When hiking through an aging natural forest, did you ever accidentally burst your foot through an old log and see the wood fibers crumble while bugs and worms scuttle away into the moss or wiggle around your hiking boot? That is a moment to not only gaze at the young shoots, but also appreciate the secrets of an ecosystem’s functionality. Effective decomposition is vital, contradictory as this may sound, to every functioning ecosystem. It liberates resources for re-composition into new uses and, eventually, new structures.
