"Trees Are Critical to Ocean Health"
SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 2, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- On November 3rd, WellKind joins CNN's "Call to Earth Day," with California students from Archie Williams High School, Tamalpais High School, & non-profits Salmon Protection and Watershed Network and Archangel Ancient Tree Archive.
Late fall and early winter is "the peak of the return" when hundreds of thousands of Chinook salmon leave the ocean and swim back to their ancestral streams to spawn in California. After spawning, the fish die and decompose, their bodies rich in nitrogen and other nutrients. These nutrients enhance the soil, feeding plants, trees and wildlife.
According to Catriona Glazebrook, J.D., M.S., "Salmon confirm the deep connection between the sea and the land. . . . Isotope analysis can identify nitrogen atoms, abundant in algae but very rare on land, inland in forests after traveling hundreds or even thousands of miles in the body of a salmon."
Trees feed the ocean. For example, forests create atmospheric rivers and bring nutrients to ocean habitats. Decades ago, Katsuhiko Matsunaga, a marine chemist at Hokkaido University, discovered that when tree leaves decompose, they leach acids into the ocean that help fertilize plankton. In addition, McCauley et al. (2012) found that native forests provide habitat for birds whose droppings enrich the soil with nitrogen. This nitrogen enters the ocean as natural run-off, feeding phytoplankton.
In Japan, fishermen have replanted forests along coasts and rivers to bring back fish and oyster stocks in a campaign called "Forests Are Lovers of the Sea." The fish and oysters have returned, confirming the links between oceans and forests.
As part of WellKind's education program, which highlights the holistic nature of our world, youth spent the day learning about the important interconnections between the land and the sea, and the salmon and the trees.
According to Michael Rawlins from Archie Williams High's SEA-DISC program, "It's really important to have students learning outside, especially in this day and age . . . to get kids outside and learning in that context where we can slow things down to the speed of the ecosystem."
You can find a link to a YouTube video of our field trip here: LINK.
To spread the word, share our video using the hashtags #CallToEarth, #CallToEarthDay and #PerpetualPlanet. We will provide a downloadable video file upon request.
Contact:
Catriona Glazebrook
415-747-1019
[email protected]
www.wellkind.org
SOURCE WellKind
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