{"id":581458,"date":"2020-06-23T15:53:12","date_gmt":"2020-06-23T19:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.earthrangers.com\/?p=581458"},"modified":"2022-02-17T08:31:15","modified_gmt":"2022-02-17T13:31:15","slug":"fantastic-forests-and-the-secret-weapons-that-keep-them-healthy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.earthrangers.com\/EN\/CA\/my-missions\/fantastic-forests-and-the-secret-weapons-that-keep-them-healthy\/","title":{"rendered":"Fantastic forests and the secret weapons that keep them healthy!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As Earth Rangers we probably don\u2019t need to tell you twice that trees are really important for a ton of reasons! They provide food for the animals we love, create shade to cool us down, and the forestry industry creates lots of awesome jobs (who wouldn\u2019t want to be a Junior Forester<\/a>?!) But perhaps one of the most important features of forests is their ability to provide habitat for not only animals but also plants, fungi, and all sorts of other cool living things!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Take Ontario\u2019s Niagara Escarpment Biosphere Reserve, for\nexample. It\u2019s part of the Ontario Greenbelt, a 2 million acre stretch of\nprotected land that surrounds the Golden Horseshoe area (home to cities like\nHamilton, Toronto, Peterborough, and Burlington, as well as Peel, Durham, York,\nand Niagara Region). It was designated in 2005 to help prevent habitat loss and\npreserve the important greenspaces, including forests, around an area growing\nreally quickly. The greenbelt\u2019s forests are home to hundreds of different\nplants and animals, plus a ton of creepy crawlers and other organisms that all\nwork together to keep these important ecosystems thriving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Have you ever heard of a bryophyte? These are plants like\nmosses, liverworts, and hornworts (you probably haven\u2019t heard of these either!)\nthat are different than other plants because they don\u2019t have true roots,\nleaves, or stems. This means they absorb water and nutrients straight from the\nenvironment and then pass these nutrients along from cell to cell. Not only are\nthey super unique, they\u2019re also super important since they\u2019re usually one of\nthe first species in an ecosystem to indicate something isn\u2019t quite right. In Ontario\u2019s\ntemperate forests, mosses and liverworts make their homes on the sides of trees\nlike the balsam fir and sugar maple, where they get plenty of moisture that\nkeeps them healthy. Healthy bryophytes then provide a safe space for different\nbugs to lay their eggs, which then hatch to provide food for birds and other\ncreatures that feast on a delicious bug buffet. Although they might seem like a\nsmall piece of the forest puzzle, it\u2019s easy to see that bryophytes are an\nimportant link in the food chain of this amazing ecosystem!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
A Blue-spotted Salamander takes a rest on a bed of moss!<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Bryophytes are just one example of the organisms that help\nthis forest function, and we\u2019re lucky enough to be able to see them in action\u2014but\ndid you know there\u2019s a whole underground world that\u2019s just as important in this\nforest? It can be hard for trees to absorb nutrients from the soil, and unlike\nhumans they can\u2019t just pick up and find a new spot when resources are scarce,\nso some of them will buddy up with below-ground fungi to help them do just\nthat! The fungi can absorb soil nutrients and water, which they\u2019ll give to the\ntree through its roots, and in exchange the tree will send some of the sugars\nit makes through photosynthesis down below to feed its friendly fungus. These\nfungi can spread much further underground than the roots of a tree (in fact,\nthe biggest fungi in the world was recently discovered in Oregon and is estimated\nto stretch far enough to cover over 1,500 football fields!), helping bring far\naway nutrients to their tree partners to keep them healthy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We hope you enjoyed learning about some of the lesser-known organisms that rely on trees to survive and thrive! And now we challenge you to make a world of difference by accepting the Just 1 Tree<\/strong> Mission today!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Earth Rangers we probably don\u2019t need to tell you twice that trees are really important for a ton of reasons! They provide food for the animals we love, create shade to cool us down, and the forestry industry creates lots of awesome jobs (who wouldn\u2019t want to be a Junior Forester?!) But perhaps one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":52119,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1020,586,931],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-581458","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-j1t","8":"category-my-missions","9":"category-all"},"pp_force_visibility":null,"pp_subpost_visibility":null,"pp_inherited_force_visibility":null,"pp_inherited_subpost_visibility":null,"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.earthrangers.com\/EN\/CA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.earthrangers.com\/EN\/CA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.earthrangers.com\/EN\/CA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.earthrangers.com\/EN\/CA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.earthrangers.com\/EN\/CA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=581458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.earthrangers.com\/EN\/CA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581458\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.earthrangers.com\/EN\/CA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.earthrangers.com\/EN\/CA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=581458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.earthrangers.com\/EN\/CA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=581458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.earthrangers.com\/EN\/CA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=581458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}