In June, 2013. I got a chance to fly to Teey Tahéen, (West Arm Kendrick Bay), under Gijòok Shàa, golden eagle mountain (Bokan Mtn, thumbnail), in South Tàan biogeographic province. It was an extraordinary opportunity to visit country few of us ‘northerners’ get to see, and was especially valuable in my education about cedar forest. For the first time in my life, I bushwacked for hours through forests in which spruce and hemlock were minority components. Even on the most cedar-rich timberlands of North Tàan province, cedar never dominates to this degree. (more thoughts below in the sidebar Cedar questions.)
Our ground-truthing for this project was fairly technical and less interesting to the Southeast naturalist than what we saw from the air, going and coming. I’ve excerpted those annotated aerial views here.
Pond on Gravina Island, departing Ketchikan Airport.
Speculations on how cedar might come to dominate a forest over the course of many millennia. Is it chemical warfare, making germination difficult for competing conifers?
