Science correspondent MILES O’BRIEN: Thirty-six years after its spectacular, deadly eruption, Mount St. Helens still rumbles and bears scars from that earth-shattering day.
But hike down the slopes, away from that jagged crater just a little, and you will see Mother Nature hard at work. And there’s a good chance you will bump into a team of scientists led by John Bishop. He is an evolutionary biologist at Washington State University-Vancouver.
JOHN BISHOP, professor of biological sciences, WSU Vancouver: The goal of our research is to understand how plant and animal communities reform after a catastrophic disturbance.
MILES O’BRIEN: Bishop is one of a select group of researchers studying this rebound from a volcanic eruption. Back in 1980, Mount St. Helens had given scientists all kinds of clues that a big disturbance was brewing…. It killed every living thing in a 230-square-mile area. What was left was akin to a moonscape; 57 people died. Some remains were never recovered.
Bishop and his team have had a front-row seat as nature got busy bringing this place back to life. They wanted to know where it begins and how it takes root. Here, it started with these purple flowers. Alpine lupine were the first plants to return. For many years, they were pretty much the only game in town. But as they went through their life cycles over several seasons, they created soil from the volcanic ash.
And that made it possible for woody plants, like the Sitka willow, to find a home. They are how a forest gets started, but it hasn’t been easy for them.