a problem?

And the answer is that these trees are assumed not to have any commercial value that because they don't make unuseful wood product, they don't belong in our forests.

And this is a huge mistake, not only for the reasons I just don't mind, but because the Aspen is actually a very versatile and wonderful would.

For 40 years since the first industrial facility in Canada utilized Aspen, Aspen has being used in enormous array of products from a West B panel used in achieving to integrated trust Choi systems to peril and beams to finish grade plywood.

Aspen has desirable and actually lower shrinkage rates.

Higher resistance to impact bending and comparable strength of weight ratios is your standard soft woods.

Let's not forget, it looks fabulous as a wall panel product were in furniture.

The challenge we face is how do we bring our economic model back in line with our forests, simplifying our stand structures and our ecology to match.

The lack of diversity in our wood products sector is making her for us more vulnerable to fire two pests and to failure.

It undermines other activities and livelihoods and industries that depend on the productivity provided by Aspen that would include cattle ranching, trapping guide, outfitting, hunting and gathering, not to mention tourism.

That's the one challenge.

The other challenge is for us.

These Canadians, too, turn our gaze to the aspen a little more closely.

The Aspen is one of our.

So if we lose these trees, we don't know.

They lose an incredible amount of biological productivity, resiliency and a tool you may find useful down the road loss of lose a cultural icon of the North.

Those trees can't be called and wanted anymore.

I'd say we need a thanks.

Not only is it amazing and awesome, but it represents all of Canada from coast to coast and from the southern border all the way up, too.

As far as where trees will grow.