Virginia Dale Oral History Interview, August 12, 2015

SAMUEL SCHMIEDING: Good morning, this is Dr. Samuel Schmieding, Oregon State University. I am here with Dr. Virginia Dale, Oak Ridge National Laboratories. We are in the Baltimore Convention Center at the Ecological Society of America Conference. We are going to complete the second half, shall we say, of an oral history interview that we started last week at the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument basically in the debris flow avalanche deposit.

VIRGINIA DALE: Correct.

SS: I got it right this time.

VD: Yeah. And the other correction I want to add is it's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (singular).

SS: Oh, did I say laboratories?

VD: Yeah, minor issue.

SS: Okay. Thank you for correcting me.

VD: It's been made before.

SS: Okay. So, we did what we could last time and it was a very hot day and we went as far as we could. You basically stopped early in your history of working 00:01:00with Mount St. Helens. You of course went through how you got to know the mountain, how you set up your plots, how you experienced the eruption and the post-eruption landscape, the initial Pulses. What you want to do is maybe recommence in the early mid-'80s and pick up your work and how it proceeded from that point. I'll just let you take it from there, and then I'll ask questions, as I see appropriate.

VD: Okay, so there was all this excitement in 1980 and '81 that was met by a number of researchers doing their work on different areas of the mountain. As I said, we focused on the debris avalanche deposit, which was really exciting and we're part of the initial NSF funding that was led by Larry Bliss and Jerry Franklin. After the initial pulse of funding, it became more difficult to obtain funding. We were very lucky to be able to attain funding from the National 00:02:00Geographic Society and from organizations such as Earthwatch and the Center for Field Research that enabled volunteers to come help us do the work as well as help pay for the work. We ended up early on having many teams of volunteers, which has been real important to the work that we've done. Because early on when we set up these permanent plots it took some work to set them up. We physically had to carry out a lot of hardware that we then put in place, which was rebar, and then we had to go through and measure the plots. Measuring the plots was mainly looking for plants and then identifying what they were. Early on just finding the plants was hard, and we learned that some people had a good eye for these teeny little cotyledons that you would see, and other people didn't. Then 00:03:00we would have a botanist with each team that, once we found the plants, we could identify what they were. Other work that we did was set up seed traps that we monitored over time. We had to do that every 10 days or less. We had these frames we first established, and then we put sticky material on them, replace them with sticky material and then counted the number of seeds. Again, we had trained botanists on our team to identify the species. We found things that were contrary to what one would observe, one would have thought about from typical successional processes. For example, we found the number of seeds was highest in the center of the debris avalanche, which was furthest from areas that were not impacted, contrary to what you would learn in ecology class. We think that's perhaps because the prevailing winds were coming up the valley along the center 00:04:00of the streambed and that's where it was carrying all these seeds and not from the closer areas that had not been disturbed along the edge of the debris avalanche deposit. We initially started finding very different things. I don't know how much I'm repeating of what I've said earlier. Did I say that?

SS: You said that part earlier. When you do a two-part thing like this, there are going to be redundancies because there are certain things that are part of your pro forma responses to certain things, so that's perfectly acceptable and understandable.

VD: We had these teams of researchers through 1984 and 1985 that were really important for setting up different experiments. Then, thereafter, we started coming back every 5 years. That's where the logistical support of the Forest Service was really important in getting non-standard funds, like from National Geographic, were really important to allow us to come out and continue revisiting our plots. The Forest Service not only provided us with tables and 00:05:00chairs and some of that, but some of the years they provided us with the services of a botanist, like Elsie Denton, who you met, during our field work. We first met her in 2010 when she helped our team. Then this year she was a volunteer on our team. Throughout the years we've had a number of untrained people, but especially valuable were the trained botanists who were taking their time to help us. That's been great. We have been able to monitor every 5 years since 1985, these plots, and what we've found is that there's been an increase in the cover of the plant species that are there with a peak in cover in 2004 and then it's slightly declining, but we're getting some shifting of the species 00:06:00composition more towards species that you would find in a forest situation as canopy cover has been established. That canopy cover, as you saw out there, is largely alder, but we are getting some conifers, like Douglas-fir, are now seeding on the debris avalanche deposit. And, we are getting some of the true firs and some the western hemlock, which is more of a late-successional species that you would expect to see later on coming into play. That has been a very important part of the process. Interestingly, we found these late successional species very early on. They were coming in early. They're just slow growing in many cases. When they did not get eaten by the elk, the elk story is an important part of this process, they survived and, although the true fir and the hemlock have not seeded yet, they may in 10 or 20 years and that's going to be important to the successional dynamics that we see.

SS: The volunteers that you got, were they students like REU type programs? Or?

VD: Well, sometimes I had students, particularly when I was working in the Pacific Northwest, because I was at several different universities. Those students would come along. But the really excellent professionals I'm getting are established botanists in the area. For instance, we had someone who recently retired from the California Native Plant Society. We have some rare species specialists from California: Bob Holland and Ginny Daines, who have been working with us since the early 1980s and they are excellent taxonomists and to me the taxonomy is really the difficult task: figuring out what those plants are. In September and next month, we are going to have a taxonomy party in California where we have taken our pressed specimens. Because the plants that we don't know we press and then we will go and work with microscopes to try and identify what 00:08:00those plants are. I have done that before in the past: gone to California to work with the botanists there who have helped me with plant identification. So, it's not just the field work.

SS: How many new species have you developed, I mean, discovered at Mount St. Helens?

VD: Okay, I don't know what you mean by new species?

SS: Well, I'm not assuming some weird nuclear mutation. That's not what I want to make it sound like, but new species to the area?

VD: Okay, we have found all the species that were present on Mount St. Helens before, as obtained from a list of St. John and other people who work there previously, have all come back. What we're finding is that some of the non-natives are very important. But we haven't found any new species to the 00:09:00region per se. We have, I was going to look at my list of the number of species total, because that would be important for you to know, if you wait a second here.

SS: I think I asked you that when we were out in the field, and you asked me to look at the book. You have the book.

VD: Yeah, and maybe while I'm looking this up, I should refer to the book, because [SS interrupts].

SS: I don't have it with me, so.

VD: Well, I'm going to get it on your record, the fact that we have a book summarizing what happened 25 years after the eruption in which we had most of the main researchers who have been working, some short-term some longer-term, prepare a chapter that summarize their work. I find again and again this book, this compilation, of the different research efforts that are ongoing is really a valuable source and Charlie Crisafulli and Fred Swanson worked with me in 00:10:00editing this book.

In particular, our chapter one is looking at how Mount St. Helens fits into other volcanic studies in the region, and our second to last chapter looks at the management implications, and the final chapter looks at the key lessons learned, and we had a paper in Science that also summarizes those. All of those chapters are really important to the synthesis activity. Now Charlie and I are working on the 35th anniversary book. When I go to ecologists, like we're meeting at the Ecological Society of America, they are more aware of the publications that have come out than of the intense efforts that we were involved such as a couple of weeks ago as part of the Pulse. There are different ways to reach the communities. The Pulse reaches the researchers who are involved. Publications and presentations like you're hearing at this meeting reach the wider ecological audience as well as those who are not so familiar 00:11:00with the ecological studies that go on. Okay, so I'm looking at my species lists and the total number of vascular plants that we have is about 225. That's many, many plants.

SS: In the debris avalanche area?

VD: On the debris avalanche area. And what's interesting is over the 35 years of this work, we found that the scientific names for 36 species, 15% of our sample, have changed names. That's partly because of all the genetics work that's been done intermediate. One of the challenges of working in this area is dealing with all the changes that occur, and one of them is the change in taxonomy.

SS: Because the sophistication of the field is greater, and you're able to differentiate on a finer, more detailed level.

VD: Right. So, we have to know what we were calling earlier as Festuca myuros is 00:12:00now Vulpia myuros. Keeping our long-term record straight, now I have in our long-term records as well as in our list, a list of the current names, and what the prior name was. Some of those have changed several times. This is one of the challenges of long-term research. As well as when we first started this and put out our permanent plots, we had no GPS, no GIS. Then over time that came into play. When we first got the GIS locations for our plots, you may recall, that it was not accurate. The GIS technology was largely being used by the military and, so, they offset the points by a certain distance, and, when we subsequently went out and we realized all our points were offset, we couldn't figure it out. And then we remembered in the 5 years since we've been there the military had decided everyone was breaking this code anyway to release what the real location was.

SS: Go figure, the military because they don't want to show the real targets, right?

VD: That's right. But for ecological research, that made a real difference. When we first put these plots out, fortunately, there was not much out there, so it was pretty easy to go find our points. Like the first day of our fieldwork this time was to find one of our plots and to sample it. Just finding the plot took a little bit of time because we had to know which projection system we were [using], and some of the team when they had their GPS units out were monitoring with different projection systems and then our plots are marked by rebar, which doesn't look that big. It's about the size of your finger coming out of a forest where many of the alder trees are about that same size. Fortunately, now the trees have gotten a little bigger, but in 2004 and in 2000 it was more challenging to find the plots. Then our whole team, because we had a big team 00:14:00this year, all did one plot together to make sure that we agreed taxonomically. We were agreeing on what we call the plants. We had agreed on methodology and making sure that we provided the information accurately and systematically. That's always important. And that's the value of having the three of us, me and Bob Holland and Ginny Daines, who have been part of the sampling team over this 35-year period.

SS: Tell me about Bob and Ginny, just because of that long relationship and just meeting them. They're very interesting people.

VD: They are, they are. So, they heard we were involved in Mount St. Helens and they picked up the phone and said we're coming. They have come every year. This year, in particular, they have been very valuable because several of their botanical colleagues have come as well. Having skilled botanists is really 00:15:00critical to this kind of work and my job, I know the common plants, but I'm not trained in taxonomy. I'm trained in ecology, but I've been able to keep the records, which is another critical part.

SS: People like that are kind of your eyes in the field, more or less.

VD: Well, I can be the eyes in the field but the work we're going to do in September to make sure we get the plants right is really critical. But we need lots of eyes because these are big, 250 m2 plots and being able to see and differentiate among the plants and make sure we get the plant names correct is critical. That's why we have all these voucher samples we take back so that we can compare from plot to plot to plot. For every plot we have a big plastic bag, and sometimes two or three. We put samples from that plot and then in September we're going to make sure that between plots we're calling, particularly the grasses, those are always the hard ones, the same name for consistency. And we 00:16:00have those samples from prior years, too, to make sure we're consistent.

SS: Now, where are all those samples stored at?

VD: They are in Oak Ridge. Maybe someday we will put them in a repository, but, as we continue these plots, it's better to keep them with me so I know where to access them.

SS: There we talked about having a Mount St. Helens research center of sorts?

VD: Yes, and Charlie Crisafulli is very interested in making sure that happens. There's interest in having it at Oregon State University. Some of the samples are stored in different places. I think I probably put some in the University of Washington herbarium, because I was working there in many of the early years. I think, and I'm not positive about this, that many of the animal samples are at Utah State University, because so many of Jim MacMahon's students were involved in the initial studies. They are not in one repository. But the team, I'll use that term broadly, is very aware of the need to have a consistent place where 00:17:00people can go for samples. Another valuable resource that I am personally maintaining is soil samples that I have from each of these plots on which we've done very limited work. We did some initial work on soils, and I did some microbial work from some of the soils, but every year we've been out there we've collected soil samples from each of the plots and I would be very interested in having the analysis done on these. That may happen as a result of some of the contacts I've made at the Pulse this year.

SS: For instance, my sense from what you're saying is that whatever samples in whatever studies with whatever PIs would happen to be in the purview and probably within whatever university or institution they respectively came from, correct?

VD: Correct. Correct. One of the problems with these herbaria-that's the name for the plant samples-there was an article in Science recently about how funding for herbaria is going away. Some herbaria are closing and then, occasionally, I 00:18:00would hope always, they are consolidating their work into another existing herbarium, but maintaining these samples and having funding to maintain these samples is always a challenge.

SS: What is the storage requirements, in terms of humidity and temperature, an ideal scenario for that, for example?

VD: Well, you want to keep it dry, and you don't want to have a fire. Fire is the big hazard.

SS: So, it's pretty simple. It's not quite like archives like we do where you're worried about humidity and temperatures and stuff. You have a little more leeway, but still similar concerns.

VD: Yeah, yeah. I mean you don't want to have it too hot, but dryness is the main thing. Most buildings in the U.S. are air conditioned and have some kind of humidity control, so it's not major. It's when you go to the tropics that you have some really major, major control problems. Fire is always an issue. Anyway, I could go on about that but that's not an issue here.

SS: What surprised you most about the colonization process that you witnessed from the beginning to even today? Either a general dynamic or a specific species?

VD: There were a couple of things. One is how random it was. We had been led by reading ecology texts that it was going to be an ordered progression and one species would make way for the next and that you would have physical changes to the substrate and to the surface that would allow other plants to come in. We found that the location was pretty random and also the species that came in. We found that all species in the area were observed on the debris avalanche deposit fairly quickly, particularly ones that we had heretofore called late successional species. I learned in ecology texts, and it's still being taught in 00:20:00ecology texts, that you have first the early successional species characterized by being very small, light seeds that are wind dispersed that will germinate in high light conditions that can survive in a variety of conditions come early, and you only find the later successional species that have heavy seeds, that aren't so adapted to wind dispersal, that typically only grow in the shade - only those occur later. We did find an abundance of these "early successional species" early on, but we also found that the late successional species were there, and, as I've said, the species like the true fir and the western hemlock are present and are growing very well. They look very healthy. The randomness is what you don't read about in ecology texts. The ordered progression just does not occur.

SS: Why do you think that paradigm has fought change? Or, I won't say it fought 00:21:00change because it sounds like it's an active thing, but why do you think it's not changed quickly?

VD: Well, one thing is many of the textbooks are rehashings of prior versions of the textbooks. If they do talk about something like Mount St. Helens, they will have it as an aside and they will say: "And this is what we find at Mount St. Helens." Science seeks order and rules. Saying that there are random phenomena does not meet that paradigm. But this is the way it is. We want to say a simplified order of things, and it isn't always the case. Reality is messy.

SS: What are some of the things that you found extremely important for you to 00:22:00learn from your colleagues that were doing other studies at St. Helens, especially the people you've known for many years that are doing different things around the area?

VD: Oh, gosh, there are so many different things that we've learned. One of the things that's really been important at Mount St. Helens is initially we understood that this volcanic eruption was not just one event. There were several different volcanic phenomena that occurred: the debris avalanche, the pyroclastic flows, the blowdowns, the mudflows, etc., and understanding the ecological processes that prevailed in each of those regions has been really interested and subsequent we have looked at other types of large-scale disturbances. We had a workshop on what we call LIDS, large infrequent disturbances, and we've learned that other events, other disturbances, are not uniform either. This phenomenon, this concept that disturbances are a single 00:23:00thing, just doesn't hold hardly ever, either. It might hold in a managed agricultural system, where the disturbance might be going through it with a plow. But when natural disturbances occur, there are fringes around the edges, there are areas that are harder hit in terms of impact, the frequency and duration of different events are different, and the actual phenomena are very different.

So, the ecological responses have been different. Hearing about the gophers that survived in some areas and that the brought the seeds up is really fascinating, but that just does not occur on the debris avalanche deposit, where it's 45 m deep on the average. Hearing about subsequent disturbances on the pyroclastic flow area where there were subsequent flows coming down from the mountain is very different than the subsequent disturbances we had on the debris avalanche 00:24:00deposit where it was mud flows or droughts. So, this comparison has been fascinating to hear about, and I think the collective story that we all tell is very valuable. That's why I was referring to the book earlier, because only in that kind of synthesis volume where you can hear in depth each of the stories that go along with the different disturbance types and then put them together into a synthesis is really interesting. I think that has helped us learn about management systems. Another thing that I think is important, maybe because I work at an applied laboratory, I always think about what is going on in the world more than some of my university colleagues. What I have learned on the debris avalanche deposit, I think, is highly applicable to other types of disturbances, and I don't hear that so much from my other colleagues, and so they're searching for similarities with natural and managed events.

SS: For example, what of your other colleagues are, and maybe what fields would you characterize as trying to still find an analogy or an exact example?

VD: An example I heard about last week was all the logs floating on the lakes that are still there.

SS: Spirit Lake and Coldwater?

VD: On Spirit Lake, yeah, and Castle have all these logs, and there's been some really interesting research about that impact, but it sounded like the researchers doing that work had struggled to find how that was analogous to other managed systems, but actually it is. In the eastern United States where they did a lot of logging, they had a lot of material that came down and then subsequently sank and is still in some of those rivers and ponds, and now they're pulling out. To me, it's kind of natural to look at those analogies, partly because some of my other work has been looking at sustainable agriculture, land-use planning, those kinds of things. Besides the Mount St. 00:26:00Helens work, I have had a very active research program in land management and that's helped me kind of understand how what we learn at St. Helens applies to different systems around the world.

SS: Now, I believe you also had some input on the planning for the volcanic monument, correct?

VD: Okay, so there were several aspects to management, and I'll start very general first. Immediately after the eruption, there was two million dollars available within 6 months, a short-term period, in order to protect the downstream areas from any kind of hazards. There was real concern about this situation because those communities had been greatly impacted by the eruption. One of these efforts was the seeding planned by the Soil Conservation Service? Did I talk about this? Okay, and so the Soil Conservation Service, which has now 00:27:00become the Natural Resources Conservation Service (the name has changed under USDA), was very interested in stopping erosion. As I said, this was a real concern. But subsequently we learned that the kind of erosion that occurred on the debris avalanche deposit is sheet erosion. It's massive erosion, which no kind of plants could have stopped. This was new material that was not going to stay in place. It was going to move.

SS: You're talking about the ash and the tephra and all the things that were just kind of laying around and became eroded however they were going to become eroded, correct?

VD: I am talking about the debris avalanche deposit, largely (not the ash or tephra).

SS: Oh, okay.

VD: This was the mountain that tumbled down and just haphazardly fell, and there was a major river, the Toutle River, which had to find its path. In the early years there was no river. There was quicksand in places, and the river had to emerge and created what some people now refer to as the Grand Canyon of Mount 00:28:00St. Helens as it found its way. There was great concern as that happened, for it could happen in such a way that it would impact downstream areas. These rivers have filled much of the riparian systems in all the way down to the Columbia River. They've become non-navigable, so they've had to dredge a lot of the material out. If this happened all in one major pulse of movement, for instance, if Spirit Lake lost the plug of the debris avalanche holding it back, that would wash out many of the homes that have survived the 1980 eruption.

There was real concern about this. The Soil Conservation Service wanted to seed the entire area with some seeds that it had available. We called them up and talked to them and the seeds they had available is what they typically spread along highways. It's a lot of non-natives, a few native species (largely selected for quick establishment), some nitrogen fixers, and some species that 00:29:00would support wildlife. But they didn't include in the seed mix any of the native species you would expect to do really well, like alder. I asked them, "Why aren't you going to use red alder?" They said that they didn't have seeds.

One of the actions we initially took was at a meeting that summer of an international group supporting systematics and taxonomy, I could look it up and give you the formal name in, several of us went and had petitions and asked the international scientists to sign a request to the US Congress not to spend that money on seeding of these non-native plants over the entire mountain.

SS: How expensive would that be for example, approximately?

VD: Two million dollars.

SS: Serious money.

VD: Yeah, serious money. So, they did not seed the entire mountain, but they did seed part of it.

SS: Which part, do you know?

VD: They seeded some areas around the edges. They seeded some areas out where 00:30:00there had been blast and heavy ash deposits, as well as they seeded on the debris avalanche deposit. I was out there and was seeded upon by one of these helicopters. That was very disconcerting. However, it ended up being an unintentional experiment, because I was right there and could see where the seeds fell. I knew that 11 of our plots of the 103 we initially laid out had seeds on them. Subsequently the plants of the plots grew. In fact, I could show you a picture of how prevalent the impact still is if you'll take a break here.

SS: Yeah, let me turn it off.

VD: So, one of the results that I'm going to talk about at our meeting that I'm at tomorrow is the effect of the areas that were seeded versus unseeded still, for 30 years later there is much greater cover and number of species than the 00:31:00unseeded plots. When we talked to the Soil Conservation Service at the time, they said well, we're just doing this to reduce erosion and it won't have a long-term impact. It does have a long-term impact. Even 30 years later, we're still following that to see what the effect might be. There are a lot of non-native plants out there, but on these seeded plots there still are more non-native plants. We found early on that there was greater mortality of the trees that occurred on the seeded plots. We think that was because in those areas (I thought I could show it to you) where there were lots of grasses, a big outbreak of mice that occurred. During the winter, the mice didn't have much to eat under the snow and they would go around chewing the bark [girdling the trees]. Although trees died, not all of them survived, and there was some mortality in both the unseeded and seeded areas, but there was greater mortality 00:32:00in those seeded areas.

SS: How far is this picture up the debris avalanche, for instance, from where your camp was?

VD: Not very far. The area where we were camping, all those plants right there, many of those, are still a result of that initial seeding. When you go further up you don't see as many of those non-native grasses as we saw where we were camping. There's still [SS interrupts].

SS: Is that because there was a limitation on where they spread it because they were spreading it lower down, like you said, on the fringe areas, correct?

VD: Yes. They spread it lower down, and they had different seed mixes on the debris avalanche deposit than they had in the blast zone. Our evidence shows that the places where they seeded still have quite a strong long-term effect. This information is really valuable for understanding other managed areas. Now, since that time what has now become the Natural Resource Conservation Service has 17 native plant nurseries that are distributed around the United States that provide native seeds that are particular to that region. At the time, they 00:33:00didn't have those kinds of things.

SS: Where's the one for the Northwest now, do you know?

VD: I don't know. I think it's in Oregon, but I'm not really sure. I could look it up, but I don't know. Anyway, but they have these region-specific nurseries, but at the time people weren't thinking about the value of using native plants. If they had seeded with alder, we would have gotten a very different kind of story than now on those seeded areas than what you have with these grasses, because the grasses are in some sense competing with some of the native vegetation.

SS: Now the alder was not conceived as something to be feasible, because people thought it was too dry, correct?

VD: Okay, for the seed mix they didn't use the alder seed because they didn't have it. Because when I suggested alder, they said, well, we don't have the seeds. The other part of the story you're alluding to is when I talk to ecologists about what was going to happen in this area and propose that alder was going to be the real story people were surprised at that, because you do 00:34:00think of red alder as a wet site species and this is highly sandy material. There's not much water, not much nutrients. They didn't think alder would do well. As you saw out there, alder is part of the story.

SS: It's doing quite well in parts.

VD: Yeah, it is. One part [SS interrupts].

SS: And cottonwood, too, though right?

VD: Well, the cottonwood is not doing very well because it is one of the preferred species of elk. Although we did find a few very large cottonwood in our plots, we noted early on that if they got past the level of elk browse that they were going to do well, but many of the cottonwood you see are heavily browsed and just don't make it. Although the cottonwoods are very abundant and the seeds come in and they can grow fast, the elk are so abundant that they eat them up and most cottonwood don't survive. The elk and the other plants and 00:35:00animals are very important in terms of what's going on.

You asked me earlier, what have I learned from other researchers, and one of them is the importance of herbivores, the insects as well as the elk. We've seen some of that, obviously, ourselves, but having the documentation of that work has been very important for our understanding of the vegetation. But, going back to the management story, part of the management early on was thinking about what the US Government was doing to manage this natural disturbance. What we've learned in our study with these large, infrequent disturbances, not just at Mount St. Helens, is the initial reaction to any kind of large disturbance is what can we do about it? How can we fix it? A lot of these places cannot be fixed in the sense of going back to what they were immediately before the disturbance. That's not a problem. We can learn from these situations. For 00:36:00instance, in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Hugo the immediate reaction was to go in and clean up some of the streams where a lot of debris fell in the streams. Yet they found afterwards, that compared to streams that were not cleaned up, the ones that were left alone had much greater diversity and soil retention.

This concept of fixing and cleaning up is often a part of management understanding in the U.S. or elsewhere. We're trying through our research at St. Helens to think about what a messy, diverse ecosystem really means and the benefits that it has. To me, that is one of the true lessons from St. Helens that we still need to get out there, that ecosystems are often a beautiful mess and have lots of service values, if we keep that mess. The seeding is also a big 00:37:00part of the story. Another big part of the story that Jon Major can probably tell you better about is the activities to reduce the erosion that occurred. Part of that story was putting an erosion dam [Corps of Engineers, Sediment Retention Structure] in the early '80s on the Toutle River. The plan was to create two basins, so that the Toutle would be flowing through one basin and slowing down so all the sediments in it would deposit. When that basin got filled, they'd switch the flow to another basin and then dredge out the first one. Then the operation would switch back to the other basin and dredge out the second one, so it'd be a continual operation.

SS: They were trying to save the lower Toutle, the Cowlitz, and even the Columbia from [VD interrupts].

VD: From those deposits, yeah. But there was one big mudflow event and it filled up both basins immediately. That was, I can't remember the price, a million dollars or so, that was immediately filled up. So, now they have constructed a 00:38:00hard rock dam that is being used to retain the sediments as well, and that is filling up, of course, quicker than predicted and they're not sure what to do about that. One of the problems with the new dam is it does not have any ladders for the salmon that would go upstream, so now they're trucking the salmon upstream because the adult salmon can't get past this hard rock barrier; although the young salmon can get through the dam.

SS: So, there are salmon coming up the Toutle?

VD: Oh, yeah, there are salmon coming up.

SS: Are they coming up as far, what lakes are they coming up into, do you know?

VD: I don't know. I don't know the story. But the fish people have some interesting stories to tell, and we worked closely with the fish people early on to try to determine whether the temperature in these streams was going to be a problem versus the sediments. Our studies showed that the projected alder growth was going to be so fast that they were going to shade these streams enough to reduce the temperature and that's what happened. So, the salmon are coming back. 00:39:00But, let's get back to the management story.

SS: Yeah, let's talk about the management story and how that developed beyond what you've already said.

VD: Right. So, we have the soils and all the sediment and erosion issues. Then, early on there was concern about what was going to eventually happen to these lands, because, as you know, it was a patchwork of ownerships. The mountain [top] itself was owned by the railway company. The state owned productive lands in the area that were used for forest[ry]. There were private companies, like Weyerhaeuser was the big landowner that owned lands that had been in production, and then some of it was under the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. There was great interest in preserving the area in some way, and several of us realized early on that a national monument was a way to do this.

My colleagues and I started distributing petitions (and I will send you some of 00:40:00those that we sent to universities across Washington and Oregon) and got numerous signatures from the science community saying there is great value in establishing a national monument. There were, of course, other people from different communities, with different interests, that also endorsed this concept. Collectively, I think this worked so that our government eventually did establish a national monument. I got very involved in these political discussions. Maybe I mentioned that I was at home in my kitchen one day and Congressman Sid Morrison called me up to talk to me about this, and I remember thinking, Sid Morrison,

SID MORRISON: I know that name!

SS: Is he from Washington State?

VD: Yeah, from Washington State, and I was trying to think, who is it? I know that name. Fortunately, I didn't ask him who are you but remembered him. He was really interesting because, as a farmer, he understood a lot of the processes we 00:41:00were talking about. His concern was the long term. He thought - sure, it looks really interesting now and people would be interested and there's lots of research activities, but in some years, some decades, it's going to look like it did before, maybe, and then what's the value of having this long-term monument set up. He was personally interested in having that discussion, which was fabulous to me that he understood enough and was able to be convinced that there was long-term value in preserving the area. The document that I sent you was the document that established the Mount St. Helens National Monument. I also have the full record, which, if you don't have you should get a hold of, of all the testimony that occurred in Washington.

The congressional record is very important and gives the written testimony, as well as the actual testimony, because people say things a little different that 00:42:00was in prepared written statements, and I think the book probably has the subsequent hearings that were held around the Pacific Northwest with local groups that were very interested in the possibility of establishing a monument. As a result of those hearings, you see the house legislation that establishes the monument. Part of the debate about this monument was -is it to be established under Park Service or Forest Service, because most of the monuments are established under Park Service, although there are some under the Forest Service. Historically, many of the Forest Service monuments have become national parks. There was concern among the Forest Service representatives that this would happen. However, there are a number of Forest Service monuments that are retained, and the collective understanding was there was great value in retaining and protecting this area as a national monument. That is what has 00:43:00happened. The Forest Service still, 30-some odd years later, is doing an excellent job in managing the monument. I haven't heard that discussion come up subsequent to the initiation.

SS: At the beginning was there like an argument, a discussion about well, this monument has got to be under the Park Service because it is what they do versus the Forest Service? Was that a central part of what they were talking about?

VD: Yeah, that's basically what they were saying because it is and was an unusual national monument in that it was set up largely for research as well as education and recreation, but research was a big component of it and that's very different than other national monuments. But, if you read the Antiquities Act under which this is established, it allows each national monument to have different purposes and different values, and the enabling legislation is critical for each monument. The enabling legislation talks about research values 00:44:00and how to maintain them, and it actually set up a Science Advisory Board for the early years to make sure that the research values were maintained. As I mentioned earlier, I was in the senator's office, me and a geologist, and the senator and the staff [SS interrupts].

SS: Which senator?

VD: I have to look it up.

SS: A Washington senator?

VD: A Washington senator in Seattle. We were standing up in his office which was way in some skyscraper [SS interrupts].

SS: Scoop Jackson?

VD: It wasn't Scoop. It was [SS interrupts].

SS: Okay, because he was still in office, wasn't he?

VD: Yeah. I'll tell you a story about Scoop.

SS: Okay.

VD: It wasn't Scoop. It was the other senator. I can't remember. But we could look it up. We were standing in his office in Seattle in this skyscraper and part of our discussion with this geologist was the fact that the fault was right off the coast and what was going to happen to this skyscraper we were standing in when there was an earthquake.

SS: So, this was before it was in the popular media, Cascadia abduction zone conversation.

VD: Exactly. It was pretty scary because it was a beautiful view, but we were in this area of high risk. The staff got out a map, and we actually drew the boundaries of what eventually did become the national monument. To me was important in having an ecologist in the room was that I was able to represent the diverse interests that I had heard about. Some of these places I had never been to, like Ape Caves. I had never been to some of the areas that were included and were important not only for the impact of the 1980 eruption, but from the fact that they were not impacted, because we wanted to make sure control areas (areas where there was no or relatively no impact) were part of the monument for scientific research. If there hadn't been an ecologist in the room to make that argument, I don't think, would have been successfully made.

SS: For example, when I was doing soil sample outside of the blast zone with Bob Parmenter, case in point, right? But I think we were outside the monument. But 00:46:00maybe not. I'm not sure.

VD: Okay, I don't know where you were. But there is [SS interrupts].

SS: It was on the eastern, it was close to the boundary, but I can't remember exactly.

VD: But there is the possibility of doing that research, and that's going to become even more important the longer we go along, because other owners are going to be able to manage their land in whatever way they want, of course. A key part of this monument, of course, was having agreement among the non-Forest Service owners that they would, through exchange largely, trade land that became in the monument for land that was outside. As part of that agreement, much of the land that had wood on it was harvested before the monument was created and so the companies such as Weyerhaeuser and the State of Washington harvested the wood and actually benefited by having land of unknown future productivity traded 00:47:00with land of known productivity. It ends up that this volcanic land is growing trees very well. Weyerhaeuser has done some initial studies, and they grow trees extremely well on areas that were impacted. At the time, they didn't really know what the effect was going to be. This trade was made, and that negotiation was really important. But I think having boundaries that included this diversity of disturbances and non-disturbances was also important. I credit the many ecologists who signed these petitions and became involved in the discussion with representing their fields very well and learning how to communicate to the congressmen that made these decisions about the area.

SS: What was the input or the pushback from the logging industry, Weyerhaeuser especially, but also from the local communities in the site of the monument?

VD: I don't really remember there being pushback per se. There was obviously 00:48:00interest in economic opportunities. The local community saw this, from my understanding, as a potential for recreation value. A lot of their jobs had been washed out, and there were some recreation amenities that were previously there that were gone, but these were mainly homeowners and vacationers, who went up to the area. If they could benefit from the monument, that would be good. I think they have. Weyerhaeuser was concerned with retaining productive land, and I think they benefited. I think it ended up being a win-win all around. That's what we wanted to argue, and I think the scientists greatly benefited by having an area where they could perform these long-term research activities with some understanding that they would be somewhat protected. They're not protected in the sense that there's a fence around it and people can't go there, but some of 00:49:00the activities are restricted that would harm research activities. I think it's been good for everyone in many ways.

SS: How would you characterize the general shape but also some of the details of the management plan and how it was implemented initially and maybe how it's evolved?

VD: Gosh. The general shape, as I've said, was to incorporate the variety of disturbances in the areas and to reach out, like it reaches out along the debris avalanche, and it follows areas that were very close to ownerships that would allow productive lands that would occur versus those of unknown productivity. It's not just a regular circle or square. It has all these odd little ins and outs that were related to particular components of the landscape. I think that 00:50:00is probably unusual. When you see other monuments, they have more of a regular shape. That's partly because they've been set up where you didn't understand the land so well, and we spent a lot of time out there on the ground understanding the land in the time period since the eruption to when the monument was laid out. I think it's been a very useful configuration over time. I think it's worked very well.

SS: There's not a lot of recreation that has gone on in the area that you have specialized in, in terms of the debris avalanche deposit area. Is that correct, or?

VD: There is, actually, in some sense because the road that has now been established that goes up to Johnston Ridge is right along the debris avalanche deposit.

SS: You're talking about up on the high ridge that looks down into the valley?

VD: The high ridge. Right. So, when most people drive in, they are looking at the debris avalanche deposit. That part is probably seen more than any other area because the eastern side of the mountain is not as accessible. When people 00:51:00come into the area, the prime access from the larger cities-Seattle, Olympia, Portland-is along the I-5 corridor, and if they take the road up to the Johnston Ridge, they will see the debris avalanche deposit and then the hiking trail, the Hummocks Trail, is on the debris avalanche deposit as well. It's about 2.5 miles, a little bit less than that, and people can experience what it actually is [like] on the debris avalanche deposit and then when you go to Coldwater Lake, which is right there along the road, too, which was created by the debris avalanche deposit, you can see the floating logs. You can be a part of that environment, and that is where many people stop to picnic, swim, and boat. People do go to that part of it.

SS: My point is, though, beyond that, but in terms of across the expanse of the 00:52:00deposit, do they generally stay close to the road so the study areas that more or less have stayed intact without a lot of disturbance from human meddling, shall we say?

VD: Yeah, that is true. There's not very much impact. What we did find was that when the logging was occurring on the slopes there was a bulldozer that went through one of our plots that was holding one of the chains down that they used for logging when they pulled the logs upslope. We saw those tracks immediately and could see them for several years afterwards, but we did not find any long-term impact, because it was very early on. I think it was in 1981, before there was any recovery, per se. We didn't see any long-term impacts, but we have seen horses out there with people riding their horses.

SS: That's supposed to not happen?

VD: That can happen.

SS: But they're not supposed to?

VD: I think-I don't know what the rules are on that. I have to look. I found somebody's credit card in one of our plots one year! That wasn't supposed to happen. Peter Frenzen was very interested in that. But the other way [SS interrupts].

SS: The credit card, what were they going to try to buy out there?

VD: I don't know! So occasionally people do get out there. But you are correct in that very rarely do people get out there. I should say that the helicopter rides people pay for go directly over the debris avalanche deposit. People fly up and down that area quite a bit.

SS: They come out of Toutle, don't they?

VD: They come out of; I think it's Studebaker Ridge? Right along the road, there's a place where you can pay $100 or so per person and can get a 15-minute ride, which mainly takes you over the debris avalanche deposit, or you can take a longer ride that will take you up to the crater. All those people see the debris avalanche deposit. A funny story is one of the news people was flying in 00:54:00his helicopter and he said, "I see all of the signs," is what he called them, "that are up." They were about 1 m high, about a quarter meter across, a quarter meter deep, he said, and they were placed regularly along the debris avalanche deposit. He said, are those for sale signs? Of course, those were our seed traps.

SS: Reference to the credit card.

VD: They were our seed traps. Yeah!

SS: You see that's the credit. It happened when somebody saw that and they tried to, anyway-humor for the record. Why not?

VD: I don't know. The credit card was much later. But anyway, the people's thinking was weird. You asked about Scoop Jackson.

SS: Yes, tell me a story about Scoop.

VD: I have to tell you about Scoop. Scoop was on one of the committees that we testified before when I was in Washington. He asked this great question to the head of USGS who had lived in Washington, had heard about St. Helens, had all 00:55:00these reports, and had staff people standing in the background. Scoop asked, "I've heard that there is a guy named Harry Truman who lives out there and that there are others that own property and if we make this a monument what is it going to do to Harry Truman and his property and his friends' property?" The head of USGS said, "I'm not sure." Then had this little conference with people at the table, again, who were Washingtonians [DC people] that didn't really know, and they finally answered something like, I don't think any of that is there anymore.

SS: Rumor has it that Harry may not be with us anymore.

VD: Right.

SS: He's under 500 meters of whatever.

VD: Right, I mean, obviously, all of that is gone. But that was pretty funny because this is how Washington works. You have the head people who don't really know the on-the-ground situation. That's why I was thrilled that I was able to 00:56:00go to Washington and be a part of this debate. Another really great commentary: there was a senator from Ohio who was chair of the House committee and wanted to be very supportive. There is a very famous ecologist from Ohio who had done a lot of good work on succession and this senator, this congressman, was aware of that and he wanted to be supportive in understanding succession. He said it's really important that we set this area aside and learn how to understand succession, as Ohio scientists have found that this can actually be beautiful brown and that brown is something we learn a lot from until it turns to green. You've been out there, and it's not brown. It's not brown at all. When I testified, his aide [said], "Well, you're right. These concepts are really important, but it's gorgeous gray. It's not brown." It's the mountain tumbled down and the ash. Everything's gray. It's not brown. I talk about the gorgeous 00:57:00gray a lot. That's not beautiful brown. It's mainly one of the differences when you think about succession in the eastern United States compared to Mount St. Helens. In the East it largely is soil that is turned over that is brown, but Mount St. Helens is a mountain, which is gray.

SS: Speaking of the absurd and the misunderstanding, my thought before you actually went into the story about Jackson and ownership was did anybody ever ask a question about the ownership of the top of the mountain?

VD: Oh yes.

SS: The railroad that who the heck knows where it is, right?

VD: The railroad company graciously said, well, we own the entire earth because the ash had gone around the earth. They were jokingly saying they owned everything.

SS: Unfortunately, having been a historian of gilded age politics in the 00:58:00railroad robber barons, I find some humor, but some alarm in that.

VD: But they were very, the owners of the mountain, were very gracious because, obviously, there was no value in owning that. What was interesting to me was that historically there had been discussion of having thermal energy provided from the top of the mountain and putting shafts down at one time, which obviously would have been long gone.

SS: Oh yeah, absolutely.

VD: It wouldn't have been a good idea with the eruption, and now as we move toward geothermal, people are aware of those possibilities and certainly take care when needed.

SS: You talked about funding and continuity in National Geographic and Earthwatch, how has that dynamic changed let's say after that first 15, 20 years? Has it kind of continued patch-wise since that time? Or has the NSF come and stepped in again more?

VD: There are some individuals that are funded by NSF. As I said, the Forest 00:59:00Service has been great about providing a lot of logistic support and pretty much everything that I've asked for. The laboratory that I work for has provided some support, but my lab is largely dealing with energy issues, and so it's hard for me to justify the Mount St. Helens work. I end up taking vacation to do a lot of this work. I have found the amount of time I take to do vacation would be the same amount of time to write a proposal. I know that one of the proposals I wrote to the National Geographic was funded, but I did it through the laboratory and then the laboratory wouldn't accept it, because of the rules that National Geographic had. I also have a position at the University of Tennessee, and I should write these proposals through the University of Tennessee, which is probably what I'll do in the future. After that lesson when it was kind of disconcerting.

SS: Go Vols. This is Oregon State.

VD: Okay. We're a little different color orange. But yeah, go Vols. It's challenging to continue long-term studies. It's easier to get funding for efforts to go out there and do the work than for the record keeping and all the amount of work that is taken to do the record keeping and do the statistical analysis. That part, getting out there is easy to fund, but the details of real research, I don't know what the number is, but you have 2-3 hours more work in your office once you get back compared to what you do in the field. That part is really hard, and it takes a lot of dedication by the people involved.

SS: Because you have to do something with what the time you did out there.

VD: Right. I think having these volunteers in the field is terrific and allows the field work to happen, but it's only my literal blood, sweat, and tears that 01:01:00have enabled a lot of the analysis to happen, and I think that situation is true for some others.

SS: Now, referencing the IBP [International Biological Program], LTER [Long-Term Ecological Research] type dynamic and specifically some of the H.J. Andrews people that came up there at the beginning, and specially I'm talking about Jerry Franklin and Fred Swanson and then Jim Sedell (he's no longer with us), but how would you characterize the importance of what they brought to the table at the beginning and also in carrying this thing through 35 years now?

VD: I'll answer this very broadly. The International Biological Program (IBP), was a large program that looked at synthesizing large areas of research. Actually, my initial work at Oak Ridge National Laboratories as a student was funded under IBP. I and then others like you mentioned obtained a broad-scale perspective. It was interesting to me, because when I went to University of Washington, where I did my graduate work, that perspective was not so pervasive. It was more an evolutionary perspective. Getting involved with St. Helens early 01:02:00on and those who had this IBP perspective and that regional perspective again kind of brought me back to my roots. It was very important in the initial discussions about how can we sample this area in a way that we have consistency across the difference disturbance types and the ability to determine impacts over long-term in the future were really important in deciding this 250 m2 sampling [plot] regime that all of us set up, I think was really important and benefited from having that broad-scale long-term perspective, such as IBP provided.

SS: What about the personalities, like Jerry Franklin and Fred Swanson?

VD: Yeah, well that was fun. Jerry is a great person to work with, and I felt so interested to be able to be involved with him and with others. Jerry is a great 01:03:00leader and a very enthusiastic scientist and quickly engaged everyone in a very productive way that I think was really profitable to everyone. It was profitable in the sense that he was very inclusive in having people involved. Me, I was the young kid on the block. I was a decade or two younger than almost everybody on the team, but I had the time available to do this work because everybody else had existing commitments. I felt very lucky to be involved in this and I don't' think that would have happened if someone like Jerry, who still recognizes youth and the abilities that are there, to be engaged. That was great.

SS: He told me that the Pulse idea actually came first where he developed in the Sierras.

VD: Correct.

SS: They did a couple of trips to Sequoia, Suwanee, and Crescent Creek and then the mountain blew up and I guess it was time to test it on a bigger scale, perhaps?

VD: Right. So, the Pulse concept had already been established. When he first proposed a Pulse and so forth everyone, they kind of knew logistically how to do this. Of course, they didn't envision it was going to be so big and so long, but that has been valuable.

SS: What do you know about the salvage logging dynamic in the early years and did it have anything to do or affect anything to do with your research, directly or indirectly?

VD: Okay. So, there weren't logs on the debris avalanche deposit, because it was all buried by the mountain itself. But the roads that were open for logging were how we got to our sites. Having those roads available and having maps of those roads, because we had to go through this maze of logging roads to figure out where we were going to go, was important. Of course, the hazard was all these 01:05:00fully loaded logging trucks coming out that were really dangerous, because many of the roads were single pass [lane] and when they were coming up from roads that went down toward the debris avalanche fully loaded, they would often be pulled by a bulldozer. A logging truck pulled by a bulldozer going up a steep slope cannot stop. If they stop, they cannot get started again. There are dozens of switchbacks and they cannot stop. We would have radios with us, and the radios would tell us there's a truck coming up, pull off the road. But there weren't always pull offs. We'd be driving, the question is do you drive frantically and fast as you can down to find a pull out and then get closer to that logging truck or whatever. We never were run off the road, but I think they would have run us off the road, which would have been disastrous, but anyway.

SS: Didn't one or two get pretty seriously injured at some time?

VD: I don't know of anybody being injured at St. Helens, but I have had a good friend killed by a logging truck who was a graduate student at the University of Washington.

SS: Up in the Cascades?

VD: Up in the Cascades. Yeah. The logging trucks are very dangerous and when you're in a small vehicle, it's pitted against you. I also remember taking a class down to the east side of the mountain to look at the effects of the volcano, and they were more interested in the salvage logging operation. (It's 12:23.) They were less interested in the effects of the volcano, because helicopter logging was being done and is amazing. They wanted to look at the 01:07:00helicopter logging versus the effects of the volcano, because it was fascinating. We benefited and Weyerhaeuser has been very supportive over the years. I need to give them a lot of credit by allowing us to go on these roads where they were pretty much off-limits, except to Weyerhaeuser vehicles. The Department of Natural Resources provided us with radios that were required to go back there. We got a lot of different kinds of support. That was kind of different from everything that was going on on the east side where the Forest Service was providing support. We got more support from those two groups because that's where they were active.

SS: How would you characterize the cultural place of Mount St. Helens? You're a scientist but, obviously, you have a lot of experience with this place. It's a powerful place in your personal history. How would you put it as a cultural phenomenon?

VD: It's interesting. Often when I talk, I used to say,"Remember when Mount St. 01:08:00Helens erupted," and you will know where you were then, and everyone would say oh yeah, I was doing this, or I was doing that. Everyone would know. But now you have to be younger than 40, pretty much, to remember that and as our population's gotten older [SS interrupts].

SS: You mean older than 40.

VD: Older than 40, yeah. Older to 40 to know that, in fact, someone who joined us on our field work this summer when they heard they were going to Mount St. Helens, they said, oh, but I thought that blew up, implying and was gone. Some people don't think of it as phenomena right now, but people are always interested in it. One thing, I was going to show you this picture that I always do, let's see if I can get it here.

SS: Are we back to that same picture of the debris avalanche again?

VD: Yeah, but this is, I'm going to move down. One thing I always do every year 01:09:00is I have a volcano cake. These are some of my recent volcano cakes.

SS: And those are strawberries?

VD: Yeah. This is my way of conveying what has happened with Mount St. Helens. We try to make these as accurate as possible. We start with a layer of a strawberry cake, which is the magma. Then we have a chocolate cake, which is the soil and the dirt. Then I create a bunt cake that I pull apart, which is the debris avalanche deposit. Because strawberries are so good to eat, we put a bunch of strawberries in the cake, which is the lava which really doesn't exist much of. We artificially do that. But we have the pretzels, which are the blowdown forest. We have a few volcanic bombs, which are chocolate covered raisins.

We have now the vegetation coming back, which are usually herbs that represent 01:10:00the recovery, and we have the glaciers on top (white icing). In some years I'll put dry ice in it to represent the steam. When I've taken this to a fifth-grade class, the teacher said to me, "I've never seen students so interested in looking at the cake rather than eating it." But it's really a cool way to get people involved in the phenomena [SS interrupts].

SS: Have you ever taken this to a conference or a group of science people to get their perspective on this?

VD: Well, I'm going to show this this week.

SS: I think it's great. It's fantastic.

VD: Yeah. It depends on wherever I am on May 18th as to where I do it.

SS: Okay, every year on.

VD: I do it at May 18th at 8:32, which in eastern time is 11:32. I always have it at 8:32 Pacific Daylight Time.

SS: Do you ever have like a moment of silence or anything just to kind of think about that moment?

VD: Well, we talk about the moment. Before we eat the cake, we always have a 01:11:00discussion of what this is, depending on where I am, as to how it happens. As I said, I've taken it into schools quite a bit and it's a really good way to get the kids to talk about the different disturbances, the different vegetation coming back because these kids don't remember it now. They were not born, and they don't understand what volcanoes are. The offshoot of this when my granddaughter, who's 2, heard that I was a volcano ecologist she immediately thought that means you get to bake cakes all the time, which didn't occur to me. Anyway, what I find is people think of it in different ways that you don't anticipate right now.

One interesting cultural phenomena, I was invited to Princeton to the Theoretical Physics Laboratory to talk about Mount St. Helens because all these physicists were interested in phenomena that have shaped the science of this 01:12:00generation. I went just because I thought it was so interesting that these physicists were interested in the ecological recovery of Mount St. Helens. What I found that we have in common that we talked about quite a bit was scale. The scale of research and the scale of phenomena and this is definitely a big issue at St. Helens. How do you measure what happens on a very small scale that has implications for a very large scale? You can look at geologic time. They are all components of it. Across science this issue of scale really pervades. I think that's true in cultural circles as well. If it hasn't occurred in your lifetime, if you don't remember it, it has a different kind of [SS interrupts].

SS: It hasn't occurred.

VD: It just means something different to you. People think of Vesuvius, and they know the story of what happened at Mt. Vesuvius in terms of what they've read 01:13:00about or the pictures they've seen in places like National Geographic. Maybe for this younger generation St. Helens is becoming this same way. I think having people who were there talk about it and can convey the stories gives a different perception to something that may be out of the human scale of their lives.

SS: I still remember the movie, and I think there was a book: Krakatoa, East of Java. That was the first big volcano thing that I remember in literature when I was small. It made an impression of me. The whole island disappearing. A much more violent eruption even than St. Helens, which is kind of hard to believe.

VD: Yeah. The way it's first conveyed to people I think is important and that it's not just a geology event. I find sometimes when I talk to people, they ask a lot of geology stories and I think bringing in the ecology and the potential for succession. Change is what the story of Mount St. Helens to me is really 01:14:00about, not just geologic change but ecologic change. The human story has changed there and getting the acceptance of change as part of our understanding of the world I think is very important. This is a good way to introduce that concept to people.

SS: I think it's more impactful and I think it's natural for people to be impressed by catastrophic events versus slow succession processes.

VD: Absolutely.

SS: I think it's a natural reaction. Anyway, how would you best synopsize your history and role of Mount St. Helens?

VD: My history?

SS: How would you best synopsize your role in the science at Mount St. Helens?

VD: My role?

SS: Not just in the debris avalanche deposit but general. I mean, you've been part of the publications, the editorial, the Pulse, but also your specific study area.

VD: Part of it is my specific study area, because no one else had any interest in the debris avalanche deposit. To me, that's so different from everything else we hear about. Even on the Pulse trip when people talk about all the phenomena on the east side of the mountain, and I realize how different it is on the west side where the debris avalanche deposit and also on the mud flows that you hear a little bit more about. I think understanding of this massive burial that occurred is really different, and again provides a story that there were different disturbances and there were different recovery patterns. That's part of, not only the Mount St. Helens event, but also the different kinds of disturbances. They always are different impacts, different recovery patterns.

I think besides all the work we've done on the debris avalanche, pulling together the book. The 25-year anniversary book and the upcoming 35-year 01:16:00anniversary book is really important because to me that's what's going to stand the test of time of the synthesis. I've produced several other books with Springer and have a lot of experience in books. I know how to do those. I've been an editor of the journal Environmental Management for about 13 years, but finally gave that up. But I know how to pull together an edited volume and initially contacted Springer, got the contract worked out, and I've had discussions with a lot of other publishers and knew that Springer was going to be able to do a good job with us. That activity, in my mind, is going to really stand the test of time of pulling things together. In talking to one of the students at the Pulse, I was referring to the book and he said, what are you talking about? And then he said, oh the Bible. Which is a little, right, 01:17:00ridiculous. But still, I think for allowing young people to come in and understand what is going on to me that's a place they can go to and I think the 35th anniversary book, which pulls in other studies that aren't covered in the initial volume, is going to be really important for capturing the story. The paper we had in Science that covered the 25-year recovery, again, brought it back to people's minds that this wasn't just a one-term event and that this is the most ecologically studied volcano in the world and in terms of successional stories it really is a part of the story. I am contacted sometimes by people writing ecology text, by people covering more synthesis activities about 01:18:00succession that what is the role of Mount St. Helens. For instance, there was an Encyclopedia of Ecology, and they asked me to write the entries on succession and disturbance. I was glad to do that because I knew from my experience, I would tell the story a little different than someone who had worked in other kinds of successional processes. I hope the impact that we have at St. Helens is broader because of these kinds of activities I think we've learned so much and that needs to be part of the successional and disturbance lexicon.

SS: In your view, what's the most important scientific lesson or lessons learned at Mount St. Helens?

VD: Diversity. The diversity of disturbances, the diversity of recovery, and the importance of the particulars of this event: the timing of the event. 8:32 on May 18th made a huge difference in the impact and in the recovery processes that 01:19:00occurred. If it had been in the afternoon on another day of the week in another season, it would have been a very different kind of event. Then the components of succession that we have learned about are really different than what we have learned otherwise. So, in the earlier volume, and it's now being updated a little bit, we have a successional diagram that we've developed of what the key components of succession are. I've highlighted in what you're looking at in yellow what we've really learned from research at St. Helens. Not that other research hasn't contributed to these. When I look at this the importance about survivors, the importance about survivor mortality-just because you survive the initial disturbance doesn't mean you're going to make it later-the importance of habitats being created, the importance of the landscape being able to accept new 01:20:00organisms that come in that weren't there, local conditions, and then subsequent disturbances and management that can occur on all these areas is really critical. These were not so much a part of what you would have drawn out in successional diagrams prior to 1980. We learned some of these lessons early on, but they're really being enforced again and again. I put management in big letters and kind of across the whole diagram because it hits so many different parts of the story. I hope that some of these words are now part of what freshman ecologists learn, but they aren't always, unfortunately.

SS: Well, scientific revolutions take place in different ways over different timescales and have different pushbacks or shall we say lag effects?

VD: That's right. That's right. So, it's important like this talk that I'm able to give tomorrow is a discussion on long-term studies. Being part of those 01:21:00discussions and what we can learn from those and how they can impact other work, like you talked about the long-term ecological program, ecological research LTERs, that are often done in very controlled environment. The disadvantage of St. Helens not being part of an LTER is we don't have continuing funding for some of these kind of activities, whereas there should be, I think. Because we've learned so much and, if we continue this work into the future, we could learn who knows what more, but we would.

SS: Along that, and this will be the last question, what is some of the work or research that you think remains undone at Mount St. Helens?

VD: Well, soils are a big part of the story. Particularly on the debris avalanche, I think the soil changes that are really important to the vegetation changes is really critical and we haven't done enough of that. In my area, we 01:22:00haven't done hardly any of it. It's been really hard to get the soils people to be engaged. I know when I finished my Ph.D. a professor at the University of Washington said, "Well, now, you can do a Ph.D. in soils and learn what's really important." Needless to say, that is not what I did. Once you finish one Ph.D., you're not enthusiastic about doing another.

SS: One Ph.D. is quite enough for most people.

VD: For me, for sure. As a systems ecologist, I would have liked to had more systems work that looked across the comparisons. Hopefully that will happen in the future. There's no reason why it can't happen, particularly in places where we retain this 250 m2 plot sampling that allows us to do that kind of analysis. I'm trained as a mathematical ecologist, and one of the reasons I got into this was because when you look at mathematical models of succession of trees the 01:23:00first 30 stages are pretty much just guesswork. I was hoping to really be able to do a better job of modeling, but what we've learned hasn't helped much because so many of the phenomena are random, and maybe that's what the story is. Maybe we need to be more random in the models than putting in early successional species first. But I haven't revisited that part either of being able to model and predict what can happen under successional dynamics. I think that's another story that could be and should be revisited.

SS: Virginia, thank you very much.

VD: Oh, well, thank you.

SS: That was a great two-session interview, and I look forward to hearing your talk tomorrow.

VD: Okay, and I'll try to send [recording cuts off].