The Alexander Archipelago, a 300-mile-long sweep of islands off the southeastern coast of Alaska, is known for its isolation, its heavy rain, and its thick, ancient forests of hemlock, pine, spruce and yellow-cedar. Yellow-cedar, which John Muir called a “truly noble tree,” has long been prized for its fine-grained, butter-colored wood. But over the past century, as average temperatures have risen, shrinking spring snow cover has exposed more and more of the species’ shallow roots to freezing temperatures, and yellow-cedars have been dying off. Because the tree was and is used for so many human purposes—canoe paddles, ceremonial carvings, even bridges—the disruption is both ecological and cultural.
Ecologist Lauren Oakes wanted to know how the rest of the forest was responding to this long upheaval, so in the summers of 2011 and 2012, she and her field crew sampled forest stands in the archipelago, comparing tree size and species composition at different stages of yellow-cedar decline. In the south, where the decline is most advanced, she found that while some very old yellow-cedars are hanging on, there are few young trees—and those are usually outcompeted by other species such as western hemlock and Sitka spruce.
Oakes had glimpsed the future of the forest, and she wanted to communicate what she’d seen—especially to the people whose lives are still shaped by yellow-cedar. So after she summarized her results in the language of science—bar graphs, charts, and scatter plots—she decided to use the language of music, too.
Several times in the last few weeks, I’ve found myself driving Highway 101 from Santa Barbara to Berkeley, a 320-mile route. The trip starts out along the ocean, then dips in and out of oak-dotted hills. Later, the road slices through the Salinas Valley and then into Silicon Valley.
