Marine nitrogen from salmon carcasses fertilized ancient inland forests

Evidence

The diversity of salmon in the river—Chinook, Chum, Pink and Coho—ensured that the people would not go hungry, likewise the forests. Swimming many miles inland, they brought a much-needed resource for the trees: nitrogen. The spent carcasses of spawned-out salmon, dragged into the woods by bears and eagles and people, fertilized the trees as well as Skunk Cabbage. Using stable isotope analysis, scientists traced the source of nitrogen in the wood of ancient forests all the way back to the ocean. Salmon fed everyone. — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 883

Categorization

• SHARE: The stable isotope tracing of ocean nitrogen into old forest wood is a striking, specific finding worth sending to a botanist or ecologist friend.