Starting this week’s look into the environment and how it regenerates after trauma is a learning activity for me. I took some ecology and environmental studies coursework in my undergrad career, but as a biology major, my well of knowledge on the matter is fairly shallow and might hold no more than a few little row boats of information and wisdom. The first term I discovered in my research was: ecological succession (Witynski, n.d.). Primary ecological succession explains how life takes shape when a new island or other land mass is created, perhaps, by lava flows and results in a rocky terrain, void of any soil or plant life. Eventually lichens and other plants requiring little or no soil begin to appear, leading to grasses, then shrubs, then small trees until, finally, larger hardwood trees take over. After an extreme event that destroys an environment, a secondary succession takes place. This is similar, however, does not go all the way back to the barren rocky terrain phase. As the soil has been established it can pick back up with grasses, shrubs, and smaller trees.