Under the Canopy
On Outdoor Journal Radio's Under the Canopy podcast, former Minister of Natural Resources, Jerry Ouellette takes you along on the journey to see the places and meet the people that will help you find your outdoor passion and help you live a life close to nature and Under The Canopy.
Under the Canopy
Episode 88: What Tree Lichens Tell Us About Our Changing Forests and Landscapes
The forest canopy above us holds secrets most people never notice—miniature ecosystems thriving on tree trunks that tell profound stories about our changing world. In this eye-opening conversation with Dr. Yolanda Wiersma, professor of biology at Memorial University in Newfoundland, we venture into the fascinating realm of landscape ecology and lichen biodiversity.
Dr. Wiersma introduces us to landscape ecology—a discipline studying interactions between living things and their environments at scales visible from airplane windows. From the rolling hills and forests to human developments cutting across them, these patterns shape everything living beneath the canopy. Her work bridges traditional scientific approaches with Indigenous knowledge, leading to remarkable discoveries in unexpected places.
The heart of our discussion revolves around lichens—organisms far more complex than most realize. These aren't single lifeforms but miniaturized ecosystems combining fungi, algae, and sometimes bacteria from three different kingdoms. Dr. Wiersma's passion shines as she describes how these slow-growing organisms "eat the air" through photosynthesis while producing hundreds of unique chemical compounds, some with antimicrobial properties so effective that birds line their nests with them to protect vulnerable chicks.
Perhaps most surprising is Dr. Wiersma's discovery of a lichen biodiversity hotspot in central Newfoundland—an area previously overlooked by scientists until a member of the Qalipu First Nation reached out with photographs of rare specimens. This collaboration led to documenting 175 species in a region not previously known for lichen diversity, highlighting how traditional knowledge enriches scientific understanding.
Whether you're a nature enthusiast, someone curious about the hidden workings of our forest ecosystems, or simply appreciate learning about overlooked wonders in our natural world, this conversation will transform how you see the trees around you. Listen now to discover the miniature worlds thriving silently above our heads and what they can teach us about our changing planet.
How did a small-town sheet metal mechanic come to build one of Canada's most iconic fishing lodges? I'm your host, steve Nitzwicky, and you'll find out about that and a whole lot more on the Outdoor Journal Radio Network's newest podcast, diaries of a Lodge Owner. But this podcast will be more than that. Every week on Diaries of a Lodge Owner, I'm going to introduce you to a ton of great people, share their stories of our trials, tribulations and inspirations, learn and have plenty of laughs along the way. Meanwhile we're sitting there bobbing along trying to figure out how to catch a bass and we both decided one day we were going to be on television doing a fishing show.
Speaker 2:My hands get sore a little bit when I'm reeling in all those bass in the summertime, but that's might be for more fishing than it was punching you so confidently.
Speaker 1:you said, hey, pat have you ever eaten a drum? Find Diaries of a Lodge Owner now on Spotify, apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.
Speaker 3:As the world gets louder and louder, the lessons of our natural world become harder and harder to hear, but they are still available to those who know where to listen. But they are still available to those who know where to listen. I'm Jerry Ouellette and I was honoured to serve as Ontario's Minister of Natural Resources. However, my journey into the woods didn't come from politics. Rather, it came from my time in the bush and a mushroom. In 2015, I was introduced to the birch-hungry fungus known as chaga, a tree conch with centuries of medicinal applications used by Indigenous peoples all over the globe. After nearly a decade of harvest, use, testimonials and research, my skepticism has faded to obsession and I now spend my life dedicated to improving the lives of others through natural means. But that's not what the show is about. My pursuit of this strange mushroom and my passion for the outdoors has brought me to the places and around the people that are shaped by our natural world. On Outdoor Journal Radio's Under the Canopy podcast, I'm going to take you along with me to see the places, meet the people that will help you find your outdoor passion and help you live a life close to nature and under the canopy. So join me today for another great episode and hopefully we can inspire a few more people to live their lives under the canopy people to live their lives under the canopy Well, as always. We want to thank all our listeners around Canada, around the world, in Switzerland and Ghana, trinidad and Tobago and the States, of course, and you know it was an interesting morning.
Speaker 3:It's that time of year where the sap is still kind of sort of running and we're out doing a boil. So I was out this morning doing the maple syrup activities, making sure everything's going fine for our special blend which we make available at shows and things like that. It's called Chaga Maple and of course, my chocolate lab Ensign Gunner looks up at me like come on, dad, what's going on? Are we going for our walk? Are we doing our morning run? Well, on maple syrup time, he usually gets out in the bush with me so he gets lots of time later on, but it looks like it's closing down very shortly and we should be moving forward with the finish of the maple syrup season, cleaning up all the pans and all the buckets and the lids, and all that because we still use an old system. We got about 150, 200 taps when we're all fully operational, but it's going well. And anyways, this morning we've got a special guest, yolanda Wiersma. Welcome to the program, yolanda.
Speaker 4:Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3:Well, that's good. And, yolanda, maybe tell us a bit about yourself First of all. Whereabouts are you located, so our international guests can kind of figure out where you're contacting us from.
Speaker 4:Yeah, for sure. I am in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, on the island of Newfoundland, in the city of St John's. So if you picture a map of North America and you look for that big island to the northeastern part of Canada, st John's is on the easternmost edge of that big island. So I am as far east as you can get in North America.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was interesting. I have to tell you that when my wife and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary I said to her I said where do you want to go? She said I want to go to Newfoundland. You know something? Their marketing and promotion must be doing wonders because, sure enough, for our 25th anniversary we went to Newfoundland in May and rented a vehicle and drove up all along the eastern shore and all the different communities right up past Gander and all the way up quite a bit up, and I found it very, very interesting. And the one thing I found very interesting about Newfoundlanders was a lot of them know exactly where or had relatives or friends that worked in Oshawa, predominantly at the General Motors automotive plant here or one of the feeder plants, and they seem to have a good sense of it. But it was a great province of people are extremely friendly, hardworking and dedicated individuals and we very much appreciated the time that we did spend in Newfoundland. Yeah, awesome.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a great place to live. Yeah, it is well. I don't know how's the winter been you still, you got snow there in st john's, or you know.
Speaker 4:I don't think so we had a very uh, snow-free winter, uh, which is sad because I'm a I'm a big fan of winter, I'm a nordic skier and it was kind of a sad winter to be a skier.
Speaker 4:But our wintersters are really variable. In the almost 20 years I've lived here, we've had winters where snow's on the ground in December and doesn't leave until April, and I've even skied as late as May long weekend once. And then we have winters where maybe there's only five or six weekends with snow on the ground and it's mostly falling as rain. So it's it's very variable, but the winters here are comparatively mild compared to central Canada.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the snow depth, I understand, can be quite a bit once the hard winters hit.
Speaker 4:Yes, it can be. Yes, oh yes, we've had, we've had some pretty pretty good storms with a lot of snow.
Speaker 3:Well, when we were there and I'm noticing a friend, I don't know if you know I'm noticing a friend, I don't know if you know we've been there 20 years. I don't know if you know Steve Kent. He was a provincial member that, just out Mount Royal, I think it was was his riding.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, so name rings a bell.
Speaker 3:Yeah, just there. So I went into the legislature, which I found very interesting because Newfoundland is the only legislature in the province or in Canada, of all the legislatures, where the governing body sits to the left of the speaker. Everybody else sits to the right. And so I went in and I was in the chambers. We were in the chambers when the session was on and found it very interesting that the governing body was sitting on the left-hand side of the speaker and they told me they said well, what happened was that the heaters broke down one winter and the only heater was working was on the left-hand side of the speaker. So they moved the government body to the left-hand side and they stayed there. Yeah, it was interesting. We were there in May when our anniversary was, and we were told that well, you know, it's not a good month to be here, it's not something that a lot of people would want to come out in May, but we had no problems at all and drove up the eastern coastline and very much enjoyed it.
Speaker 4:Oh great.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Now you mentioned you've been in Newfoundland for 20 years. Where were you before that?
Speaker 4:I grew up in southern Ontario in the Niagara Peninsula, and I've lived all over various parts of Ontario, spent a couple of summers on the North Shore of Superior, spent a lot of time in the Georgian Bay area and lived right in Toronto for about five years and spent a year in the Northwest Territories and, yeah, then ended up out here.
Speaker 3:Oh, interesting. You were in the territories, you were there for a year.
Speaker 4:you said yeah, I actually. In a previous life I was a high school teacher and I taught up there for a year.
Speaker 3:Oh, very interesting. So now you have a position at university, correct?
Speaker 4:That's right, I'm at Memorial University.
Speaker 3:Tell us what you do at Memorial.
Speaker 4:I am a professor in the biology department here, so my job is a mix of primarily teaching and research. So half of my time I'm teaching undergraduates mostly ecology courses teaching undergraduates mostly ecology courses and then the other half of the time I'm doing either my own research or I'm supervising graduate students. So in my research group I have at any given time anywhere between three and eight or nine graduate students, so those would be master's or PhD students doing their own independent research that I'm supervising.
Speaker 3:Oh, very interesting. So just for our listeners getting an understanding, because not many know what an ecology course is kind of give us a breakdown of what an ecology course is.
Speaker 4:Sure. So ecology is essentially the study of our home. So eco, actually, the root word comes from the Greek word for home and ology is the study, so it's the study of our natural home. And ecologists study the interactions between living things and their environments, and they do that in all kinds of different ways. They might study it at the level of the individual. So how do individual organisms that could be plants, animals, insects, what have you? How do they adapt to the particular environment that they live in? They can also study populations. So how do populations ebb and flow through time and what drives those changes to populations? Some ecologists study communities, so they might look at all of the organisms in, say, a pond community or a meadow community. And my branch of ecology is called landscape ecology. So I study those interactions at extremely large spatial, uh extents, at the scale of entire landscapes so how large would an entire landscape be?
Speaker 3:you're referring to somebody's household. Are you looking at an acre? 10 acres, 100 acres, a thousand acres?
Speaker 4:yeah, that's a great question and I get, I get asked that all the time. So, um, it can be to. It's usually at the extent of several kilometers to tens or even hundreds of kilometers. In landscape ecology we like to define. People always ask you know well, what do you mean by when you say a landscape? And we like to describe it as what you can see from an airplane window.
Speaker 4:So if you think about, you know, being on a cross-continental flight on a cloudless day and you've got a window seat and you're looking down, you can tell if you're flying over. You know flatland or rolling hills or bumpy hills, mountains, whatever it is, and those are the land forms. And you can also see what's covering the land. You can see whether it's forests and you can usually tell if it's deciduous or coniferous forest. You don't see the individual trees, you can't identify the species, but you can see, you can discriminate the forest from the fields and all that.
Speaker 4:Those are the land covers. And then you can also see the human land uses. You can see the roads, you can see the railways, you can see the towns, you can see the industries, you can see where humans have altered the landscape for agriculture. You know where forest harvest is taking place, and those are the land uses. And so all three of those things combined land cover, land form and land uses are what make up a landscape the way we understand it in my discipline, and so we look at how those things interact to then influence the species that live on that landscape and also how the species might in turn help shape those patterns.
Speaker 3:Very interesting. So you mentioned, yolanda, that you had some students masters and PhD students that were doing their thesis or their papers. What kind of research do they typically are they doing in your classes that you're dealing with them?
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's over the years it's been kind of lots of variety, I'd say the sort of thing that's in common is it's usually focused here in Newfoundland and usually has something to do with an applied problem related either to conservation or resource management. So I've had students, we do a lot of work in the national parks here in Terranova and Grossmoor National Parks with my colleagues and my collaborators and we've done stuff with the provincial wildlife division looking at trying to understand distributions of species of interest. So it's really varied. But I really like to have research that feeds into some kind of applied problem and hopefully influences things like management decisions, policy decisions, that sort of thing.
Speaker 3:Very interesting. Now you mentioned you do a lot of the parks and they were looking for management sources to try and deal with the overpopulation so they didn't have big swings or die-offs in large numbers. Did any of your students or have you worked with any of the moose population problem that was taking place at that time in Newfoundland?
Speaker 4:Yes, actually we have my colleague, dr Sean LaRue, and I have a project that we're just wrapping up.
Speaker 4:That's in the two parks, and it's directly related to sort of examining the effect of moose on plant communities, liking diversity and as well as the buildup of carbon and nitrogen in both plants and soils.
Speaker 4:And so we've been doing that project for a number of years and we were also taking advantage of these moose exclosures that were developed here, quite actually before my time, by a now retired colleague of mine, dr Louise Hermanutes, in collaboration with both the provincial government and the two parks, and these are large fenced areas that keep the moose out, and so we can sort of understand how the forest would grow back following a disturbance, in the absence of moose.
Speaker 4:And then we compare that to adjacent areas and we're looking at a lot of how the forest responds to different disturbances, so things like insect outbreaks, wind throw, fires, as well as logging, and then how the forest grows back both with and without moose in and out of the parks. And the parks when you were here they would have just been starting to think about actually introducing moose hunting. So we also have some data, that sort of traces how the forest has been changing and then the two parks have had some hunting and it is showing an impact in that the forest is starting to come back, with a little bit of population control on the moose.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I know that when I was there, one of the things that I discussed with the ministry responsible for dealing with those issues in Newfoundland and Labrador was was that Ontario? At one point we traded actually moose for turkeys with Michigan and other jurisdictions and they were quite surprised you actually traded animals. I said, yeah, we helicoptered into Michigan and things like that and had quick turnovers which helped stabilize a lot of the moose populations in other jurisdictions. So they were thinking outside the box when we sort of brought those sort of ideas in, which was good to hear. But now Newfoundland obviously is a large island. Do they get the same sort of diseases coming in that would affect, like the spruce budworm and those sort of things that come in and actually have an impact on a lot of the forest as they found in other jurisdictions? Or because it's an island, it's not quite as as hit as hard, or you get as many of those diseases coming in, or would you know?
Speaker 4:um, I'm not an expert on all diseases but in terms of uh, forest pests, we do have spruce spudworm. In fact we're just sort of at the beginning stages of the spruce spudworm outbreak on the island right now. But we also have hemlock. Looper is another forest insect that we've got out here. So we do have ones that you would find in the eastern boreal on mainland Canada.
Speaker 3:So now are you familiar with management practices and how they're trying to deal with the spruce budworm and the hemlock looper. So with the spruce budworm and the hemlock looper.
Speaker 4:So with the spruce budworm, the province does do some spraying with BT. As far as I'm aware, that's the main spray and there's some controversy around that they're not spraying in the two national parks right now. So from a scientific point that's kind of interesting because you have sort of a natural experiment and again, doing experiments at a landscape scale is often tricky. But with the fact that there's similar forests in and outside of the boundaries of a national park you can assess what the impact of these outbreaks which are naturally cycling, and the boreal forest is a disturbance-driven ecosystem. It is interesting just to sort of see how that will sort of play out over time when you can compare an area where there's been spraying versus where there's not been spraying.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I know spruce budworm has had a significant impact in a lot of other jurisdictions and one of the ways that they dealt with it was they allowed the forest companies to go in and do major cuts in order to take out the fiber before it was totally useless, which had a huge impact. Well, when you look into the ecology of the impacts on the society because all of a sudden there was huge amounts of fiber that were available which decreased the price of wood products Canada-wide in our locations where sales were done and I don't know if they looked at those sort of impacts as well as potentially increasing their harvest in order to make sure that that fiber that has been contaminated is utilized before it becomes basically a waste material but those are different ways to look at sort of things yeah, definitely, um, you know forest, for I I not a trained forester, but a lot of my research has sort of uh, been in in forest ecology, so I do do a lot of chatting with forest managers, and forest management is a very complex area to work in.
Speaker 4:You're balancing a lot of social pressures, economic pressures, ecological, and they're complex ecosystems too. So, yeah, it's a very complex and nuanced too. Oh, absolutely yeah, it's a very complex and nuanced area in which to work.
Speaker 3:Now, I know we didn't plan on talking about a lot of the forestry stuff, but the Hemlock loop. Are you familiar with the impacts that are taking place in Newfoundland there?
Speaker 4:Not really. We haven't had an outbreak of that one in a long time, so it's kind of not on anybody's radar at the moment.
Speaker 3:Okay, that's good to hear. So what research are you yourself working on then, Yolanda?
Speaker 4:So, in addition to the work in the two parks on carbon nitrogen in the plants and the soils, the other work I'm doing is what I call lichen landscape ecology. So I'm taking some of the principles of landscape ecology and using lichens as kind of a model system to understand ecological processes across different spatial scales.
Speaker 3:Well, lichens are. I think they're predominantly the main food for caribou species, is it not?
Speaker 4:Yes, they are.
Speaker 3:And so what is the impact of the lichens on the caribou populations, or what are you finding? Are you finding any relationships there with that?
Speaker 4:So lichens are definitely hugely important for caribou and we do have caribou here on the island but those kinds of lichens are not my main area of research. Those are ground lichens, but lichens are actually here a huge diverse group. We probably have. We have probably over 300 species or more of lichens here in the province and I primarily study the ones that live on the trees.
Speaker 3:Okay, so how long does it take tree lichens to grow?
Speaker 4:That's a great question. They're slow growing and they'll grow a few millimeters at a time, and so they tend to. But there's variation. There's some lichens that we can that sort of get labeled as weed species. They might grow a little faster, but there are other lichens that only grow a few millimeters to a few centimeters a year, and so they really like to be on older trees in these older forests.
Speaker 3:Now I did a podcast with Bruce Ranta, who is a biologist for the Ministry of Natural Resources, and one of the comments he made was that the Slate Island caribou in the Slate Islands, which are in the Great Lakes and Lake Superior way, were very dependent on lichens, but the caribou there were eating tree lichens mostly and waiting till the winters brought them down to feed on. Is that something that you found or you know about?
Speaker 4:yeah, caribou will eat uh tree lichens.
Speaker 4:So you, you know the ones that people sort of uh call the old man's beard lichens, those, those sort of tufty ones that there's actually probably 12 different species or more that sort of, are all labeled, uh, lumped together as old man's beard as a common name, but they have various different scientific names. Definitely, caribou will eat those off the trees if the snow's too deep or the snow's too crusty, and those are an important food source. But they will also dig through the snow and eat what people call the caribou lichens or the rainbow reindeer lichens, um that that they can paw, you know, paw through the snow and eat that and they're yeah, they're definitely a hugely important food source. Uh, I haven't done any direct research on on the links between lichen and caribou uh on the island, but it's um, I have a colleague down the hall who's working with a caribou herd on fogo island and we keep talking about maybe holding in some lichen research. But you know, you can only do so many things at once.
Speaker 3:Oh, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Hi everybody, I'm Angelo Viola.
Speaker 2:And I'm Pete Bowman.
Speaker 1:Now you might know us as the hosts of Canada's Favorite Fishing Show.
Speaker 2:But now we're hosting a podcast that's right. Every Thursday, ange and I will be right here in your ears bringing you a brand new episode of Outdoor Journal Radio.
Speaker 1:Now, what are we going to talk about for two hours every week?
Speaker 2:Well, you know there's going to be a lot of fishing.
Speaker 6:I knew exactly where those fish were going to be and how to catch them, and they were easy to catch.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it's not just a fishing show. We're going to be talking to people from all facets of the outdoors, from athletes, All the other guys would go golfing.
Speaker 2:Me and Garth and Turk and all the Russians would go fishing. To scientists. But now that we're reforesting and laying things free.
Speaker 6:It's the perfect transmission environment for the line to be.
Speaker 7:To chefs If any game isn't cooked properly, marinated, you will taste it.
Speaker 2:And whoever else will pick up the phone.
Speaker 1:Wherever you are.
Speaker 2:Outdoor Journal Radio seeks to answer the questions and tell the stories of all those who enjoy being outside. Find us on Spotify, apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 3:And now it's time for another testimonial for Chaga Health and Wellness. Okay, we're here with Kim from Bob Cajun and Kim, you had a great experience with the Chaga cream and your grandson. Can you tell us about that a bit?
Speaker 5:Yeah, so my grandson actually struggles with psoriasis. He's only 16 years old, so of course, the self-esteem right. He doesn't want his face all covered in scales and stuff like that. And I picked him up on a weekend to come and visit with me and I had overheard you talking to somebody about psoriasis. So it kind of piqued my interest and I thought I would ask you about that. And when you explained it to me I took a container home for him.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 5:And in one day he was over the moon, happy that his face looked clear and he's going to be religiously doing it because he's so self-conscious about it. Okay.
Speaker 3:So he tried other things uh, the, the medical system and things like that and, yeah, he just didn't have any success, correct he?
Speaker 5:had a prescription of cream and you know, it would sort of dry it up a little bit. But that was the problem. It just dries it up and then it's flaky on his face and he doesn't really like that and it leaves a lot of little red blotchy stuff right. So after he rubbed that stuff on the chaga stuff he was his face didn't look so angry you know because it's a red, angry sort of right on his face and it didn't look so angry, it looked soft and and clear.
Speaker 5:So he was over the moon happy, and so I took him home, and then he messaged me after a couple of days to tell me that he's so, so happy that his skin looks clear.
Speaker 3:Great. Thanks very much, kim. From Bob Gajan.
Speaker 5:You're welcome, okay.
Speaker 3:We interrupt this program to bring you a special offer from Chaga Health and Wellness. Offer from Chaga Health and Wellness. If you've listened this far and you're still wondering about this strange mushroom that I keep talking about and whether you would benefit from it or not, I may have something of interest to you. To thank you for listening to the show, I'm going to make trying Chaga that much easier by giving you a dollar off all our Chaga products at checkout. All you have to do is head over to our website, chagahealthandwellnesscom, place a few items in the cart and check out with the code CANOPY C-A-N-O-P-Y.
Speaker 3:If you're new to Chaga, I'd highly recommend the regular Chaga tea. This comes with 15 tea bags per package and each bag gives you around five or six cupsaga tea. This comes with 15 tea bags per package and each bag gives you around five or six cups of tea. Hey, thanks for listening Back to the episode. Now. I know that you're listed on a paper dealing with lichens that you wrote with a number of other individuals. Maybe you can kind of elaborate on that or expand on that individuals.
Speaker 4:Maybe you can kind of elaborate on that or expand on that. Yeah, that's one of my latest papers, which is a new area of research for me in central Newfoundland. So lichen diversity on the island of Newfoundland. There's been lichenologists who have come here to do research from mainland North America, from the United States, from Europe, for quite a number of decades and there's some key parts of the island of Newfoundland that are sort of known globally as lichen hotspots. One of these is on the Avalon Peninsula where I did a lot of my earlier work on lichens. It's an area called Hull's Gullies and it's sort of known globally in the lichenology world as a hotspot. But central Newfoundland is a little bit more continental in climate. It's had a lot more industrial forestry so the forest is a lot younger. There's been a lot more disturbance at larger scales than this sort of coastal Avalon area which gets a lot of fog, a lot of of moisture. It has a very sort of oceanic climate which is ideal growing conditions for for lichens, and so we hadn't historically um thought of central newfoundland as as being particularly interesting for lichen diversity because, as I mentioned, they like these older forests. They also like areas with a lot of high humidity. So I'd been doing a lot of work in this hulls gullies area this sort of known hotspot for for about a decade.
Speaker 4:And then a couple of years ago, a gentleman from central Newfoundland who's a member of Hullapoo First Nation and had been doing, you know, traveling through his family's traditional territory. He contacted me by email and he said, you know that the subject line of the email was a question about an interesting lichen. Subject line of the email was question about an interesting lichen, and I get emails like this from time to time where people see something and they, you know, they find my website and they find out I know a little bit about lichen and they want to identify it. And I thought, oh, central Newfoundland, this is not going to be anything interesting. Like any time I've looked at lichens in central Newfoundland, they're just sort of more those weedy species.
Speaker 4:And I opened up the attachment and it's this absolutely stunning lichen in this group called cyano lichens, which are a special subgroup of lichens that are uniquely sensitive to air quality. They're a little bit more rare and they like, tend to like higher humidity and they're not typical for that area. So that right away piqued my interest. So I contacted him and he invited me out and we went, we did some exploring around his area and I quickly realized this is a little bit of a different pocket of Newfoundland than what you would expect for central Newfoundland.
Speaker 4:So I'm not a lichenologist, as I mentioned, I'm a landscaping scholar. So I contacted my collaborator, dr Troy McMullen, who's at the Canadian Museum of Nature and he's a lichenologist, and so he came out and we did about five days of surveying in all kinds of different habitats just to sort of try to document some of this diversity. We also had a few days with some other lichen experts and we compiled all that information to document the total species richness in this little area. It's about 120 square kilometers in central Newfoundland and we found 175 species of lichens in that area, which is higher than I think we would have expected for central Newfoundland and is comparable to this other hot spot on the Avalon.
Speaker 3:So what do the lichens normally feed on?
Speaker 4:So lichens essentially Troy, my colleague the lichenologist he likes to describe them as they basically eat the air. So lichens are a really interesting organism. So in the textbooks you know that you might have learned in school they they're characterized as this symbiotic association. So this combination of two different organisms living together. The main part of it is a fungus, Right, and then it houses within its tissues, it houses these algae cells, so these single-celled plants. So essentially these single-celled plants are photosynthesizing, they're using the sun's energy, they're using liquid water from fog or from rainfall and the fungus is sort of absorbing that for them. It's keeping these little single-celled plants in a stable environment within the fungal tissues and those little single cell plants are making sugars, just like every plant does, and the fungus part of the lichen is living off those sugars that the algae is making. And then the cyanolichens, which is those rarer ones, actually have a cyanobacteria which is in a completely different kingdom again, and those cyanobacteria are bacteria that also can photosynthesize and make sugars from the sun's energy.
Speaker 4:So lichens are the whole idea of what is a lichen is really kind of, in academic circles, a hot topic, because we, you know, historically, was sort of thought of as just the simple, simple sort of association between a fungus and an algae, and it's just these two things living together in a partnership. But now we know that in some cases there's a third partner, this bacteria um. So you actually have three different kingdoms living together the fungus kingdom, the plant kingdom and the bacterial kingdom. But then we're now finding out that there's some lichens that have multiple species of fungus, um, in combination with you know, these, these photobionts, um, and so we're starting to, like knowledge, are really starting to characterize them more as miniaturized ecosystems that sort of run on their own and have all these complex interactions at this very, very small extent. So they're quite fascinating.
Speaker 3:So with the relationship, is it like an arbuscular or an ecto relationship, where they connect to each other through the roots of the fungal world?
Speaker 4:No. So lichens don't have any roots. They sometimes will have these little hairs on their undersides, called rhizomes, that look like roots, and those are. Those are essentially just function, kind of like Velcro. They help the lichen attach to its substrate, but there's no. There's no vascular tissue. There's nothing that's sort of absorbing nutrients from the tree that it's growing on or the soil that it's growing on tree that it's growing on or the soil that it's growing on. They're simply just hanging on there and they're getting all of their energy from their little photobiont buddies, whether that's an algae or a cyanobacteria. That's where all the food energy is coming from the fungus. So, unlike mycorrhizal fungi which you see in the soil that have this close association with roots, or fungi that you see on a log that are decomposing the log and getting their energy from that decomposed tissue, lichens are getting their energy from photosynthesis because they have these other tissues, these other organisms living within the fungal tissue.
Speaker 3:Very interesting. So are there more and more medicinal applications being found with lichens? I think old man's beard is one of the ones you mentioned. I believe that there are some medicinal applications found with old man's beard, but I'm not sure because I haven't really looked into it in depth and I'm not sure if you looked at it at all.
Speaker 4:Yeah, this is not my area of expertise, but definitely there is a whole area of interest in lichen chemistry. Lichens produce that's the other fascinating thing about them. They produce all kinds of chemical compounds. They estimate that there's probably at least 200 or more different chemicals that lichens can produce, and some of those compounds can likely have medicinal properties. But we don't really. They're not yet well studied.
Speaker 4:We do know from, you know, traditional knowledge, we have some documentation of certain species of lichens being used to, you know, control, things like inflammation, to be a disinfectant. There's definitely lichens that have antimicrobial properties and we even see there's bird species will line their nests with lichens as a way of keeping the emerging, you know, the baby's birds. When they hatch they haven't built up their immunity and so having lichens lining the nest is a way of helping keeping microbes that might infect the chicks as they're developing, help keep them from getting sick. And then some of the lichen chemicals are also used in dyes, natural dyeing. So yeah, lichen chemistry is this whole other sort of subdiscipline. That again, not a lot of people, there's a few people working on, but there's just so much more that we don't know yet.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I know old man's beard is antimicrobial. That has a number of different applications that are used for treating wounds and things like that from a lot of other research that I've done and look at that. But I don't know about many of the other lichens or the applications there at all.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and we don't. Unlike medicinal plants, which are easy to identify, lichens can be pretty tricky to identify. So the one that folks call old man's beard is usually this sort of greeny one that hangs down from the trees. Or sometimes there's a brownish one that sometimes gets called old man's beard, but I've also seen it called horsehair lichen. In reality there's probably a dozen species that look like that, that either look like that brown one or that green one, and you really need to have an expert tell you how to tell them apart. And so telling people that, oh, you know, old man's beard has medicinal properties. It might be just one species of that group that has those medicinal properties and the other ones don't.
Speaker 4:And because lichens are slow growing, you know they can easily be susceptible to over-harvesting. So we don't like to sort of tell people like, oh, this has these properties because they might, a harvest the wrong one, because it's difficult to tell them apart, and, b, there's just too much of a risk of over-harvesting. It's not like a medicinal plant, like Labrador tea, where you can pluck a few leaves. There's Labrador tea everywhere. It'll grow back, it's not an issue. But with lichensens, where they're so slow growing, um, it's, it's just best to sort of leave them be. The folks I know who do um use lichens for dyeing, they only harvest lichens that are on branches that have fallen from the trees.
Speaker 3:So I see so, yeah, so there could be a lot of yeah there's. There's like a lot of mushrooms where there could be numerous types of the same that look the same. You got to make sure you're getting the right thing, and so you need some expertise in order to be able to identify the right one.
Speaker 4:That's right.
Speaker 3:Yep, so now also Yolanda, you've published a book. Maybe you can kind of give us some background and details about your book.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 4:So yeah, to kind of veer back to where we started with landscape ecology, as a landscape ecologist we, as I mentioned, we tend to do our work at these large spatial extents and it can be difficult to do experiments at that scale.
Speaker 4:Occasionally you get that ability to do sort of a comparison, like we were talking about with the spruce budworm, where you might have a protected area like a park, where spraying hasn't happened, and you compare that to an adjacent area. But in an experimental sense you have no replication and a good experiment you should always have replicates just to make sure what you're seeing isn't a chance event. And so I've always been fascinated with the idea of well, how do we, how could we do robust experiments in landscape ecology? And when I discovered the world of lichens about 10 years ago and discovered, you know, they could be used as a model system, that enabled some replication, because I could sort of scale these down to the landscapes of tree trunks. But then that got me thinking just more about the concept of experimentation in landscape ecology generally. And so, yeah, a few years ago I wrote a book called Experimental Landscape Ecology, and it's essentially a book written for my peers in the discipline, about ideas on the different ways that we can do robust experiments in our discipline.
Speaker 3:And so, what sort of robust experiments do you suggest or you highlight in your book?
Speaker 4:Yeah, so there's different approaches. So there are experiments at those big extents where you can do sort of manipulations, sometimes in collaboration with, say, land managers. So you if you have an area that's going to be harvested, say for forestry, if you work with a forest company and you get them to harvest in kind of an experimental fashion, you might be able to have kind of that, you know, control, replicate and have treatments that are a little bit more amenable to a statistical analysis. But I also talk about how we can harness scaled down tools to do experiments at smaller scales and then extrapolate that back up to larger extents. And then I also have a chapter where I talk about how we can use computer simulation models to try to understand some of these landscape scale processes in a sort of like in Ontario.
Speaker 3:The Ministry of Natural Resources here is responsible for well, it used to be when I was minister. Now there's a separate ministry of forestry it's called where we predominantly did something called moose mosaic cuts, which was forest harvesting designed for moose populations, for moose populations. However, other governments later on did a caribou mosaic, which means they go in and cut large swaths of land in order to allow mostly lichens to grow in those areas, because lichens require a significant amount of time in order to support caribou life. So there's different ways of cutting the landscape in ontario a moose mosaic, which is kind of patchwork to allow connecting links or large areas so they can be undisturbed for lengthy periods of times to allow lichens to grow on. I guess it's the same sort of idea of what you're speaking about with your, your book, your experimental landscape ecology yes, exactly that would be.
Speaker 4:those would be examples of sort of harnessing forest management in an experimental fashion and comparing, you know, how do these species respond to these two different sort of forest prescriptions, forest harvest prescriptions. And there are examples of studies that have done similar kinds of things with experimental forestry at large spatial extents all over the world. So my book basically just sort of collects, you know, a huge survey of the scientific literature from around the world and the book is basically kind of a synthesis. It's aimed mostly at graduate students or other researchers just to give a summary of what the sort of state of knowledge is on this.
Speaker 3:So basically, it was just your ideas to give a summary of what the sort of state of knowledge is on this. So basically it was just your ideas. Now, when you were in the Northwest Territories and Ontario and different, did that kind of inspire you, because you see different things in different provinces to try and write the book.
Speaker 4:The inspiration for the book really came out of starting to work on this scale down system with the lichens, which is something that I only came to about 10 years ago and that just really starting to make me think about how do we do experiments at these broad extents.
Speaker 3:Okay, very interesting. So how do people get a copy of your book or where can they get more information about your work? Yolanda copy of your book or where can they get more information about your work.
Speaker 4:Yolanda. So the book is published by Springer and, as I said, it's a little bit of a technical book, so it's aimed more at academic audience. But you could order it direct from Springer. I think most of the major bookstores will bring it in for you. But if you want to find out more about my work, um, but if you want to find out more about my work, um, I'm really findable, uh, if you just Google Yolanda Wiersma, um, most of the hits will be me, um. Or if you go Memorial University of Newfoundland and look for me on, uh, you know, do a search there, you'll you'll hit my uh research page pretty quickly and I have links to, um, some of my research papers. I try to keep my website pretty up to date with what my students are up to.
Speaker 4:But if your listeners are interested in lichens, I will plug two other books by my colleague, troy McMullen, which he's done a really excellent job as a lichenologist to communicate the complexity of lichens and just their awesome diversity and beauty to a broad audience.
Speaker 4:So just last year he published a book with Firefly called Lichens the Macro Lichens of Ontario in the Great Lakes region and it's a nice, not too technical guide that describes a lot of the species you will see in the Great Lakes region of Ontario but beyond that and it's a book I highly recommend picking up for somebody who's interested in learning more about lichen diversity and then the other one he co-published with Francis Anderson, who's a lichenologist from Nova Scotia.
Speaker 4:It's called Common Lichens of Northeastern North America and it's just a nice little field guide like very lightweight, fits in your backpack. All of the species in it are field identifiable, which not. There's many, many lichens that are not field identifiable. You have to take them back to the lab to either look at under a microscope or do chemical tests on. But this little book, super lightweight, fits in your backpack, will teach you to identify over 130 different species, and that one's published by the New York Botanical Gardens Press. So it's a little bit harder to get your hands on, but it is a highly worthwhile book to have if you're interested in learning about lichens.
Speaker 3:So whereabouts is Troy located? Where are these individuals located? Well, troy would be basically, I guess, from lichens of Ontario, and Great Lake regions would be from Ontario.
Speaker 4:Yes, he's a research scientist and lichenologist at the Canadian Museum of Nature, so he's based in Ottawa. And then Francis, who's his co-author on the book with the New York Botanical Gardens, is based in Nova Scotia.
Speaker 3:Very good. Well, yolanda, thank you very much for taking the time. It's very interesting. It's a topic that I don't have a lot of experience on or a lot of knowledge about, and I'm sure it would be the same for a lot of our listeners as well, and it's always good to learn about these different communities that live out there under the canopy and find out more information about how our systems work, and not only that, but also the on in dealing with landscapes and all the the other things. And and tell us once more, how can people get more information from you or how can they get your book experimental landscape ecology uh, so they can get the book through uh springer press and they can find out about me.
Speaker 4:If you just go to the university website, uh munca, so for memorial university of newfoundland, and then just in the search, search for Yolanda Wiersma, you'll hit me, or just Yolanda Wiersma in Google. I think I'm the only Yolanda Wiersma out there, so I'm pretty easy to find and I'm always happy to hear from folks and if you just my contact information is on my Web page and I'm happy to chat with people about lichens, about landscapes, about boreal forests.
Speaker 3:So if people find an interesting lichen, they can send you an image of it for maybe some discussion.
Speaker 4:Certainly I can't promise I'll identify it, but you never know what where that might lead to.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you very much, Yolanda. We really appreciate you taking the time to enlighten us on this, these couple of interesting topics, and it's just a little bit something different that people are learning about what's happening out there under the canopy. Thanks, yolanda.
Speaker 4:Thanks for having me.
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