Earth will win: Nature bites back on Washington state's Key Peninsula Natural processes overcome human impact across the beaches, forests and developed areas of a remote peninsula in southern Puget Sound.

USA | Monday, 14 January 2013 | Views [302] | View Smaller Image

A large tractor tire, discarded along a trail, fills with fallen leaves and debris to create humus from which blue huckleberry, sword ferns and other plants arise. Lichen and moss attach to the tire, which over time will become covered, buried, and part of the forest floor.

A piece of glass from a long-ago broken bottle is washed smooth by the sea. In time this fragment made from silica will erode to pieces no larger than the grains of sand on which it rests.

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Weather exploits weakness in concrete to create cracks. Opportunistic plants invade and continue the work of reducing pavement to rubble.

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Earth will win: Nature bites back on Washington state's Key Peninsula Natural processes overcome human impact across the beaches, forests and developed areas of a remote peninsula in southern Puget Sound.

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