Meet Maria Oldiges, senior at our Lady of Lourdes High School in Poughkeepsie, NY. As part of her Christian Service Learning course, and in between her innumerable other activities, Maria volunteered her time to the Native Plant Program at IES. She loaned her biceps, accustomed to rowing for crew team, to pounding stakes and stapling burlap for deer barriers, transplanted seedlings, painstakingly pulled minute weeds from the moss mat in the wetland, raked leaves, raked more leaves and raked still more leaves. Ergo, when I invited her to contribute a short article to this web page, it seemed only natural that she should choose leaf litter as her subject.
Bright, beautiful and passionate about the environment, Maria was a breath of fresh autumn air. We look forward to seeing more of her at IES this spring.
You may have noticed, in your travels through the Fern Glen, that there is a timely abundance of dead leaves littering the ecosystem floor. Rotting wood and leaves provide critical habitat for innumerable species, including insects, fungi and moss. During the current fall season, leaves and needles that have fallen to the ground will rot, releasing a plethora of elements and organic molecules to the cyclical process of the Fern Glen's ecosystem. Bacteria, moisture, air and water affect what happens to these leaves and how fast it happens.
Leaf litter decay also plays an extremely important role in the life of the Fern Glen's stream. By falling into the stream, leaves open the door into another ecosystem, supplying energy to the stream macroinvertebrates instead of the trees that they energized during the spring and summer months. Bacteria that congregate on surface of the leaves convert them into a form upon which the macroinvertebrates can feast. Shredder insects in the second trophic level begin working to reduce leaf litter (also called detritus) even further. Trophic levels refer to the position that an organism occupies in a food chain — what it consumes and what consumes it. Since each layer of this system relates to the one below it by absorbing a fraction of the energy it consumed, each level can be understood as resting on the level below it. Without the participation of dead leaves in the fall, microscopic and macroscopic stream inhabitants would not be able to complete their life cycles.
Decaying leaf litter serves the ecosystem in other ways, as well. The surface layer of fallen leaves provides a way to recycle nutrients back into the forest through the soil. Reforestation occurs as nutrients are released and absorbed back into the ground where area vegetation then benefits.
So, the next time that you stroll by, take a look and appreciate these dead, life-giving entities of the Fern Glen because, although they have lost their once lustrous golds, auburns, coppers and crimsons, these leaves are still a beautiful part of this native habitat.
Questions, comments, or other feedback to Judy Sullivan.