Why Study the Rooting Zone?
The story of earth-building and water cycling starts in the rooting zone.
In one way I have been attracted to the rooting zone because it is a good story, only fitfully studied, with some of the best work found in dusty books on library shelves. It begs a re-telling. Two seminal researchers in this field, John Weaver and Lore Kutschera spent countless days hand-digging their way through massive root systems. Their whole plant excavation technique is rarely, if ever, practiced any more. Ending that practice was partly for the plants’ sake, but also because we keep improving non-invasive, in-situ study methods. While the methods of study keep improving, none of them yet reveal the whole root system as fully as excavation does.
I began my career in ecological engineering invested in learning how plants fit into the engineering picture. In the beginning for me it was wetlands and wetland plants and I was obsessed about them. I chose ecological engineering inspired by a talk in 1989 given by John Todd at the New Alchemy Institute on Cape Cod.
Todd talked about using plants to clean water instead of chlorine and concrete. It was life-changing. The next day I called his non-profit the Ocean Arks Institute and asked to see all of their research. I went back to school fully engaged and got a second undergraduate degree in ecological engineering from the University of Rhode Island in 1992.
About 10 years into my consulting career, I saw another talk that covered some research at Iowa State University about a multi-species riparian buffer. The research found that six years after planting a riparian buffer with native, mixed herbaceous and shrubby plants in what was once a row crop field, the soil infiltration rate went up, on average, five times more than under cultivation. I was incredulous and now fifteen years later am still trying to understand how and why this change occurred.
At first, I was looking for mechanisms and functional explanations that I could apply, and hopefully build some competitive advantage for my career around for the knowing. Over time, my reading and searching went around in every-widening gyres, encompassing much more than the rooting zone. It finally got to the point where, from studying the science, I began to really understand the older stories, the buried stories, the stories told by indigenous people around the world.
This then is my story of following the trail of roots. First recognizing they order their underground environment to make the best of patchy and ephemeral resources, to learning how they manage, move and recycle water in ways that result in self-reinforcing, continuous “home” improvements that extend to the atmosphere.
I'm looking forward to hearing more
Really enjoyed reading this. It gives great insight into the philosophy and science that has inspired you to pursue this work. It makes so much sense to work "with nature and natural systems" versus more energy intensive engineered based approaches... I've subscribed!