Hatrack River Writers Workshop: do you buy this

This is topic do you buy this in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by bladeofwords (Member # 2132) on :

It's a short simple question. I just want to know if you would buy this explanation?

On a large tundra-esqe island the vast majority of the land is totally uninhabitable. There is very little plantlife (mostly because the ground is frozen almost the entire year). However, there are several "hot spots" where geothermal heat keeps the ground from freezing (most of these have small lakes fed by hot springs). These form a sort of very cold (not frozen) oases.

Do you buy that?

Jon

Posted by djvdakota (Member # 2002) on :

Well, yeah.

Iceland.

Yellowstone in Winter.

'Nuff said?

Posted by Phanto (Member # 1619) on :

She said it all.

I am redundent and useless.

Posted by Beth (Member # 2192) on :

I buy it, too.

Posted by hoptoad (Member # 2145) on :

I would not buy it if you had large trees, but certainly would about rushes and dwarf or prostrate vegetation and or grasses. You would rely mainly on wind and birds for the transport of seeds to these areas, so mainly grasses, mosses and groundcover I would imagine. I would also imagine the pool itself would be rich with plant life, carried there in the plumage of waterbirds.

I think the environment you describe would suit plants with a fibrous or spreading rootmass able to support itself upon the topmost layers of soil, anything with roots that go too deep, i don't know about that, it may just get too hot for a tree to get too big.

As a side note, the gasses that escape from these hotspots can be pretty noxious and occasionally deadly, for instance there is a hotspot area in (Galapagos I think) where animals that come to drink at the water's edge die from suffocation, CO2, and don't even know they're dying.

In these sort of places the vegetation tends to be low and stunted too, as an effect of these gasses.

You may want to ask Mike Munsil about what he has observed.

[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited May 19, 2005).]

Posted by MaryRobinette (Member # 1680) on :

Buy it? I've lived it! The hotsprings are lovely and toasty places to soak.

Posted by hoptoad (Member # 2145) on :

Hey Mary, what was the vegetation like?
Was that in Iceland, (did you go to Iceland)?
Is the soil in other, non-hotspot areas almost always frozen?

I think the terrain sounds more like Eastern Greenland, one thing is because there is so little vegetation, there would be very little topsoil, all the plants would likely be coloniser species, hence my comments.

See here for landscape types: http://www.dpc.dk/PolarPhotos/Exhibit_3.html

And for the truly 'retentive' see here: http://www.cs.washington.edu/research/imagedatabase/groundtruth/greenland/

It interests me here that there was alow, stunted willow-scrub depicted...

But you may also be interested to know that even Antarctica and the Subantarctic Islands have a huge range of plants. On the Antarctic continent there are many types.

I am also assuming your 'island' is pretty big and is therefore subject to continental climates and devoid of the maritime climate effects.

[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited May 20, 2005).]

Posted by MaryRobinette (Member # 1680) on :

As bladeofwords said, it's mostly tundra*, although in the summer the ground isn't frozen at all. The vegetation in Iceland consists of moss, grass, and low shrubs. The blueberry bushes are about four inches tall. There are "forests" in Iceland that were planted in hopes of controlling the wind (which is strong enough at times to rip the asphalt off the road) but an Icelandic forest counts as a grove of trees in the US or Europe. The native forests of scrub willow are around six feet tall.

There's a joke, "If you're lost, how do you find your way out of an Icelandic forest."

"You stand up."

Greenland, on the other hand, really is a big sheet of ice.

*tundra - A treeless area between the icecap and the tree line of Arctic regions, having a permanently frozen subsoil and supporting low-growing vegetation such as lichens, mosses, and stunted shrubs.

Posted by djvdakota (Member # 2002) on :

The botanist speaks! I bow to the Botanist!

Posted by Elan (Member # 2442) on :

Tundra, of the sort found in Alaska, is spongy in the spring/summer months. You have a lot of lichens and such, and it makes walking on it somewhat more difficult along the same lines as walking on sand.

My cousin's husband is an Alaska Bush pilot, and he flies hunters out into the tundra to hunt. He says he won't take moose hunters out who haven't had hunting experience on tundra before because it's nothing like hunting on hard packed soil as found in the lower 48.

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

Actually, I have a bit of a problem with "totally uninhabitable". If you think about it, that's a pretty undefined term for something that sounds so superlative.

If you're talking about something like Antartica rather than Iceland, then I don't think it works. All a volcano or other geothermal hot spot does in Antartica is make the ice pack flow a little faster. Okay, a lot faster, but not enough for you to notice from the surface without instruments.

I mean, if an area is totally uninhabitable due to cold, that means that the snow never melts, ever, and it gets miles deep.

That's different from tundra, where you have permifrost under the surface. But I wouldn't catagorize tundra as "totally uninhabitable". It just means that summer is short and winter is long and harsh.

I can see a situation where the winter would be bad enough that everyone would tend to congregate around a geothermally heated area. But people would definitely go out into the "uninhabitable areas" during the summer, and the winter can only be so bad if it's tundra rather than ice cap.