After the Blast: The Ecological Recovery of Mount St. Helens by Eric Wagner

Abstract

87 Reviews It is surprising that more scholarship has not been written on water pollution abatement in western Oregon, given McCall’s regard. Speaking for the River corrects that oversight with deep research and convincing analysis — a testament both to the author’s work and to the Portland State University History Department, where he began this project over a decade ago as a master’s student. In the end, Hillegas-Elting offers a thesis that squares with most environmental histories on natural-resource regulation. “In claiming to speak for the river,” he writes in closing, “we are, in fact, speaking for ourselves” (p. 238). Such a self-critique made me wonder what we might be missing, then, by limiting our scope to White liberal activists, scientists, and politicians. To what extent has water pollution affected communities of marginalized race and class? What have Native people thought of settlers’ Janus-faced relationship with the Willamette? And what do we make of Oregon’s powerful anti-fluoridation movement, which draws on the language and legacy of environmentalism ? Regardless of the direction future research takes, Speaking for the River sets up historians to better understand the Willamette River’s history, as well as the ways in which we continue to misunderstand its beautiful, temperamental intricacies. Taylor E. Rose Yale University AFTER THE BLAST: THE ECOLOGICAL RECOVERY OF MOUNT ST. HELENS by Eric Wagner University of Washington Press, 2020. Illustrations, maps, 248 pages. $29.95 cloth. In After the Blast, Eric Wagner sheds light on how the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens generated new ways of thinking about enduring ideas in ecology and evolution. Wagner brings readers into conversation with a fascinating array of scientists, from the foremost senior scientists to those who played supporting roles. This scholarship demonstrates that scientific advancements about complex systems rarely develop through inquiry by individuals alone; rather they develop through the loosely interconnected efforts of a research community — often one that evolves over time and across geographies. This book, a work of environmental science writing by an author with advanced science training (Ph.D., Biology, University of Washington), is organized in four parts: More than the Boom; Natural Experiments; Of Logs and Lakes; and Changes to the Land. Through these sections, readers gain insight into how scientists tapped into the “unprecedented opportunity . . . to test on the grandest of scales some of the oldest and most durable theories in ecology and evolution about how life responds to a massive disturbance, how it recovers from one, or how it does not” (p. 5). An epilogue, Volcán Calbuco, which focuses on a southern Chilean mountain that erupted in 2015, brings the narrative into the present by reporting on the field-based interactions between Mount St. Helens scientists and Chilean scientists, prospectively propelling advancements in the southern hemisphere. Readers with an interest in the natural history of the Pacific Northwest as well as those with interest in the history of environmental science will find much utility in this work. Particularly interesting are the discussions of the evolution of key ecological concepts, especially ecological succession, disturbance, and biological legacies. Also interesting is discussion of the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest as one of the first sites of the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Program of the National Science Foundation. Readers with an interest in other historical fields (environmental history, forestry history, public lands history, regional history) also will find a number of relevant insights. These historical perspectives, however, are not specifically applied in this book. Consequently, the scholarship is best appreciated as an environmental science narrative, rather than a historical argument. 88 OHQ vol. 122, no. 1 Wagner’s scholarship is strong. He conducted interviews with tens of scientists, often in field settings, to substantiate the narrative. The ecological precision and nuance that emerges from these interviews indicates sustained , careful, mutually respectful interaction between the author and scientists to get the story right. In addition, the author draws on his background in biology to anchor key insights. For instance, Wagner communicates how an eminent scientist bequeathed a carefully tended dataset to a scientist trained in the use of new analytical tools. This transfer of data across the generations of scientists resulted...