Island Blocks
Thursday, July 7th, 2022 08:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snoozefestaudioSo, yesterday I heard three different cicadas out there. One was across the street. The second was on my block nearby. And the third was a block away to the south. None of the three were singing continuously or simultaneously.
I just heard one here for a bit... then a couple minutes later, one over there for a bit... then a few minutes later, the third one for a bit. And then it all went quiet again.
I took a walk, five blocks north to the neighborhood bodega to get some smokes and listened the whole way, but heard nothing at all.
--<>--
Today, I heard a new one right in the hackberry tree in my front yard, and another at some distance, and both called repeatedly... though there was a minute or two of silence between calls.
--<>--
So, given that it's only July 7th, it's looking like I may have to disabuse myself of the idea that cicadas don't get going until August 1st.
That first loner I heard was on the 3rd. And now, four days later, I'm hearing several others. But on the other hand, none of them sound very committed yet.
Meanwhile, no loner crickets to be heard at the moment. The most recent one went silent a couple days ago and there hasn't been another.
We'll see how things play out through July, but I have been surprised at this much cicada sound so long before August.
And that may be, because I've just never paid this close attention before, in July.
------------{=0=}------------
But yesterday, walking north for five blocks and not hearing any cicadas up there, got me to wondering more about... to what extent are the blocks in my neighborhood islands?
In the July 2nd entry, Snoozefest Biome & Ecology, I looked at how this city is a quasi-forest, because of the historic and economic forces that shaped it.
--<>--
Farmland was rezoned into residential lots at the end of the 19th century, and many of those lots remained vacant for decades, as the working class slowly bought the parcels and built their houses... which gave trees, plants, and animals time to establish a new forest biome... that the working class now simply lives alongside, without much disturbing it.
I say, quasi-forest, because the trees are dense enough and tall enough that from the air, you can't see the houses or the streets. All you see is canopy.
But there's still grass, and other green ground cover in between those trees, because enough sunlight still hits the ground to support it. So in that way, it's a little more like a savannah.
I'd say it's closer to being a forest, but at the same time, there is a way more diverse mix of random deciduous & conifer species than you'd find in a wild forest, and the trees don't live as long, or grow quite as tall.
The upper age limit of a neighborhood tree in Aurora is about 100 years, and the upper height limit is about 80 feet. Whereas, in a wild forest, some trees would be several hundred years old, and well over 100 feet tall.
But it still is very much like a forest in the sense that the trees do have deeply interconnected root networks below the soil, that intermingle with networks of fungi filaments... at least in the back yards of the blocks.
------------{=0=}------------
Back in the 1870s, when these vast acres were divided up into blocks, the streets were little more than paths paved with gravel. You can look at an old map and see the familiar grid we know today, but on the ground, they were just gravel paths, traversed by humans on foot, and the horses and wagons of businesses delivering goods, or moving raw materials around to help build the city.
Such gravel paths wouldn't have been much obstacle to tree roots underground, but on the other hand, there weren't as many trees around either, because the forest biome was still in the earliest stages of regaining a foothold, after decades of the land having been farmed.
Over time, those gravel paths were paved with bricks, and the first sidewalks were wood plank, and more like slightly elevated boardwalks.
And then, as the 20th century dawned, it was the sidewalks that became brick, while the streets became paved with asphalt... but not before getting dug out and fitted with sewer pipes.
Today, those sidewalks are concrete, and the sewers that run under the asphalt streets are split up into storm and waste pipes, going down to the good depth of 30 to 50 feet.
--<>--
But all the while, the interior areas of each block... those back to back yards that comprise two to five acres of green space, depending on the block... have gone largely undisturbed.
If you're a front yard tree... especially one on the parking between the sidewalk and the street curb, then you've got sewers beneath your feet, utility lines in your face, and cars kicking up salt at you in the winter.
The crowns of these trees are pruned severely to keep clear of the power lines, and I'm not sure they have much freedom to extend roots under the pavement anymore.
Go too shallow and you'll upend the sidewalk or the asphalt and you're cut down. Go too deep and you'll tap into the sewer line... and get cut down.
Meanwhile your soil is quite salty, from snow melt salt on both the walk and the road.
But if you're a back yard tree, it's a different story.
There is no underground infrastructure in the block interiors. Not even gas or water lines. And if there were any utility lines above ground, they were telephone lines... which are now becoming obsolete.
The block interiors are unadulterated acres of soil, where trees are free to spread their roots as deep and as wide as they like... and grow as tall as they like, without any severe pruning.
And this is where I know for certain that the root systems are interconnected with fungi and can communicate and share resources, because I've seen it in my own back yard.
Old ash stumps that refuse to die, and keep sending up new trunks every year. A couple of them have grown right back into full fledged trees again. And they can't do that without help from neighboring trees, beneath the soil.
The old root systems of the stumps are being fed nutrients, via the wood wide web of the block, to stay alive and try again at growing new trunks.
Also, species that have healthy mother trees... and in my yard that's a huge mother Hackberry, and a huge mother mulberry... will take root and grow insanely fast the first few years.
I now have three young hackberries in my back yard that are too tall for me to try and cut down. And there are four new mulberries that are the same.
They all began as little, accidental saplings, a few years ago... when I wasn't paying attention... long before I'd bought myself a chain saw.
And in those few years, these new hackberries, and mulberries grew so tall, so fast, that they are now, too big to fail.
I could still get my DeWalt, battery-powered chain saw through them, and bring them down, but... it would take me a week of hard work, and sweat, to cut up even one, into manageable chunks... and I'd have nowhere to put all the wood, and no hope of ever burning it all.
The best I can do is prune the lower branches a bit, but they're here now, for the next 50 to 80 years.
And the reason they were able to get so tall so fast, I'm sure, is because they had help from their mothers.
--<>--
The hackberries and mulberries in my yard are an example of mothers helping children of their own species, but I'm sure that those same mother trees, and other's on the interior of my block... like the towering locust tree in my side yard, and the huge cottonwood in the neighbor's yard... are pitching in together to help those ash stumps defy death, and any other distantly related deciduous cousin who can get a foothold.
My neighbors planted a scrawney little maple sapling in their front yard about ten years ago... far enough back from the parking not to catch any flack from the city infrastructure on the street. And it has grown to massive proportions!
That young maple is now, easily forty feet tall, and over two foot thick at the trunk.
If you had planted that same sapling in a new subdivision on the outskirts of town... there is no way in hell it could grow that huge in such a short span of time.
Trees in these old neighborhoods aren't just tall and shady because they've been around longer... they get tall and shady at super speed, because they're getting boosted with sugar and nutrients through the underground network that's been established on the block.
------------{=0=}------------
But this brings us back around to tonight's main question, which is... to what extent are the individual city blocks, islands?
Do the underground networks, so clearly active within one block interior and the next, connect with one another, to form broader, citywide networks?
Or are the modern streets like great moats that root systems can't reach beyond?
In The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben, which I finished today, he said that in wild forests, most tree roots don't go much deeper than five feet, and prefer to spread out horizontally.
The subterranean infrastructure of the streets around here goes a lot deeper than that, so the question is... are there zones closer to the surface that are safe for root expansion... zones a few feet below the asphalt, but above the sewer tile?
And if so... can roots last long in that zone... where the soil is a lot more compacted, a lot saltier, and disturbed a lot more often by construction workers digging in to fix things or repave the surface?
Can the fungi even thread their way across the streets?
--<>--
If not, then each block is essentially it's own island, as far as subsoil root networks go. But the trees from block to block can still communicate chemically with one another through the air, above ground.
Seeds from one block can find their way to another... either by wind, bird, or squirrel.
Animals and insects can cross these boundaries without any problem.
So, in some ways the larger biome of the city is not affected much at all by the streets, but in other ways... each block may still be an island.
When it comes to an insect like the cicadas, who climb the nearest tree to where they hatched... and then spend their short life in that same tree, only for their decendents to drop from that tree back into the soil and repeat the process... it could well be that the timing of when they hit maturity and start calling... is block specific.
I'm not sure if that's true, but if so... I wonder how many other ecological quirks might be block specific?
Is the mix of percussionists, solists, and chorus singers I hear in my back yard through August and September, just a function of the peculiar success that hackberries and mulberries have enjoyed on this block?
Does it sound fundamentally different on other blocks where other plants and trees have established different profiles?
Or am I just overthinkng things again?.. as I wait for August to get here.
°¦}
https://soundcloud.com/snoozefestaudio
I just heard one here for a bit... then a couple minutes later, one over there for a bit... then a few minutes later, the third one for a bit. And then it all went quiet again.
I took a walk, five blocks north to the neighborhood bodega to get some smokes and listened the whole way, but heard nothing at all.
Today, I heard a new one right in the hackberry tree in my front yard, and another at some distance, and both called repeatedly... though there was a minute or two of silence between calls.
So, given that it's only July 7th, it's looking like I may have to disabuse myself of the idea that cicadas don't get going until August 1st.
That first loner I heard was on the 3rd. And now, four days later, I'm hearing several others. But on the other hand, none of them sound very committed yet.
Meanwhile, no loner crickets to be heard at the moment. The most recent one went silent a couple days ago and there hasn't been another.
We'll see how things play out through July, but I have been surprised at this much cicada sound so long before August.
And that may be, because I've just never paid this close attention before, in July.
But yesterday, walking north for five blocks and not hearing any cicadas up there, got me to wondering more about... to what extent are the blocks in my neighborhood islands?
In the July 2nd entry, Snoozefest Biome & Ecology, I looked at how this city is a quasi-forest, because of the historic and economic forces that shaped it.
Farmland was rezoned into residential lots at the end of the 19th century, and many of those lots remained vacant for decades, as the working class slowly bought the parcels and built their houses... which gave trees, plants, and animals time to establish a new forest biome... that the working class now simply lives alongside, without much disturbing it.
I say, quasi-forest, because the trees are dense enough and tall enough that from the air, you can't see the houses or the streets. All you see is canopy.
But there's still grass, and other green ground cover in between those trees, because enough sunlight still hits the ground to support it. So in that way, it's a little more like a savannah.
I'd say it's closer to being a forest, but at the same time, there is a way more diverse mix of random deciduous & conifer species than you'd find in a wild forest, and the trees don't live as long, or grow quite as tall.
The upper age limit of a neighborhood tree in Aurora is about 100 years, and the upper height limit is about 80 feet. Whereas, in a wild forest, some trees would be several hundred years old, and well over 100 feet tall.
But it still is very much like a forest in the sense that the trees do have deeply interconnected root networks below the soil, that intermingle with networks of fungi filaments... at least in the back yards of the blocks.
Back in the 1870s, when these vast acres were divided up into blocks, the streets were little more than paths paved with gravel. You can look at an old map and see the familiar grid we know today, but on the ground, they were just gravel paths, traversed by humans on foot, and the horses and wagons of businesses delivering goods, or moving raw materials around to help build the city.
Such gravel paths wouldn't have been much obstacle to tree roots underground, but on the other hand, there weren't as many trees around either, because the forest biome was still in the earliest stages of regaining a foothold, after decades of the land having been farmed.
Over time, those gravel paths were paved with bricks, and the first sidewalks were wood plank, and more like slightly elevated boardwalks.
And then, as the 20th century dawned, it was the sidewalks that became brick, while the streets became paved with asphalt... but not before getting dug out and fitted with sewer pipes.
Today, those sidewalks are concrete, and the sewers that run under the asphalt streets are split up into storm and waste pipes, going down to the good depth of 30 to 50 feet.
But all the while, the interior areas of each block... those back to back yards that comprise two to five acres of green space, depending on the block... have gone largely undisturbed.
If you're a front yard tree... especially one on the parking between the sidewalk and the street curb, then you've got sewers beneath your feet, utility lines in your face, and cars kicking up salt at you in the winter.
The crowns of these trees are pruned severely to keep clear of the power lines, and I'm not sure they have much freedom to extend roots under the pavement anymore.
Go too shallow and you'll upend the sidewalk or the asphalt and you're cut down. Go too deep and you'll tap into the sewer line... and get cut down.
Meanwhile your soil is quite salty, from snow melt salt on both the walk and the road.
But if you're a back yard tree, it's a different story.
There is no underground infrastructure in the block interiors. Not even gas or water lines. And if there were any utility lines above ground, they were telephone lines... which are now becoming obsolete.
The block interiors are unadulterated acres of soil, where trees are free to spread their roots as deep and as wide as they like... and grow as tall as they like, without any severe pruning.
And this is where I know for certain that the root systems are interconnected with fungi and can communicate and share resources, because I've seen it in my own back yard.
Old ash stumps that refuse to die, and keep sending up new trunks every year. A couple of them have grown right back into full fledged trees again. And they can't do that without help from neighboring trees, beneath the soil.
The old root systems of the stumps are being fed nutrients, via the wood wide web of the block, to stay alive and try again at growing new trunks.
Also, species that have healthy mother trees... and in my yard that's a huge mother Hackberry, and a huge mother mulberry... will take root and grow insanely fast the first few years.
I now have three young hackberries in my back yard that are too tall for me to try and cut down. And there are four new mulberries that are the same.
They all began as little, accidental saplings, a few years ago... when I wasn't paying attention... long before I'd bought myself a chain saw.
And in those few years, these new hackberries, and mulberries grew so tall, so fast, that they are now, too big to fail.
I could still get my DeWalt, battery-powered chain saw through them, and bring them down, but... it would take me a week of hard work, and sweat, to cut up even one, into manageable chunks... and I'd have nowhere to put all the wood, and no hope of ever burning it all.
The best I can do is prune the lower branches a bit, but they're here now, for the next 50 to 80 years.
And the reason they were able to get so tall so fast, I'm sure, is because they had help from their mothers.
The hackberries and mulberries in my yard are an example of mothers helping children of their own species, but I'm sure that those same mother trees, and other's on the interior of my block... like the towering locust tree in my side yard, and the huge cottonwood in the neighbor's yard... are pitching in together to help those ash stumps defy death, and any other distantly related deciduous cousin who can get a foothold.
My neighbors planted a scrawney little maple sapling in their front yard about ten years ago... far enough back from the parking not to catch any flack from the city infrastructure on the street. And it has grown to massive proportions!
That young maple is now, easily forty feet tall, and over two foot thick at the trunk.
If you had planted that same sapling in a new subdivision on the outskirts of town... there is no way in hell it could grow that huge in such a short span of time.
Trees in these old neighborhoods aren't just tall and shady because they've been around longer... they get tall and shady at super speed, because they're getting boosted with sugar and nutrients through the underground network that's been established on the block.
But this brings us back around to tonight's main question, which is... to what extent are the individual city blocks, islands?
Do the underground networks, so clearly active within one block interior and the next, connect with one another, to form broader, citywide networks?
Or are the modern streets like great moats that root systems can't reach beyond?
In The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben, which I finished today, he said that in wild forests, most tree roots don't go much deeper than five feet, and prefer to spread out horizontally.
The subterranean infrastructure of the streets around here goes a lot deeper than that, so the question is... are there zones closer to the surface that are safe for root expansion... zones a few feet below the asphalt, but above the sewer tile?
And if so... can roots last long in that zone... where the soil is a lot more compacted, a lot saltier, and disturbed a lot more often by construction workers digging in to fix things or repave the surface?
Can the fungi even thread their way across the streets?
If not, then each block is essentially it's own island, as far as subsoil root networks go. But the trees from block to block can still communicate chemically with one another through the air, above ground.
Seeds from one block can find their way to another... either by wind, bird, or squirrel.
Animals and insects can cross these boundaries without any problem.
So, in some ways the larger biome of the city is not affected much at all by the streets, but in other ways... each block may still be an island.
When it comes to an insect like the cicadas, who climb the nearest tree to where they hatched... and then spend their short life in that same tree, only for their decendents to drop from that tree back into the soil and repeat the process... it could well be that the timing of when they hit maturity and start calling... is block specific.
I'm not sure if that's true, but if so... I wonder how many other ecological quirks might be block specific?
Is the mix of percussionists, solists, and chorus singers I hear in my back yard through August and September, just a function of the peculiar success that hackberries and mulberries have enjoyed on this block?
Does it sound fundamentally different on other blocks where other plants and trees have established different profiles?
Or am I just overthinkng things again?.. as I wait for August to get here.
°¦}
