Are these native trees on the mountain slope or just planted there to produce timber? Which kind of trees did cover these slops 150 years before now?
PS: Seeing it again, I value the BW treatment of the river bend very highly.
There is quite some biodiversity since we covered 460 km. that day from Coastal Hemlock to Ponderosa Pine to Bunchgrass biogeoclimatic zones and return on a circle tour. Considering the distance travelled, we did not come up with a lot, since there was not much fall colour left for imaging and the weather was rainy. (The yellow leaf of the Trembling Aspen was our quarry.) Most of the images were taken in a mixture of Ponderosa Pine and Bunchgrass areas, - very dry zones, where some of the wetter low areas will host deciduous species, like our aspens. With reference to #7, if you are referring to the relatively solidary conifers with orange brown and black bark, they are Ponderosa Pines, a native growth. I doubt these would be logged on steep unstable slopes. They also occur in sparse, solidary fashion within the grazing lands as well as the more desert grasslands where sage and other brush plants predominate. The main agriculture in the area is cattle grazing with some hay production where irrigation is possible, as you can see in the valley bottom. The wetter slopes across the valley appear to show denser growth of
Lodgepole Pine and maybe some fir (edit: Ponderosa Pine, obvious at 100%.) I could be wrong, but it does not appear that these slopes are suitable to logging. While I did not portray any pure grassland areas in my series, they are nearby. There are attempts to protect grasslands from invasive trees in the BC interior. So it does happen that trees may plant themselves! But, in general, I do expect that the biology, geology and climate was much the same 150 years ago.
