It seems that in her speech, Suzanne Simard utilized a number of fundamental scientific skills that make her performance and the reported work significant and coherent. Firstly, throughout her whole TED talk, she establishes many connections between the theme of forest intelligence and common sense. For instance, she depicts a forest as a living organism with all the necessary traits (Simard, 2016). Then, Simard also compares forests and their “underworld” with social relations between people, showing similarities between these forests with families and friends. Such an approach allows the audience to follow her train of thought and be empathic toward the professor’s primary message.
Moreover, Simard was likely to implement her skill of diligent skepticism. Particularly, she revealed the use of this skill while telling the story of her interaction with the commercial harvest (Simard, 2016). Due to skepticism, Simard was able to critically assess the role of the mentioned harvest and clear-cutting, although she was involved in cooperation with it to an exact extent. Here, it is noticeable that intellectual courage is also inherent to the professor. It was visible from her passage and called to action regarding the way in which people can save forests and treat them appropriately.
From Simard’s speech, I learned that the exchange of nutrients for carbon occurs when the fungal cells engage with the plant root. The fungus acquires those nutrients by spreading across the ground and covering every soil component (Simard, 2016). A simple footstep can cover hundreds of miles of mycelium. Similar to the Internet, this mycelium connects individuals of other species, such as birch and fir. It is quite surprising that forests disguise such a great and advanced system.
Reference
Simard, S. (2016). How trees talk to each other. TED. Web.