General Sherman, thx .. hello there .. look at us .. Largest girth?
The giant sequoia is also not the tree with the largest girth (thickest giant sequoia: 8.98 m diameter, Boole Tree). Some African baobabs (Adansonia digitata), see the image on the right, have similar girths at the end of the wet season. During the heavy rainfall of the wet season, these trees try to store as much water as possible in their thick trunks to survive the hot dry season so their girth changes constantly during the year.
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If you take trees with multiple stems into account, there is a thicker Montezuma cypress (Taxodium mucronatum). A strangely shaped specimen, the famous árbol del Tule in Mexico, has a "diameter" of 11.42 m (image on the left).
Oldest tree in the world?
The giant sequoia definately is one of the species that can become very old, but it has to leave the first place to the bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva), a small Californian type of pine (4000 to 5000 years) and the south American alerce, Fitzroya cupressoides.
The oldest Pinus longaeva of which the age was determined exactly based on tree ring countings, was 4844 years old in 1965 (the tree was cut).
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The images above show such pines. They grow at high altitudes in quite poor conditions, so these tough trees grow rather slowly and are gnarly and weathered. The oldest living Pinus longaeva is about 4789 years old and is the world's oldest tree.
Take a moment to think about how old this is. America was not yet discovered, there was no christianity or islam. Rome and Athens were not founded yet, even the piramids in Egypt were not yet built when this tree was already growing and was facing all weather.
Then the Western men comes and cuts them down. Such a lack of respect, that's just beyond my comprehension.
Comes in second on the list of old trees: Fitzroya cupressoides. The age of a certain specimen in Chile appeared to be 3622 years old in 1993.
The giant sequoia comes in third: a specimen was 3266 years old when it was cut.
Cloud forest trees drink water through their leaves
Graduate student Greg Goldsmith in the montaine cloud forest of Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve, Costa Rica. Photo courtesy of Drew Fulton, Canopy in the Clouds
by Robert Sanders, UC Berkeley Thu, 12/13/2012 - 9:59am
Tropical montane cloud forest trees use more than their roots to take up water. They also drink water from clouds directly through their leaves, University of California, Berkeley, scientists have discovered.
While this is an essential survival strategy in foggy but otherwise dry areas, the scientists say that the clouds the trees depend on are now disappearing due to climate change.
“The study highlights the vulnerability of this rare and already endangered ecosystem to climate change,” said Todd Dawson, senior author of the study and UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology. Changes in cloud cover have already been correlated to declines and disappearances of cloud forest animal populations, such as frogs and salamanders.
In tropical montane cloud forests, leaves are constantly bathed in clouds, making them wet. The leaves of the most common cloud forest trees drink this cloud water when water from the soil just isn’t enough, said Greg Goldsmith, lead author of the study and a graduate student in Dawson’s lab.
“Many cloud forests experience an annual dry season when the primary water source isn’t rain, but rather, the moisture from the clouds,” he said. “This is when the trees are most likely to draw water in through their leaves.”
Working in Monteverde, Costa Rica, the researchers studied patterns of leaf wetness caused by the clouds by setting up small plastic “leaves” that use changes in the voltage of an embedded electrical circuit to detect wetness. Then, they installed miniature sensors on the branches of cloud forest plants to see whether or not water was entering leaves when they were wet.
“The textbooks teach us that water enters roots, moves up the trunk and into the branches, then finally exits the leaves. That’s true, but it’s not the whole story,” Goldsmith said. “With our sensors, we observed water entering the leaves and actually moving back down the branches toward the trunk.”
The research builds on previous work by Dawson, who demonstrated a similar phenomenon in California redwoods.
However, the study found that not all trees can drink the same amount of cloud water.
An electronic “leaf” the researchers used to detect when clouds were wetting leaves. Photo courtesy of Greg Goldsmith, Canopy in the Clouds
“The trees that are drinking the most water through their leaves may be more vulnerable to decreases in cloud cover resulting from rising temperatures,” said Goldsmith, who received funding from a National Geographic Society Young Explorers Grant to conduct the research.
“The study provides a clear demonstration of the interactions between clouds and cloud forest plants and will serve as a cornerstone for future research on the effects of climate change on tropical montane cloud forest ecosystems,” Dawson added.
In addition to funding from the National Geographic Society, Goldsmith was supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, a Smithsonian Institution Short-Term Fellowship and a Wang Family Fellowship from UC Berkeley.
Poland’s environment ministry may destroy the ancient Bialowieza Forest
"... -- the General Sherman"
February 17, 2016 - 10:00 am by Zachary Davies Boren @zdboren
Adam Wajrak .. [as cute as could be, eh!]
One of Europe’s oldest forests is under threat from a new logging initiative backed by Poland’s Environment Ministry.
Bialowieza Forest, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that spans 1600 square kilometres at the Polish-Belarusian border, is one of the most biodiverse spots on the continent — 32% is protected by government regulations, but only 17% is part of the national park.
Now the Polish Environment Minister Jan Szsyszko is moving to rubber stamp a plan that would enable forest authorities to dramatically increase logging operations.
It comes four years after the passage of a popular policy allowing very limited logging in the beloved Bialowieza Forest.
The policy has been disregarded by authorities, who have blown through their 10-year-limit in one of the three Forest Districts in less than half that time.
The current policy allows for an 10-year timber harvest of 48.5 thousand cubic metres , but the proposed update would increase that number eightfold — permitting a harvest of 317.9 thousand cubic metres for the remaining six years.
Loggers have justified the increased activity by claiming they’re trying to control a bark beetle outbreak that would impede future timber extraction.
Why is this forest worth protecting? Campaigners describe it as “the last large remaining fragment of the primeval deciduous forest of the northern temperate zone in Europe” — which is science speak for really old.
It’s also home to an hugely diverse population of plants (5,500) and animals (11,500), including the largest community of free-ranging European Bison, as well as large carnivores such as wolves and lynxes and rare nesting songbirds, woodpeckers, and owls.
Broken rules
The logging matter seemed to be settled back in 2012 when, under pressure from organisations including the European Commission, the Environment Ministry passed a raft of regulations designed to protect the region. entitled the Forest Management Plan.
The Forests Management Plan separated the forest into three territories, gave each with its own inspectorate, introduced more stringent limits on logging, and officialised protection of the forest’s oldest trees – that plan, however, has not been enforced.
In order to comply with the plan, logging would have to cease in one of the three districts immediately, with loggers hitting their 10-year harvest limit in just four years.
And at the current rate, they would have to stop chopping down trees in the other two districts in the next two years.
But neither of those things is actually going to happen.
Instead the Polish Ministry of Environment may adapt the Forest Management Plan to fit the objectives of the Forest Administration, allowing a dramatic increase in logging in one of the districts (8x greater than the 2012 version) and lifting protections for the centennial trees.
Bark beetles
The rationale for this policy u-turn is the need for “active management” so that the forest doesn’t succumb to bark beetles and fires, according to Polish authorities.
Environment Minister Jan Szyszko has argued that the conservation-friendly version of the Management Plan has led to forest degradation and deterioration that threatens the delicate habitat.
However. scientists and nature groups are saying the current bark beetle outbreak is a completely natural cycle, a consequence of the spring climate, drought conditions and spatial configuration of spruce stands.
Not only that but it is playing a vital part in the forest’s development, providing better conditions for a handful of different types of woodlands and the creatures (mostly birds) that depend on them.
Instead what the proposed increase in logging will do is destroy these habitats and undermine a range of conservation goals, not to mention would infringe upon the EU’s Habitats Directive.
Among the organisations that have come out against this new logging policy are the State Council for Nature Conservation, the Nature Conservation Committee of the Polish Academy of Sciences, the Scientific Council of the Bialowieza National Park, as well as many individual scientists from all over Poland and world.
Climbers Are Scaling The World’s Tallest Trees In An Effort To Save Them Arborists from the nonprofit Archangel Ancient Tree Archive climb trees to collect genetic material from their branches as part of a major conservation project. Archangel arborist Jim Clark climbs a giant equoia in the southern Sierra Nevada near Camp Nelson, Calif., on May 23, 2016. The family run Archangel Ancient Tree Archive is trying to preserve some of world’s oldest and largest living plants. 09/07/2016 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/giant-trees-cloning-climate-change_us_57c9362ee4b0a22de095860b [with embedded video, and comment]
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