Quest for the Perfect EcosystemBy Amy Sands and Zack Tarnoff

Once upon a time, the sun, the clouds, the wind, and the lake were bored. The lake said, "Why don't we make the perfect ecosystem!" Everyone thought this was a great idea.

The lake, with all his mighty strength, heaved and shoved until a bunch of dead animals, small insects and driftwood washed up onto the sand. All of the decaying matter started to put some nutrients into the sand.

Photo credit: Felix Angelov

So the wind called upon his friends, the pioneer plants, marram grass and sand reed. These strong, enduring plants grabbed onto the sand with their roots. Then the wind blew and blew until the sand piled up around the plants forming large mounds called dunes.

Photo credit: Felix Angelov

And when the pioneer plants died, all their nutrients accumulated in the sand, called humus. The lake timed how long it took to soak a cup of his water all the way through the

humus in the ground. It took him 20.475 seconds.

The sun and the sea created the perfect environment for new plants to grow just beyond the dune builders, which they called the lee side. There were more nutrients in the ground which allowed new kinds of plants to grow. Here, it took 57.42 seconds for the lake to seep through all the humus.

One of the new plants that grew in the leeside was the little bluestem grass, because little bluestem likes to be dry and away from the

shore. Blue stem and other plants in the leeside were not as strong as the pioneer plants, so the wind had to stop blowing so hard, which made the

wind sad.

Just past the lee side, enough humus had accumulated in the ground to support even more different kinds of plants than the lee side. Here it took the lake 322.33 seconds to soak through all the humus.

Photo credit: Felix Angelov

There were many flowers and large trees, including the juniper, and a lot of spiders and wasps. Jack pine trees flourished the

most there, which gave the area its name.

Juniper

The sun and the lake have allowed for so much plant growth that the soil became rich enough to grow plants such as hickory, elm, sassafras, and oak trees. A wide variety of animals have come to live in the ecosystem. There was so much humus in the ground that it took the lake 259.67 seconds to soak through it all!

The sun and the lake stood back and admired their work. They finally accomplished their goal of creating the perfect, sustainable

ecosystem. They thought to themselves, "Nothing could ever happen to this perfect ecosystem!"

The wind and clouds became angry because nobody would let him help build the ecosystem. But the sun and the lake didn't think

about their friends the wind and the clouds who they had excluded. Together, the wind and the clouds created a terrible

thunderstorm.

The wind and the clouds struck the "perfect ecosystem" with bolts of lightning, leaving giant patches of sand. The sun and the lake did the best they could to rebuild, going through the same series of growth that they used to build the original dunes. This was called "primary succession."

Then a group of humans approached the ecosystem. They brough large machines and began to destroy the perfect ecosystem that the sun and sea had created. A large amount of their hard work returned back to sand.

Once again, the elements set back to work rebuilding what was destroyed of their perfect ecosystem in a series of secondary

succession. This became known as the sandmine succession.

All of the elements, the wind, lake, clouds, and sand got mad at each other and began arguing. The wind blew sand everywhere. Suddenly, a large depression filled with water appears. The wind had created a pond. All of the elements realize that a perfect ecosystem is very hard to create because of human or natural disaster, but they decide to keep striving for perfection anyway.