The western Olympic valleys contain among the highest biomass of living wood per acre of any forest on Earth, exceeding even many tropical rainforests. The combination of a mild maritime climate and long-lived conifers such as Sitka spruce, Douglas-fir, and western hemlock makes these the most productive temperate forests known, measured by sheer accumulated plant matter.
Here's a number that ought to stop you. This valley packs more living wood into a single acre than almost any forest on the entire planet, more even than a steaming tropical jungle near the equator. Pound for pound, acre for acre, the great mossy conifers out here are champion wood-growers, piling on mass for five hundred, a thousand years without let-up. People come looking for the tallest trees or the oldest. But by the simple measure of sheer living matter stacked on the ground, the temperate world has nothing more productive than the forest around you.
Photo: Kimon Berlin (KimonBerlin) · CC BY-SA 2.0
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