Now this might seem like a plea to the climate change deniers and the anti-sustainability faithful, but I assure you this new research on forests is, at the very least, uberly interesting. In my religious following of the podcast RadioLab, I came across an incredible story of one researcher's attempt to prove that the natural world around us may be much more interconnected and less competitive than previously thought. By the elaborate story of her grandfather digging her dog out of a pit and exposing the integrated root system of the surrounding trees and fungi, she was inspired to investigate the "foundation of the forest."

Summarized in her Ted Talk, Suzanne Simrad explains how trees of different species have the capability to look out for one another. In the forests of British Columbia this occurrence plays out through the interaction of the Birch and Fir trees with help from a Fungi known as mycorrhiza. As a result of a mutualistic symbiotic relationship - a relationship where both species benefit from an interaction- older trees with more access to sunlight, and in turn more potential to produce sugars through photosynthesis, are using the network of fungi that run through the forest floor to lend carbon and other nutrients to surrounding trees and even the fungi itself. Mother trees, identified by advanced and thick networks of fungi, are shown to make sacrifices for their seedlings and trees struggling to survive as they begin to age into passing by giving their carbon to other organisms who need it. The tree's return the favor to the fungi who provide the nutrient highway by lending it sugars which it uses to develop its underground network.

Mother trees are connected to hundreds of other organisms that surround them including organisms of many different species. Under one of your footsteps on top of the forest floor lay hundreds of kilometers of mycelium which serves as an underground economy for carbon and nutrients necessary for organic growth. The thought that trees have the capability to discriminate between the quantity of nutrients provided, as well as which organisms receive them changes the idea that the natural world is all about competition. Competition may not matter if trees have the capability to share their resources to those who are in need.

Scientists have attributed the usage of fungi by trees to the spreading of intelligence. This intelligence includes the "transfer of food from evergreen to deciduous species in the winter and vise versa in the summer," and also "acts as a conduit for sharing information about water availability and attacks by predatory insects." Scientists have dubbed this communication "the Wood-Wide-Web."

If I told you the research suggests that this process increases the chances of seedling survival by four times, and that the mother trees colonize their own kin with an increased network of the mycorrhizal fungi, compared to their connection with other organisms, would it change the way you think of nature? For me it has.

This research only serves to provide a basis for the promotion of sustainable logging practices across the globe. Forests are shown to have incredibly resilient properties when selective cutting of trees is used over clear cutting. However, selective cutting comes at an increased cost to business in the short term. When the forest is left intact through the use of selective cutting younger trees can take on new responsibility as mother trees so that the cycle of life can continue uninterrupted.

You can listen to the full podcast from RadioLab and find other resources for this research here.