The site remained untouched and extensively untested for over a decade. A sign was placed to ensure that future researchers could locate and study it.
16 years later, Janzen sent graduate student Timothy Treuer to search for the spot where the food waste was dumped.
Treuer initially attempted to locate the large placard bearing the plot – and failed.
First stock of orange peels in 1996.
Photo by Dan Janzen.
“It’s a big sign, bright yellow letters. We should have been able to see it,” says Treuer. After wandering around for half an hour with no luck, he consulted Janzen, who gave him more detailed instructions on how to find the plot.
When he returned a week later and confirmed he was in the right place, Treuer was disappointed. Compared to the adjacent barren former pastureland, the site of the food waste deposit was “like night and day”.
Orange peel accumulation site (L) and adjacent pasture (R).
Photo by Leland Worden.
He explains, “It was hard to believe that the only difference between the two areas was a bunch of orange peels. They look like completely different ecosystems.”
The area was so dense with vegetation that he still could not find any sign of it.
Treuer and a team of researchers from Princeton University studied the site during the next three years.
The results, published in the journal “Restoration Ecology,” shed light on how discarded fruit parts helped completely transform the area.
Ecologists measured various properties of the site against an area of former pastureland just across an access road that was used to dump orange peels two decades ago. Compared to the adjacent plot, which was dominated by a single species of tree, two dozen species of vegetation were thriving at the orange peel deposition site.
Lab technician Eric Schilling searches a plot of newly grown orange peels.
Photo by Tim Treuer.
In addition to greater biodiversity, richer soil and a better-developed canopy, researchers discovered a tayra (a mongoose the size of a dog) and a giant fig tree three feet in diameter on the plot.
“You could have 20 people climbing that tree at a time and it wouldn’t have any problem with weight support,” says John Choi, co-author of the paper. “That thing was huge.”
Recent evidence suggests that secondary tropical forests – those that grow after the original ones are destroyed – are essential to help slow climate change.
The site after the collection of orange peels in 1998.
Photo by Dan Janzen.
“We don’t want companies to go in there and dump their waste here, but if it’s conducted scientifically and involves not only companies but also restorationists, I think it has really high potential,” says Treuer. ” ,
He believes the next step is to test whether other ecosystems – dry forests, cloud forests, tropical savannas – react in the same way to similar deposition.
Two years after his initial survey, Treuer returned once again to try to locate the sign marking the site.
Since his first scouting mission in 2013, Treuer had visited the plot more than 15 times. Choi had visited more than 50. No one had seen the original sign.
In 2015, when Treuer finally found it under a thicket of vines, with the help of the paper’s senior author, David Wilkov, and Princeton professor Rob Pringle, the scope of the field’s transformation really became clear.
Sign after clearing the vines.
Photo by Tim Treuer.
“This is a signal to blow a bigger horn,” Choi insists.
19 years of finger-wagging had put it down, thanks to two scientists, a flash of inspiration, and the peel of a simple fruit.
This article originally published 08.23.17
Source: www.upworthy.com
