Folded surface rocks (shaped by tectonic forces) dip lower than the surrounding land creating long linear valleys filled with pine forests.
From space the pines appear as a darker shade of green than the surrounding agricultural fields according to the Earth Observatory.
In that image snow covers the fields surrounding the folds doubly highlighting the pine forests within.
Groot a walking talking tree seems to defy nature but how outlandish is the idea of a plant-animal hybrid?
To move around like Groot does on screen such a tree creature would have to eat other things too Gilroy said.
Animals developed thought because of their searching strategy for finding food he told Forbes. Alien tree-thinkers would have to incorporate movement perhaps with some type of root system that can push itself out of the ground take three steps forward
in order to plant food-bearing trees. Pollen samples from around 6500 years ago contain abundant charcoal indicating the occurrence of fire Hunt said.
and trees that flourish in charred ground we found evidence that this particular fire was followed by the growth of fruit trees.
Hunt also pointed to evidence that the New guinea sago palm a plant that yields the starchy staple food sago first appeared over 10000 years ago along Borneo's coastline.
The biggest of the half dozen are Pine Island Glacier known for cleaving massive icebergs and its neighbor Thwaites Glacier.
Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier Is Rifting Ice from the six glaciers accounts for almost 10 percent of the world s sea-level rise per year.
Recently the fast-flowing Pine Island Glacier stabilized slowing down starting in 2009. The slowdown was only at the ice shelf where the glacier meets the sea.
But Pine Island Glacier's sluggishness was matched by an increase at Thwaites Glacier starting in 2006 the researchers found.
The acceleration extends far inland for both Pine Island Glacier and Thwaites Glacier he said.
Pine Island Glacier's acceleration reached up to 155 miles (230 km) inland from where it meets the ocean.
Future hazards After the coastline sank trees began dying as saltwater and silt invaded their roots creating ghost forests still visible today.
The raised islands and tree graveyards along Alaska's coast suggest that megathrust earthquakes similar to the 1964 temblor happen sometime between every 330 and 900 years.
By 5000 B c. people in the Zagros Mountains of northwestern Iran drank wine instilled with pine resin (for its preservative or medicinal properties.
I would listen to the rustling of the pine trees: they would warn me when the wind would start to pick up and
when you have a pine tree? My last hours with comet Lovejoy December 12 2013 The comet's final days were in December.
These three categories are broken further down into many squirrel types such as Albino Mountain Tree Antelope Spotted Grey American Red Douglas Fox Pygmy Northern Flying Southern
since they prefer to live in trees. Ground squirrels live up to their names. They dig burrows a system of tunnels underground to live in.
Flying squirrels make their homes in tree holes or nests that are built into the crooks of branches To get from tree to tree
or from a tree to the ground flying squirrels spread the muscle membrane between their legs and body and glide on the air.
They can glide up to 160 feet (48 m) making it look like they can Fly on average squirrels eat about one pound of food per week.
These little squirrels are great at planting trees. They bury their acorns but forget where they put them.
The forgotten acorns become oak trees. Nina Sen contributed to this article. Other resources l
#Papadum the Goat and His Model Genome (Gallery)< p>Currently living on a farm In virginia Papadum was selected recently by the U s. Department of agriculture (USDA) to represent one of more than twenty distinct goat populations from the United states Africa and other
#Chinese Demand is Dooming Rosewood This article was published originally at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices:
We are inclined to think that trees are a renewable natural resource. Yet precious hardwood trees have already been logged almost completely out from many countries across the tropics.
Myanmar is the latest country to experience the insatiable demand for its precious rosewood. Rosewood also known as bois de rose is an umbrella term for a whole group of tropical timber species mostly from the Genus dalbergia Pterocarpus Diospyros and Milletia
which all have a dark red hue and high quality timber in common. The vast majority of rosewood is imported to China where it s fashioned into luxurious highly-priced ornamental furniture in the Ming and Quing dynasty style.
Myanmar one of the most important biodiversity hotspots in Asia has also several species of rosewood highly prized by the Chinese furniture trade.
Even though Myanmar s forest and hardwood stocks have been diminishing for several decades already (less than 10%of the land is forested now the rosewood logging
and smuggling has increased to an unprecedented level in the last three years. In 2013 alone Myanmar exported 237000m3 of rosewood to China triple the volume of the previous year.
This amounts to one thirteenth of the estimated remaining rosewood stock of Myanmar at current logging rates Myanmar s forests will have been stripped of rosewood in just 13 years.
As Chinese hunger for the luxuriant dark red timber grows and spreads across the greater Mekong region rosewood species might face not only commercial extinction but also final biological extinction.
It is hardly just the loss of a few species that is at stake. Forest overexploited for timber is likely to lose many species of animals its ability to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere deteriorates
and it is more likely to experience fires. Logging also brings about more hunting and increases the chances of complete deforestation.
or take the risk of timber smuggling in conflict-ridden border regions such as Kachin at the border with Yunnan province China one of the main rosewood smuggling routes.
So why isn t Myanmar establishing commercial rosewood plantations? Some tropical timber can indeed be mass-produced in plantations especially faster growing species such as rubberwood eucalyptus or teak.
But the extremely slow growing high density rosewood trees take many decades to grow to a commercially viable size requiring several generations of tree planters to wait for the profit.
Such long-term investment is commendable but unlikely in a conflict-ridden poor country like Myanmar with unstable land tenure and an explosive political climate.
It is in Myanmar s interest to completely stop the illegal logging and export of rosewood to China.
As almost all processing of Burmese rosewood is done in China no value is added in Myanmar. Worse still almost no tax is generated:
Instead of the desperately needed cash for healthcare education and environmental protection laundered rosewood money goes to corrupt officials and government cronies.
If Myanmar wants to escape its rosewood crisis with at least some viable rosewood populations left it should take lessons from other countries that have undergone already the rosewood massacre#.
Myanmar has to show its dedication to a permanent non-negotiable exception-free rosewood export ban.
In Madagascar we have an example of how temporary and unclear bans only lead to a more dynamic and thriving rosewood black market.
During periods of temporary bans illegal rosewood logging continues and traders simply accumulate rosewood stockpiles.
Meanwhile rosewood prices go up stimulating even bigger bouts of logging when the ban is lifted. However even an effective national ban on rosewood export might not be enough to stop the rosewood crisis in Myanmar.
In some cases a national export ban caused China s rosewood appetite to shift to a new country.
In other cases for example Vietnam China simply grabbed the opportunity of cheaper labour and moved its basic rosewood processing to Vietnam effectively circumventing the raw timber export ban.
This may bring some economic benefit to Vietnam but does nothing to alleviate the pressure on the forests.
Of the 33 species that pass China s strict hongmu quality standards for rosewood more than a third is deemed already vulnerable by the IUCN Red List of Threatened species
and six are listed by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES). The convention binds signatory countries to regulate
Whereas China offers high levels of support to protect its growing rosewood industry for customers
Europe the US and Australia all tightened their regulations regarding rosewood import in recent years.
since 2011 only stricter regulations in China can save Myanmar s rosewood forests. Zuzana Burivalova does not work for consult to own shares in
biomarkers of wine and herbal additives that were mixed into the drink including mint cinnamon and juniper.
The researchers found signatures of pine resin which has powerful antibacterial properties and was added likely at the vineyard to help preserve the wine.
Scientists also found traces of cedar which may have come from wooden beams used during the wine-pressing process.
Koh and colleagues believe the wine would have been brought from the countryside into the cellar where a wine master would have mixed in honey and herbs like juniper and mint before a meal.
As for the taste Koh said the ancient booze may have resembled modern retsina a somewhat divisive Greek wine flavored with pine resin described by detractors as having a note of turpentine.
Lehner said his team also found at Giza charcoal remains of cedar juniper pine and oak all trees that grew in a part of the eastern Mediterranean called the Levant
along with more than 50 examples of combed ware jars a style of pottery from that region.
in recent excavations of the galleries Lehner's team found charcoal remains from wood particularly cedar that was originally from the Levant.
The Lost City of the Pyramid Builders What was all this cedar from the Levant doing in a common workers barracks?
Ancient Trees The unusually stormy weather in the United kingdom this winter has done more than caused flooding.
and revealed an ancient pine forest dating back 10000 years including pine cones according to another BBC report.
The pine forest isn't the only woodland the storms have revealed. At Pembrokeshire in Wales a previously-known ancient forest is exposed more than ever in living memory.
Furthermore the ditches connecting Mummy Lake to Far View Village Spruce Tree house and Cliff Palace aren't canals to transport water
Cliff Palace and Spruce Tree house on the other hand date to the early 1200s. The researchers think the community relocated to the latter structures between A d. 1225 and 1250 and connected their past with their present using the ceremonial roads.
Currently nine Volcanic Ash Advisory Centers around the globe monitor the skies for airborne volcanic ash for the safety of air traffic.
The Volcanic Ash Advisory Centers are very competent now to be able to track atmospheric particles
Geologists use ash beds from volcanoes to date layers of rock. But there is little understanding of how pumice rafts
and their associated ash eventually sink to the seafloor and become part of the rock record Jutzeler said.
Most monkeys live in trees but there are some that live in savannas or mountain areas. Monkey tribes stay on the move to find food so one location isn't home for very long.
The lengthwise trip crosses through the redrock sandstone canyon country so iconic of the Southwest and passes into ponderosa pine-covered high plateaus desert scrubland clad with low piã on and juniper
trees and the blustery grassy plains of the western part of the reservation not far from the famous Petrified forest national park.
but also because rising temperatures forest fires and dying trees will add pollutants and sediment to streams and groundwater greatly affecting Navajos'drinking and irrigation water supplies in the future according to a new University of Colorado report published in May about climate change and adaptation on the Navajo Nation.
Now a new report finds that tree rings in those waterlogged ribs show the vessel was built likely in 1773 or soon after in a small shipyard near Philadelphia.
What's more the ship was made perhaps from the same kind of white oak trees used to build parts of Independence Hall where the Declaration of Independence
and U s. Constitution were signed according to the study published this month in the journal Tree-Ring Research.
and Its Tree Rings Archaeologists had been on-site throughout the excavation of the World trade center's Vehicular Security Center.
Piece by piece the delicate oak fragments were documented and taken out of the rotten-smelling mud.
A few timbers were sent back to New york just 20 miles (32 kilometers) north of the World trade center to the Tree Ring Laboratory at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
and cut thick slices of the wood to get a clear look at the tree rings.
The team established that the trees used to build the ship some of which had lived to be more than 100 years old were mostly cut down around 1773.
Then to determine where the wood came from the researchers had to find a match between the ring pattern in the timbers and a ring pattern in live trees and archaeological samples from a specific region.
What makes the tree-ring patterns in a certain region look very similar in general is said climate the leader of the new study Dario Martin-Benito who is now a postdoctoral fellow at The swiss Federal Institute of technology (ETH) in Zurich.
Martin-Benito and his colleagues at Columbia's Tree Ring Lab narrowed their search to trees in the eastern United states thanks to the keel of the ship which contained hickory a tree found only in eastern North america and Eastern asia.
Otherwise the researchers would have had much more difficulty in limiting their search as oak is found all over the world.
Secrets of the Deep The ship's signature pattern most closely matched with the rings found in old living trees
How Koalas Do it With a diet based on eucalyptus leaves that are very fibrous and low in nutrition
Found throughout the eucalypt woodlands of Australia koalas are quite solitary animals. Each individual sets up a home range which can span a few acres to hundreds of acres.
The fights that the males have are pretty ferocious up in the trees said Bill Ellis a koala researcher with the University of Queensland in Australia.
When a male finds a female in his territory he will approach her in a tree sniffing constantly as he gets closer to her.
To signal to males that she's ready to mate a female will rub against trees to leave her scent
The photo taken on July 10 shows a dense forest of black spruce trees surrounding nearby lakes.
For comparison the clearest images on Google maps have a resolution of 3 feet (1 m). From the G-Liht images researchers can pick out individual trees rather than just a green smear.
#Tree Infesting Insects Love the City Heat (Op-Ed) This article was published originally at The Abstract.
eight slender red maple branches clipped from trees growing in NC State s Hill Forest. I found my way to this particular spot ditch
and all by following the trail of a plant biologist who had collected maple branches there more than 40 years ago during the height of the Nixon administration and the Vietnam war.
The fevered dog days of summer now average about 1. 4 degrees C (about 2. 5 degrees F) hotter than they did then#nd that should make a difference to the trees
The scales drink tree juices so more scales are bad for trees. A couple of degrees warming can make the difference between a stately shade tree and a sad bedraggled specimen with dead branches sparse leaves and grimy scale-encrusted bark.
Specifically it ought to make a difference to gloomy scale insects. These little sap-sucking insects seem to like it hot.
and he s found that street trees in the hottest parts of the city have far more scales sometimes 200 times more than those in the cooler parts of the city.
I became extremely grateful to scores of plant biologists like the one who archived a foot-long maple twig from Hill Forest in 1971.
when only 12 branches into my first search in the UNC Herbarium there was a gloomy scale#he same species that burdens our urban red maples.
Thanks to the careful records of those past plant collectors I was able to track down 20 of the forest sites across North carolina where red maple branches were collected in the#70s#80s and#90s (and only put the truck in a ditch at one of them.
and it was made from matai or black pine found in New zealand. The boat had carved interior ribs
and clear evidence of repair and reuse. Carbon dating tests showed that the vessel was last caulked with wads of bark in 1400.
which were hollowed out from single big trees with no internal frames. In the smaller islands of Polynesia boat builders didn't have access to trees that were big enough to make an entire canoe;
to build a vessel therefore they had to create an elaborate arrangement of smaller wooden planks.
Scientists looked at the region's ice cores and tree rings which can act like prehistoric weather stations recording everything from precipitation to wind patterns to atmospheric pressure
The plume appears to be capped brown ash with a head of white steam a result of air rising quickly in a strong updraft before cooling and condensing.
See the Sarychev Eruption Animation On the ground denser gray ash known as pyroclastic flows can be seen.
or the clouds there evaporated as the hot ash rose upward. Satellite images have revealed also the aftermath of the eruption.
and settled ash veiled nearly all of the vegetation on the island's northwestern end according to NASA Earth Observatory.
These forests provide food (especially fruiting trees) habitat and connectivity to other patches of forest for wildlife.
and India the cashew tree (Anacardium occidentale) is native to tropical regions of Brazil. The tree produces a long fleshy stalk called a cashew apple
which resembles a small pear. At the end of this stalk grows the kidney-shaped cashew nut that many know and love.
Along with Brazil nuts and almonds cashews have the highest magnesium content per serving of any tree nut.
Cashew nut oil as well as the leaves and bark of the cashew tree have also been used in traditional medicines in communities around the world to treat everything from toothaches to diabetes.
They sleep during the day in trees or caves and hunt at night. Bears are omnivorous meaning they eat vegetation and meat.
Dens are made homes from hollowed-out trees caves and piles of brush. Bears can also create a den by digging a hole into a hillside or under tree roots.
Because bears are mammals they give birth to live young. Baby bears are called cubs. Cubs are completely defenseless
#Forgotten Amber Yields New Locust Species One of the world's largest and most pristine amber collections languished under a museum sink for decades stashed in stainless steel buckets.
The researchers have identified already a new species of pygmy locust a tiny grasshopper relative and two flies in flagrante.
Amber is fossilized tree resin. Before it hardened the resin oozed and flowed over bugs and debris on branches and tree bark trapping
and preserving them for millions of years. Dominican amber is especially valuable because it provides a rare window into life on the forest floor.
Trees there appeared either to secrete resin directly from the bases of their trunks or drop resin from their branches entombing creatures living beneath the forest canopy Heads said.
That's the case for the new pygmy locust species which was fossilized in amber after its death.
The locust's abdomen shows hints of decay and the insect is surrounded by ants inside the amber suggesting the ants might have been carting off the carcass for a meal.
Heads named the locust Electrotettix attenboroughi after British naturalist and filmmaker Sir David Attenborough. A description of the new species was published today (July 30) in the journal Zookeys.
Heads and his museum colleagues said they believe the locust will be the first of many spectacular finds to come from the Sanderson amber.
which consists of custard-soaked bread powdered sugar maple-butter syrup and bacon and contains more than 2700 calories CSPI says.
Mast is a botanical term for the hard nut fruits produced by trees like beeches and acorns.
The scale of land-clearing was immense and large trees (which produce the most abundant fruits) were preferentially felled.
Valley bottoms dominated by beeches the most important hard nut trees of the pigeons were cleared for farming.
African Grey Parrots aggregate in tremendous numbers around fruiting trees and at forest openings rich in salts in Central African forests.
They usually eat vegetation such as wild celery shoots roots fruit tree bark and tree pulp but they have been known to eat small animals and insects.
A male can eat up to 40 lbs. 18 kg) of vegetation each day. Gorillas'exact diet depends on where they live.
Young gorillas often make their nests in trees and older gorillas make their nests on the ground.
Clusters of trees have shed their summer greens in favor of autumnal oranges and reds around the Great lakes and New england.
A tree's fall wardrobe depends on its species. The U s. Forest Service notes that oaks tend to turn red brown
or russet while hickories go golden bronze. Red maples turn scarlet sugar maples change to orange-red and black maples go yellow.
Climate change might affect the way leaf-peeping season shakes out in the future. Simulations featured in the Climate Change Tree Atlas show how some populations of fall favorites might shift.
Sugar maples for example might be nudged from New england to Canada as their suitable habitat in the United states shrinks over the next century.
Climate change might also postpone the onset of leaf-color changes and leave fall hues lingering later into the year.
For instance the paper birch tree in New hampshire might change color one to three weeks later by the end of the century a recent study from Princeton university found.
The avocado Persea americana is a native of Central america but over the years its popularity has spread
and the tree is cultivated now in Australia Asia South africa and other warm-weather regions. Avocados may be one of the healthiest Super bowl snacks:
#Conservation Efforts Not Just for Tree Huggers This Sciencelives article was provided to Live Science in partnership with the National Science Foundation.
He was drawn first to this work through his research on the endangered butternut tree. Below Hoban answers our ten questions.
We are beginning to learn that the genetic diversity of keystone species such as common tree species is very important for the resistance of an ecosystem to disturbance as well as its ability to bounce back after disturbance.
Peanuts do not grow on trees. Despite their name and appearance peanuts are not tree nuts like walnuts
and pecans they're part of the legume family of plants which includes beans lentils peas and other familiar foods.
Contrary to what some people think pineapples don't grow on trees they grow out of the ground from a leafy plant.
Soon she s sending them on missions to four different ecosystems the Australian desert the Canadian Rockies the Belizean mangrove swamp and the Bornean jungle.
though they lie under trees to keep cool while they nap. At night they like to graze in the cool air.
and trees when they can't find grass or herbs to eat. Buffalo like most mammals bear live young
This is an emergency on the scale of a major locust outbreak, says the FAO's Christopher Matthews. Many of the armyworms have bored now into the ground,
and trees and competing with native fauna, such as giant tortoises. After having eradicated pigs from the island,
North american tree deaths accelerate: Nature Newstrees in the western United states and Canada are dying more quickly than they used to,
or the number of new seedling trees. The mortality rates, which are of the order of 1,
For example, a forest that is relatively young starts out with many small saplings, and as the forest grows it also naturally thins out,
but much larger trees. For this reason, they only looked at plots where the forest was more than 200 years old parts of the forest spared from the axe
These trees are continuously dying and being born, but the forest-wide thinning process has finished.
I don't think we are barking up the wrong tree with temperature, says Mantgem, but we need to see how that plays out.
Those in hot, arid regions may be losing trees because of drought stress. Even if rainfall is stable,
higher temperatures can suck those same scanty centimeters of precipitation through the tree faster, as evaporation speeds up.
In wetter regions, temperature increases may make life easier for things that chew on trees,
Bark beetles have caused many massive tree die offs in the region in recent years. And the mortality increases that Mantgem
and when trees are stressed, they can become more susceptible to things like the pine beetle,
says Werner Kurz of the Canadian Forest Service in Victoria, British columbia. What the work means for the carbon balance of the Earth is also not as obvious as it may seem.
With fewer live trees, you would expect that they would take up less carbon suggests Kurz.
some action could be taken with the dead trees, says Kurz. Really, the options that are available are salvage logging of the wood for biomass
the transport of tree species to colder climes further north and more controlled burns to prepare the forests for more frequent wild fires.
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