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Underground Lab to Reveal Trees' Secrets
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AUGUST 13, 2004 -- If you're a plant, chances are at least half of you is buried in dirt. That's made it very difficult for scientists to study a sizeable chunk of the forest ecosystem, the realm of roots that lies hidden in the soil.
But by this time next year, the USDA Forest Service Forestry Science Lab at Michigan Tech will have dug two long tunnels into the nearby woods, providing a mole's-eye view of this underground world.
"The vision will be analagous to an ocean-going vessel," said Alex Friend, project leader at the North Central Research Station. "We can study below-ground processes in situ, where they happen, in as natural an environment as possible."
The eight-foot tunnels, each 75 feet long, will be dotted with a mosaic of windows pressed against the surrounding soil. "You will be able to take a window off, do something, and watch what happens," Friend said. "The facility gives you the ability to study the roots of big trees, which is hard to do from the surface without significant disturbance."
Scientists can also peer through the windows with devices ranging from microscopes to webcams, using time-lapse photography to track seasonal ebbs and flows from a different perspective.
"We've all seen spring flowers come up in the spring and fall flowers come up in the fall, but what's going on underground is not well understood," Friend said. "This gives us an opportunity to study those processes."
The facility may also be used to better understand carbon sequestration, the process through which forests soak up the atmospheric greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, Friend said.
The tunnels will be among a tiny number of such facilities worldwide, said Professor Kurt Pregitzer (SFRES), whose research focuses on underground processes. "And the fact that it's right on campus and connected to the forest service building will enable easy access at all times of the year," he said. "You'll be able to walk out of the building and into the soil in the middle of winter."
The tunnels should also offer unusual opportunities for outreach by piping rare images out to the world via the web. "For instance, some of these soil insects look like Steven Spielberg designed them," Pregitzer said. "They are really wild-looking creatures. We seldom see them, but they are there."
One tunnel will be into a mature forest. A second tunnel will provide access to the mesocosm facility, a series of 36 large blocks of soil, three feet square and four feet deep, that can accommodate a variety of environments with different soils, trees and soil animals.
"These will be underground, so the environment will be the same as if they were growing in the wild," Friend said. "Unlike a greenhouse
pot on a bench, the conditions will be very close to the natural environment."
Pregitzer called the new facility "a great development for our campus."
"In terms of the terrestrial part of this planet, the soil is one of the big unknowns," he said. "People will come here from all over to do research and test new instruments.
"This is a very cool opportunity, and it will really distinguish us."
The USDA Forest Service is funding the facility, which is expected to be completed by September 2005.
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