After most storms I end up picking up many fallen branches. These are not living branches in most cases for typical storms but are certainly not dead in the ecological sense. The lifespan of a branch must include a time frame where they are dead but have not fallen from the tree. This is a new niche opportunity for life to take hold and make a new home. Here is a landscape of wood which if colonized by wood munching, drilling and digesting creatures will also provide food for consumers of such creatures. The thriving community of lichen and fungi on these fallen branches amazed me. I have always just wondered how long they have been up there given how covered in growth they are often. In many cases what grows on tree branches in the canopy of out very tall trees is not found any where on the forest floor or at least not in visible quantity. There must be microclimates up there in the tree-aero-sphere that provides just the right climate for” jellies, mosses and lichens.
The goal of this project is to photograph fallen branches and census what has colonized them. Scanning my yard regularly allows me to find these branches fairly soon after a storm has brought them down. It is possible that macro-invertebrates hop on for from the ground. Comparing macro-invertebrate fauna lists from the ground under these trees and the branches themselves will help test the hypothesis whether dead tree branches provide a special kind of ecosystem for forest life
Certainly dead wood provides important food sources for wild species. Keeping dead wood on your yard in a wood pile will provide food and homes for wood eating creatures. Knowing more about the uniqueness or importance of dead wood will inform homeowners to not see dead wood on trees on something that needs to be removed but something to leave because like the LEAVES – leaving branches enhances the biodiversity of the land you live on.
I am using a one foot ruler to provide a general scale for branch lengths. Flat rulers are smaller scale data rulers giving mm or inch data - the triple sided color faces (blue and red) are NOT. I use a triple sided engineering ruler to distinguish TOP SIDE (BLUE) and BOTTOM SIDE (RED) of branch samples there fore these, while the total length is one foot, are NOT meant to be smaller scale measurements. THE INITIAL PHASE of this study is merely to learn the taxonomy of common species and get counts for how many different TYPES are found on branches. less ↑