A real flood confirmed the lab-tested flood-tolerance and disturbance pattern

Evidence

When the ice went out on the Kickapoo the next spring I called the gaging station and an electronic voice informed me that the river was in flood. So I jumped in my car and drove down to see what the mosses looked like now. The river was chocolate brown with dissolved farmland. Logs and old fenceposts were pushed along in the torrent, bumping against the cliff. My red paint markers were nowhere to be seen. By the next morning the waters had receded as quickly as they had come and the aftermath was revealed. The Fissidens had emerged unscathed. The mid-level mosses were sodden with mud and battered by the logs and the pull of the water. A few more bare patches had been made. The Conocephalum had not been submerged long enough to die, but it was torn away in great swaths, hanging from the cliff like ripped wallpaper. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss, 304

Categorization

• SEED: Reading disturbance history from present structure: having lived the hypothesis-forming (observation -> experiment -> incidental public data -> field confirmation) and the emotional payoff of prediction fulfilled.
• XREF: connects to: The Driftless Area’s unglaciated cliffs preserve fine-scale banded vegetation patterns. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural…, 279; Species differ sharply in flood tolerance that explains their cliff elevation — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural…, 296; Suburban sprawl created flood damage faster than engineered protections could counter — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 698

Broader Connections

• Species differ sharply in flood tolerance that explains their cliff elevation #corroborates (0.90) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss, 296
• Suburban sprawl created flood damage faster than engineered protections could counter #complicates (0.75) — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside, 698