Spirit Lake Washington Before and After
September 7, 2013 by staff
Spirit Lake Washington Before and After, Mount St. Helens looks serene in a photograph taken from the shores of Spirit Lake in Washington State in 1973-a few years before the volcano’s infamous 1980 eruption.
Today marks the 30th anniversary of the blast, which killed 57 people and leveled hundreds of square miles of pristine old-growth forest.
“The eruption really caused drastic changes in the forest ecosystem,” said Mark Swanson, a forest ecologist at Washington State University.
Before the eruption, the dense forest cover meant there was little light and low wind speeds in the area. But afterward, Swanson said, “you had a very open system … with a layer of volcanic ash over most of it, varying in depth from hundreds of meters to just a few inches.”
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