The abandoned ship we were supposed to ride. 😉

On our first Thursday here, we had a boat ride through the Alaskan river.  We had seen the primary succession and the secondary succession.  The primary succession starts off when the ground is void of nutrients and minerals to start new vegetation.  The fine silt is composed of deposit from the river.  It has a high capacity of water, which has the consistency of slime.  The side with the developed forest will have the nutrients and dirt stripped and into the water they go.  As the glacier seasonally melts, the river will increase in size, which deposits the silt and other various minerals on to the other side of the river.  This will help build another layer of silt for the plants to grow.

Primary Succession

Forest after Fire

The little plants that grow on the silt are often cut short due to the winter snow and the snowshoe hares eating the tip of them.  Over the next decade, the layers of silt will grow, and the plant will grow.

First, the silt will gather enough nutrients and minerals to support vegetation.  Shrubs and graminoids will start to form in the coming years.   Alder will then form with the abundance of nitrogen in the soil.  Birch and white spruce will form after.  Black spruce will take over the white spruce within a couple decades.  Some black spruce will show qualities of white spruces.

The forest after 1.5 decades of silt depositation.

The secondary succession occurs after fire, or other natural events, that clears the existing forest.  The forest will recover within a couple of decades, while the primary succession takes up to 150 years to grow.  There are two weather stations set up next to each other to collect data, one belongs to Jamie and co. while the other belongs to the other scientists who wanted to collect data as well.