#Why One Hectare of Rainforest Grows More Tree Species than US This article was published originally at The Conversation.
One hectare of land in a tropical forest can hold 650 tree species more than in all of Canada and the continental US.
That is why a single tropical tree may have hundreds of distinct chemical compounds in its defence arsenal against herbivores which makes the analysis harder.
Most convincingly closely related trees and shrubs have diverged often defences which is a sign of exploring biotic interaction niches
and total numbers) between trees and herbivores but that may not actually be true according to Jeff Ollerton professor of biodiversity at the University of Northampton.
#Extreme Cold Could Halt Invasive Insect Air so cold it makes your nose hair crackle could be a good thing for the country's nearly one billion ash trees according to the U s. Department of agriculture.
The record cold snap sweeping much of the United states blasted states hit hard by the emerald ash borer an invasive beetle that was detected first in 2002.
Research by U s. Forest Service biologist Rob Venette suggests that temperatures below minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 29 degrees Celsius) will kill 79 percent of emerald ash
borer larvae living under the bark of ash trees the USDA wrote today in a Facebook post.
However temperatures under the tree bark could be two to seven degrees warmer than the air University of Minnesota ecologist Lee Frelich told Minnesota Public Radio.
Despite the insulating effects of bark There is a large area in northern MN that has a lot of ash trees that experiences temperatures cold enough to greatly limit the survival
Today s conifers are gymnosperms as are the short palm like cycads and the gingko.
just as hard as animal species. Fossils from the late Permian show that huge conifer forests blanketed the region.
but instead are filled with fossil remnants of fungi that probably proliferated on a glut of decaying trees.
During growth spurts trees and plants produce more chlorophyll which makes them look greener.)We think we have uncovered the mechanism for the appearance of seasonal greening of Amazon forests shadowing within the canopy that changes the amount of near-infrared light observed by MODIS lead study author Doug Morton of NASA's Goddard Space Flight
Without tree shadow the forest looks brighter and greener to the MODIS sensors. Around the equinox the MODIS sensor takes the'perfect picture'with no shadows Morton said.
sacred with blood Of men was every tree##The Celts were interested in Druidism. Robert Wisniewski of the University of Warsaw notes in an article published in the journal Palemedes that in A d. 43 Pomponius Mela wrote about the Gauls as follows:#
While finding old tree lists wasn't difficult there was not an existing list of ancient life across all species that met my criteria Sussman wrote in her introduction.
She also photographed 2000-year-old brain corals off the coast of Tobago and 13000-year-old underground forests of dwarf mobola trees with crowns of leaves poking above the surface of South african soil.
The Ratcliffe chupacabra as it's been dubbed was found Sunday in a tree on the couple's property in Ratcliffe Texas
The pollen in this time period came mostly from grasses and a few drought-resistant species of trees.
After about 2000 years ago more and more tree pollen appears in the samples including fewer drought-resistant species
It's easier to stomp on a sapling than it is to cut down a big Amazonian tree with a stone ax.
the problem tree. In high-school I identified poor nutrition as a problem this was my trunk.
The symptoms or branches of my tree included the issues that my grandmother suffered with
. I realized then how reductive my original problem tree was reassessed so I and now here's my new problem tree.
I moved nutrition from being at the core of the problem to a symptom of my new one:
Thinking about a problem more holistically may leave you with a daunting new problem tree like mine
NRDC also has a high success rate on many problem trees that it has encountered so I am interviewing senior staff members
What's your problem tree this year? I implore you to explore that problem further
which is reflected in its scientific name Theobroma cacao meaning Food of the Gods. Eurpoeans discovered cocoa in the 1500s and over the next few centuries chocolate which we know
To understand the issue you need to know that palm oil derived from the fruit of the oil palm tree is a sought-after ingredient for thousands of products from snack foods to shampoo.
Understanding the climate connection Oil-palm trees grow only in humid tropical regions such as Indonesia and Malaysia as well as parts of Africa and Latin america.
Palm-oil plantations now cover more than 40 million acres an area larger than the state of Georgia. The climate implications are enormous:
Scientific analysis has shown that through a combination of efforts such as improving yields through tree breeding and better management practices worldwide palm oil demand can be met until 2020 without further damage to tropical forests or peat lands.
With one clean stroke he sliced a fuzzy fern off the bark of a nearby palm tree carried it back to the hut
and ferns and trees thrived in the Arctic. This is the height of global warming since the extinction of the dinosaurs so it's the time interval that people look at a lot for trying to understand global warming today Eberles said.
A forest of mixed conifer and broadleaf trees carpeted Northern British columbia with palms and spruce living side-by-side Eberle said.
Bats roost in trees caves mines and barns anyplace that provides shelter from the weather protection from predators
In the day they sleep upside down from trees or the roofs of caves holding on with their sharp claws.
The bees build these multilayered nest cells in secure locations near the ground such as under the bark of dead trees in stems
Leaf matter used to construct the nest cells likely came from trees not far from the nest site suggesting the La Brea Tar pits had a nearby forest possibly containing streams or a river.
About 80 percent of prairie vegetation is grass (40 to 60 species) with the remainder made up of more than 300 species of wildflowers plus trees scrubs and lichens according to Live Science's Our Amazing Planet.
versus plants such as nut trees that must be watered no matter the weather; and lining canals so that precious water doesn't seep into the soil instead of irrigating crops.
In combination with Gum arabic (hardened sap obtained from the acacia tree) it can also delay the ripening of bananas.
As trees grow they capture carbon dioxide from the air through the process of photosynthesis and in the Amazon this process occurs at impressive levels.
in the Amazon the invisible microbes do as much as the now-disappearing trees to help our environment.
#Fossils of Ancient Australasian Trees Found in Patagonia In Patagonia at the southern end of South america scientists have discovered 52.2-million-year-old fossils of a giant evergreen tree that now is only found thousands
Coniferous trees in the Genus agathis which are sought after for their soft wood have thick trunks and can grow up to 200 feet (60 meters) tall.
But the discovery of fossilized Agathis leaves branches and cones in the rich deposits at Argentina's Laguna del Hunco suggests the tree covered much more ground in prehistoric times.
These spectacular fossils reveal that Agathis is had old and a huge range that no one knew about from Australia to South america across Antarctica Peter Wilf a professor of geoscience at Penn State said in a statement.
Fossil Forest in the Canadian Arctic Wilf added that fossils of the tree had previously been uncovered in Australia
However Agathis fossils have never been found anywhere else until now and they have never been as complete as these Wilf said.
Wilf suspects Agathis was spread throughout Australia Antarctica and South america at the time but ultimately only survived in Australia and eventually dispersed north to Southeast asia.
Though Agathis adapted its range in response to past pressures Wilf said it's not clear
whether the tree will be able to respond to the more rapid human-induced threats from climate change and activities like deforestation and selective logging.
The layers of volanic ash and lake sediments at Laguna del Hunco have turned up some other amazing ancient plants including a fossilized tomatillo and the remains of eucalyptus buds and flowers.
#World's Largest Trees Help Explain California Forests'Bald Spots Trees in California's Sierra nevada mountains including giant sequoias need sunlight water
Visitors to the western Sierra's lower elevations may find themselves abruptly stepping from a lush redwood grove onto sun-lashed bedrock.
These trees have had thousands and thousands of years to colonize this elevation band in the western Sierra
It turns out that even California's famed giant sequoias the largest living trees On earth grow only in soil topping rocks with the right chemical composition according to the study published today (Feb 10) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Tallest Trees On earth Subtle differences in geochemistry that arose more than 100 million years ago are now affecting life on the mountain range said Hahm.
which the western Sierra's trees grow the scientists showed that the plutons caused the starts and stops in the forest network.
A natural grove of sequoia was right next door to almost nothing at all. One key ingredient in the forest patterns was varied phosphorus
which widely between plutons In some cases the trees revealed fine-scale pluton boundaries overlooked by earlier geologic mappers Hahm said.
The new study suggests the trees will also march upward according to where they find the best food.
The researchers analyzed tree rings of Siberian pines which can live up to a thousand years to reconstruct a 1112-year history of soil moisture
and climate in Mongolia one of the longest tree-ring histories on record. More rain means moister soil
which causes trees to grow faster and produce thicker tree rings. Combining their data with previously published tree-ring records they found that the severity of the recent drought was matched only by dry periods in the late 12th century
which may have contributed to the political instability from which a strong charismatic leader like Genghis khan could emerge.
The fact that the 21st century has been much warmer than it was in the past means that recent temperature increases likely worsened the drought's impact.
The researchers'tree-ring record also revealed a time of unprecedented rainfall between 1211 and 1225 coinciding with the expansion of the Mongolian Empire.
To determine that tree-ring data was an accurate representation of grassland productivity the researchers compared their tree-rings to satellite data of vegetation covering Mongolia between 1980 and 2010.
In dense eucalypt forests (such as wet sclerophyll forests) fuel-reduction burning is impractical because of the risk of uncontrollable fires sustained by heavy fuel loads that only become flammable in dry conditions.
For example with extreme heat and winds eucalypt crowns can catch on fire regardless of the amount of leaf litter and surface fuel.
And because of their preference for these fruit trees species of both genera at times wind up in grocery stores
and conifer forests began to recover from the Permian Extinction. Mosses and ferns survived in coastal regions.
and glided from tree to tree. Another flying reptile Icarosaurus was much smaller only the size of a hummingbird with wing membranes sprouting from modified ribs.
Crocodiles Can Climb Trees Forget leapin'lizards. In Australia Africa and North america it's climbin'crocodiles you have to worry about.
New research finds that yikes crocodiles can climb trees even reaching the uppermost branches. Four species found on three continents showed this behavior
The most frequent observations of tree-basking were in areas where there were few places to bask on the ground implying that the individuals needed alternatives for regulating their body temperature the authors wrote online Jan 25 in the journal Herpetology Notes.
Local reports from Mexico Colombia Indonesia and Botswana among other spots described crocs basking in mangroves and other trees.
A photographer even snapped a shot of a croc cousin the American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) in a tree about 4 to 6 feet (2 to 3 meters) above the water at the Pearl river Delta in Mississippi.
In The americas Dinets observed crocs as long as 3 feet (1 m) sunning themselves on mangrove roots and branches.
and when approached the animals in trees always jumped or fell into the water. This shyness might explain why tree-climbing behavior in crocodilians remains relatively little known
despite being relatively common the researchers wrote. Dinets and his colleagues have previously found that crocodiles
One of these crocs 4. 5 feet (1. 4 m) long was seen roosting at the end of a fallen tree.
The largest tree-climber observed was a Nile crocodile 6. 5 feet (2 m) seen basking a foot and a half (0. 5 m) above water on a fallen branch in Botswana.
There is no evidence that crocodiles have evolved to climb trees but they are still capable of climbing high Dinets and his colleagues concluded.
or other warm places to bask suggesting that crocodilians use trees to get out of the shade
A tree the researchers wrote provides a safe vantage point where escape is as easy as falling off a log.
By using data from tree rings of Siberian pines researchers found an unusually warm and wet period between A d. 1211 and 1225 corresponding with Genghis khan's horse-driven invasion.
and concentrate power study researcher Amy Hessl who studies tree rings at West virginia University said in a statement.
The new study led by Neil Pederson a tree-ring researcher at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory found the opposite.
These trees are stressed water and live close to the edge so the tree rings record a sensitive timeline of wet and dry seasons.
The oldest rings found dated as far back as 650 B c. Each ring records a year of growth with more growth in warm and wet years.
By comparing the ring sizes to the rings of modern trees the researchers found that Mongolia suffered from major drought between 1180 and 1190 before Genghis khan united the tribes.
Modern warnings The tree rings are less auspicious for modern Mongolia. After centuries of typical dry and cold with periodic fluctuations the last 40 years of tree ring data point to unprecedented drought.
The most recent which began in 2002 and lasted until 2009 was similar in length and lack of rainfall to the droughts during the chaotic pre-empire times in the 1100s the researchers reported.
The pine tree ring data shows that the 2002 to 2009 drought was the hottest on record.
They climb trees slither into abandoned buildings and invade rodents nests looking for prey. Nevertheless these snakes are generally quiet and shy.
They dwell in woodlands tree groves rocky hillsides swamps fields and meadows when they live in natural environments.
How Snakes Slither Up Trees Corn snakes enjoy a diet of rodents lizards frogs small birds bats and bird eggs.
and watching them hatch the strawberry poison arrow frog carries her tadpoles one by one on her back from the rain forest floor up into trees as high as 100 feet.
Learning from Trees is a classic on biomimetics. Mattheck s lifelong love affair with trees has led to many important innovations in engineering design.
One of these considers the junction where the branch of a tree meets the trunk.
Mattheck said the curvature around this junction was designed very cleverly to minimise the concentration of stress that occurs
He suggested that the tree was sensitive to stress and so as it grew would deliberately place material in such a way as to minimise stress.
He developed a computer programme to simulate tree growth and the result was a fantastic reduction in stress concentration allowing for more slender components.
and actually look at trees I don t think Mattheck is right. I don t think trees are doing
what he thinks they are doing and proving it would be quite difficult. But of course it doesn t matter
and my daughter seemed more interested in testing her foot speed in a dusty open field than mixing water into the dirt under a shady tree canopy
walking through the woods poking sticks in the water (streams in my case a pond in my daughter's) and making imaginary forts out of hollow trees.
We took turns squishing the mud spreading it on the bark of a nearby tree
There's a lot of pasting clumps of dirt onto exposed tree roots and a lot of curious glances from passers by.
but the clues come from charcoal not from marks on fossilized trees. Charcoal remains of Earth's oldest fires date back more than 400 million years.
See Photos of the First Fire-Scarred Petrified Wood Fire stone Byers spent two decades staring at his father's 16-pound (7 kilograms) doorstop before realizing it might be from a fire-scarred tree.
The petrified chunk likely came from the Chinle Formation the same wood-rich rock layer that litters Arizona's Petrified forest national park with huge crystallized trees.
A fire-wounded tree valiantly tries to heal itself. The surviving wood hugs the fire scar growing back over the raw burned inner wood.
and polished he could also see a light-colored band dividing the pre-and post-fire growth a mark that is also found in modern trees as well as the unique growth-ray pattern.
His collaborators include the University of New mexico's Sidney Ash who may have looked at more petrified wood from the Southwest than anyone else On earth;
and Lucã a Desoto a professor at Portugal's University of Coimbra and a leader in analyzing tree growth cell by cell.
One of the team's key findings was petrified that the tree seemed to react to fire stress in the same way as modern trees.
Stress from forest fires can leave behind bands of narrow tree rings in some modern trees a result of the struggle to recover
The ancient tree was called a species Agathoxylon arizonicum a species that never forms growth rings. However its microscopic tree cells called tracheids internal highways that transfer water and nutrients show signs of fire stress in a manner similar to tree rings.
Six to eight rows of tiny tracheids suggest suppressed growth immediately after the fire the researchers report.
This post-fire growth spurt is seen also in modern trees. Rethinking the past If more evidence for fire damage turns up in ancient wood will ecologists reconsider the impacts of fire on plant evolution?
No one knows for sure what the Chinle Formation's trees looked like but some researchers think they resembled monkey puzzle trees the evergreen conifers from Chile that drop their lower branches until only an umbrella-shaped top remains.
That's a classic fire adaptation (so ground fires can't climb up lower branches) Byers points out.
As reported by numerous observers the first Exxonmobil shipments along Route 12 on the Clearwater River knocked down trees
or tree holes during the day and then climb into the forest canopy to find their favorite tree fruits at night.
Also by only searching for tree fruits during the night owl monkeys avoid competing with larger monkeys that spend their days hunting for the same foods.
Herbs and spices such as bog myrtle yarrow juniper and birch resin added flavor and perhaps medicinal qualities.
And on the Swedish island of Gotland locals still brew a mixture of barley honey juniper
and paper company is clear-cutting trees Carter Roberts president and CEO of WWF said in a statement.
Although they are used frequently for skin designs neither henna nor PPD are approved by the FDA for use on the skin Another dye jagua derives from the unripened fruit of the Genipa americana a South american tree.
Indigenous people in the Amazon have used long jagua for body decorations but the dye is newer to the United states. Allergic reactions to these dyes can involve rashes and blisters.
Old Trees Grow Fastest Like a fairytale beanstalk a tree can grow and grow until it scrapes the sky.
Instead of slowing down as the centuries add up old trees speed up their growth according to a study published today (Jan 15) in the journal Nature.
Trees keep growing like crazy throughout their life span said Nate Stephenson lead study author and a forest ecologist with the U s. Geological Survey (USGS) in Three Rivers Calif. The results of the survey of 403 tree species around the world suggest that trees never suffer the ill effects of old age.
In animals cells change and break down over a lifetime eventually causing death. But trees seem free from this growth limit called senescence.
Instead only disease insects fire or accidents such as lightning will kill a tree Stephenson said.
He forgot to mention logging of course. They never stop he said. Every year they are always putting on more weight than before.
What Is the World's Largest Tree? Missing trees for the forest The findings turn conventional forestry wisdom on its head.
It had always been suspected but never proven that older trees grow more slowly than young trees.
The evidence came from measuring carbon trapped by forests. Overall a forest full of whippersnappers sucked more carbon from the atmosphere than a same-sized acreage filled by elderly trees.
Trees store carbon in their tissues such as wood bark and leaves. So scientists assumed the older trees were growing more slowly
because they ate less carbon. But these early data weren't measuring individual trees and that's where the rub comes in said Todd Dawson a forest biologist at the University of California Berkeley who was involved not in the study.
People had this misconception because forests showed a decline in productivity as they grew older.
But this is a really fun finding because it says'Hey wait a minute that isn't the case.'
One finding published in 2010 revealed California's towering coast redwoods keep racing skyward throughout their several-thousand-year life span.
what Stephenson to pull out a long-dormant file from his 20-year-old work on California's giant sequoias.
It seemed like the giant sequoias never slowed their growth rate Stephenson said. This study in 2010 nudged
and address this issue. 670000 trees can't be wrong Gathering forestry experts from six continents Stephenson
whether trees really grow more slowly with age. They looked at more than 670000 tropical and temperate trees
and found that for more than 90 percent of species the trees kept growing throughout their entire life span gaining weight as the years progressed.
Each species grows at its own rate but the biggest oldest trees can swell their wood bark
and leaf mass by 1300 lbs. about 600 kilograms) in one year the researchers report.
I think one of the reasons the idea that older trees grew more slowly had such staying power is
But as the new findings show trees reach that adolescent growth spurt and never stop Stephenson said.
because there are more trees per square mile. Storing carbon But on a tree-by-tree basis ancient giants are much more effective at removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than young trees.
We realize now the big old trees are the ones pulling carbon most rapidly out of the atmosphere Stephenson said.
This maybe puts an exclamation point on the importance of maintaining big old trees. Dawson said more research could reveal
whether managing forests so they contain more old trees would help trap more carbon (making the forest a carbon sink).
Foresters have assumed always you need to be managing for young age because young trees grow faster than old trees
but they didn't know trees keep growing Dawson told Livescience. If you want a forest to be a carbon sink you may want to manage it to make sure you always have a lot of older trees in it.
Email Becky Oskin or follow her@beckyoskin. Follow us@livescience Facebook & Google+.+Original article on Livescience e
#The Gorgeous, Dangerous World Below Antarctic Ice (Op-Ed) This article was published originally at Slate.
The beginning of the year (and the starting of the calendar) signaled that farmers should trellis vines prune trees and sow spring wheat.
It was a moist temperate forest mostly of conifer trees and gingkos with dry hot summers and pretty cold winters.
The plant moves like a wave smothering everything in its wake trees utility poles and even buildings.
since overrun entire ecosystems destroying native long-needled pine forests woodlots and grasslands alike. In addition to the damage it inflicts by overwhelming other plants kudzu has indirect effects as well.
Tharayil and Tamura investigated the impact of a kudzu invasion in native pine forests. They found that the invasion actually increased the amount of leaf material contributed to the soil
Tharayil and Tamura attribute the release of carbon from kudzu-invaded forests to the fact that kudzu adds material to the soil that is susceptible to degradation relative to that produced by pine.
Simply put kudzu leaves and stems are easy for microbes to degrade pine needles and stems are not.
This means that carbon is locked in with waste from pines; whereas it gets released by kudzu.
and roots become the major plant contributors to the soil organic matter replacing pines'contribution. This has a threefold effect.
First over time the hard-to-degrade pine matter decreases in abundance. Second the easy-to-degrade kudzu matter actually encourages the degradation of the pine matter.
That is kudzu material primes#the soil microbes to be more effective at degrading the plant material in the soil including that previously contributed by pines.
Finally after invasion the kudzu matter is simply more rapidly degraded itself. The net result of these three effects is that plant material is degraded more rapidly it doesn t persist like it did in the pine forests.
The impact of kudzu invasions on the release of former pine forests could be substantial.
Tharayil has estimated that kudzu invasion might cause the release of 4. 8 tonnes of carbon per year.
Why one hectare of rainforest grows more tree species than US and Canada combined Malcolm Campbell receives funding from the Natural sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and from Genome Canada.
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