Gallery 041Temperate rainforest study
041 · Forest Canopy · Olympic Peninsula

Light falls in green staircases.

Five stacked layers of leaves filter the sun from emergent crowns to moss floor. Move your cursor through the right-hand forest to scatter spores and wake fireflies. Drag the daylight slider below to run dawn to dusk in seconds.

42kLux at crown
0Spores released
5Canopy strata
Strata: emergent → floormove mouse to disturb air

Emergent layer

Douglas fir and Sitka spruce break 60 metres. Their needles slice wind first; gusts you trigger start here and cascade downward through the canvas simulation.

Light economics

Only 2% of sunlight reaches the floor. The daylight slider remaps the whole palette — dawn gold, noon lime-white, dusk ember — while lux readout follows.

Spore drift

Ferns release 400 spores per click. Each particle carries velocity, drag and sway on the canvas; counters track your disturbance of the still air.

DawnMorningNoonGoldenDuskNight
Field appendix · A — needle & leaf key

Know your leaves.

Rangers ID trees by needle, cone, and bark. Three questions, no stakes — test the eye you trained in the canopy above.

Q1 · Which needle pattern belongs to Douglas fir?
Score 0 / 3 · pick one to begin
Douglas fir

Not a true fir. Cones carry three-pronged bracts — the mouse-tail legend.

Western hemlock

Feathery, uneven needles; the shade queen of the understory.

Bigleaf maple

Leaves 30 cm wide. Autumn turns the floor to parchment.