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Have had a crush on this amazing Canadian scientist for the 15 years that I've followed her work. If you spend a little time with her in this Ted Talk, you'll see why.

You can also just read the transcript to her presentation, but then you miss out on the graphics, images and her personality.

It all began in her youth, when she'd lie down on a forest floor and be absorbed by the canopy above her (used to do that all the time as a kid too)... and when her logger grandfather's dog fell into the shit at the bottom of an outhouse. :-)

She's got such a beautiful lisping sense of humor as she presents her research, getting chased by grizzlies with syringes of radioactive isotopes in her hands, and explains in very simple terms the complex underground communication's systems between trees via fungi/mushrooms. Even special relationships between a "mother" tree and "her" own genetic offspring.

The more a tree provides sugars to the fungi, the stronger these synergistic interconnections become, including trees providing one another carbons and other essential minerals, as well as hormone communications that often have to do with defense mechanisms. And it's not just among the same species. There's rich diversity of cooperation between species, deciduous and coniferous.

What she has arrived at in Canada, where the deforestation rates are actually higher than in the Amazon, is that even with standardized replanting following clearcutting, the forest ecosystem is devastated. She also provides solutions on how to harvest trees in a forest in ways that won't so impact these climate stabilizing ecosystems.

https://www.ted.com/talks/suzanne_simard_how_trees_talk_to_each_other/transcript?language=en#t-87890

Bent Lorentzen

Bent Lorentzen

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