Vulcan (planet)/Ecology: Difference between revisions

Some theorists argue that solar activity could easily have disrupted Vulcan's already weak and inconstant magnetic field, and perhaps even caused a radical shifting of Vulcan's axial tilt. Such a shift, if timed with a period of solar flares and tectonic instability, could have ripped away much of Vulcan's atmosphere, leaving the planet to bake itself dry over the following centuries. Still more radical scholars hold that a cataclysmic war among the proto-Vulcan species (either native or seeded by the [http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Ancient_humanoid Preservers]) not only flung Vulcan into barbarism but actually devastated the planetary ecology and geology, turning a lush paradise into a desert with horrific doomsday weapons that focused the planet's tectonic energy or that psionically collimated beams of Vulcan's sunlight into mighty death rays. Although fragmentary Vulcan legends can be matched up to these theories, most scientists reject them as unlikely in the extreme, none more firmly than the Vulcans themselves.

There are still isolated areas on the planet's face which retain the visage of Vulcan's primordial years, when the planet teemed with life. These areas, primarily concentrated in the fertile crescents bordering the planet's great seas, the Voroth and the Thanor, contain vestiges of old growth forest carefully shepherded from harvesting and set aside by the Vulcan Council as wilderness preserves. Here, conservators carefully nurture the many species of flowering plants, grasses, animals, and fish, keeping them from extinction. On a smaller yet wider scale, most Vulcans of means maintain personal gardens at their private residences, either in small outdoor plots irrigated by underground springs, or enclosed solaria with intricate closed-loop climate control systems that recycle every millimeter of water and gram of nutrient that can be recovered. Finally, cities like ShirKahr and Vulcana Regar have set aside parcels of land for public gardens which are popular sites for meditation, as well as tourist sites for off world visitors.

In these ways, Vulcan maintains its own magnificent diversity, the message of [http://home.teleport.com/~vli/surak.htm IDIC] which it has carried outward to the worlds of the UFP. This same regard for diversity and tradition prevents the occasional proposal for weather control or terraforming to restore Vulcan's original ecology from gaining wide acceptance.