On the far eastern edge of the Northwest, conifers encounter the region's most extreme conditions: biting cold and deep snow on the high peaks, enormous forest fires in the dry lowlands. Conifers are a group of plants with many fascinating evolutionary stories, and the ways in which their structure and physiology have adapted to ice and to fire shows is perhaps the most impressive of these biological sagas. In this episode, we travel to some of the best-known and best-loved national parks on both sides of the US-Canada border to explore how two species of conifer in particular cope with environmental extremes.
The first forests we visit in this series are the lowland forests around the Salish Sea, home of Douglas firs, western hemlocks, and western...
In this episode, we continue or exploration of sites in Texas' Hill Country that illustrate how fossils can reveal the behavior of extinct species....
The dense rainforests of the Oregon Coast Range, Washington's Olympic Peninsula, and British Columbia's Vancouver Island are an ideal habitat for western red cedar....