On December 9th, AYLUS members help clean up invasive vines. Invasive vines are the number one threat to the ecosystem beheading the outright development of building and pavement. The problem is that they tend to out-compete native plants because they didn’t evolve in the same place as native plants. So they don’t have much competition and don’t give much value to the ecosystem. If they produce fruits they don’t produce it as well as native plants and aren’t edible.
We helped get rid of very threatening invasive vines that were wrapped around a tree. The most threatening invasive vines are the honeysuckle, Asiatic bittersweet, nightshade, and mini invasive shrubs. Invasive vines kill a tree and change the ecology of a forest. Vines will climb up the tree and add weight to the tree. The extra weight will cause limbs to break. Once the limbs are broken, fungus and insects can enter causing the tree to die causing the ecology to change. Also they cause mono culture. Monoculture is where every plant is the same, and invasive vines create their own mono culture where they grow and grow and grow until they choke everything out. In addition, they cause shading. Invasive vines can climb to the top of the tree and shade the tree from receiving any sunlight thus causing tree to not receive the nutrients needed to grow.
In the world of ecology diversity equals stability. If you have an ecosystem that’s very diverse and some disease comes around and wipes the species around the rest of the system is still around. If the system is the same and a disease comes you lose everything at once.
Once we finished cutting these invasive vines they get dumped around a certain area instead of going to the land fill. This is to contain the seeds so it doesn’t spread further. Together we prevented the spread of invasive vines that could potentially damage the trees and the ecosystem around it.
Members who participated includes:
Yang Amy Wu (5 hours), Anjali Garg (5 hours)
Reporter: Anjali Garg
