Ecology of the Craters of the Moon national monument

Ecology is really just studying the interrelationships amongst everything in a environmental system. You and your class will examine Craters' ecology in the following activities. You will learn how living and nonliving parts of the Craters' ecosystem are interconnected and how plants and animals are adapted to their habitats. Through the study of ecology, you will deepen your understanding of the way of life, its limitations, and our connections to it.

Life at Craters of the Moon lives in the shadow of the Monument's volcanism. Over millennia (thousands of years) the landscape of Craters of the Moon was periodically sterilized by new flows of molten rock. Each time life was set back, receding to the places where it was not engulfed by lava and destroyed. No sooner had the lava cooled, however, than windblown fungal spores and bacteria began to emerge and grow in the new landscape, setting the stage for the more visible life that would follow.

Life Begins again after a Volcanic Eruption
With a trace of windblown soil and a few nutrients added by microscopic organisms, plants begin their life. They start growing in the lava's nooks and crannies where living things compete for scarce resources such as water. This life begins usually just a few inches away from the deadly winds and searing heat of the recently reshaped surface. Life hangs on at Craters, with over 300 species of plants, each uniquely adapted to life in a place that, at first glance, appears lifeless. It is truely amazing that such a diversity of life has emerged from a landscape so harsh to life.

Diversity Increases
With a food source of plants, more than 175 species of vertebrates live at Craters of the Moon. Woven into this living fabric are thousands of species of invertebrates and microscopic organisms, each occupying niches only they can fill. With time comes the accumulation of soil in Craters' crevices and an increasing diversity of life. Biomass, or the total weight of all the living things in an area, also increases as a flow ages. Over eons the land loses its volcanic identity to the ever more complex array of plants and animals that colonize the surface. At most of Craters, however, life is fresh and new; a mere 2,000 to 15,000 years have passed since an eruption cremated what lived before.

Life at Craters proceeds along a path defined by extreme heat and cold, a lack of water and soil, and competition between living things for limited resources. Every few thousand years the path abruptly ends beneath a wall of lava and all life at Craters of the Moon must begin again.