and related international schemes that allow payments to landholders for planting trees sometimes called carbon farming are intended to support sequestration of carbon from the atmosphere.
But alternatives such as planting strips of trees on farms agroforestry--integrating trees into cropping systems
because they can draw on local knowledge about trees likely to thrive and will remain popular.
#Ancient ancestor of tulip tree line identifiedthe modern-day tulip tree state tree of Indiana as well as Kentucky and Tennessee can trace its lineage back to the time of the dinosaurs according to newly published research by an Indiana
The tulip tree Liriodendron tulipfera has been considered part of the magnolia family. But David Dilcher of Indiana University Bloomington and Mikhail S. Romanov of the N. V. Tsitsin Main Botanical garden in Moscow show that it is closely related to fossil plant specimens from the Lower Cretaceous period.
Their findings suggest the tulip tree line diverged from magnolias more than 100 million years ago and constitutes an independent family Liriodendraceae with two living species:
The tulip tree sometimes called tulip poplar or yellow poplar is one of the largest trees of Eastern North america sometimes reaching more than 150 feet in height.
Dilcher an IU professor emeritus of geological sciences and biology in the College of Arts and Sciences discovered fossil flowers and fruits resembling those of magnolias
and tulip trees in 1975 in Kansas. Dilcher and Peter Crane now the dean of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale university published information about the fossils and named the plant Archaeanthus.
and seeds not previously detailed that were more similar to those of the tulip tree line of evolution than to the magnolias Dilcher said.
Thus the beautiful tulip tree has a lineage that extends back to the age of the dinosaurs.
It has a long independent history separate from the magnolias and should be recognized as its own flowering plant family.
While the paper provides new insight into the evolution of the tulip tree line questions remain Dilcher said.
Scientists don't know how widespread and various the early members of the tulip tree line may have been for example.
Further the fact that the tulip tree family has survived and evolved for more than 100 million years
A profusion of tree and plant species as well as one third of Peru's mammal bird and frog species make their home in these perennially wet regions located along the eastern slopes of the Andes mountains.
To date scientists only believe a fraction of cloud forest tree and plant species have been discovered. This massive array of underexplored biodiversity will face an unprecedented threat before the end of the century.
Now researchers at Wake Forest University in Winston-salem N c. have pieced together startling new evidence that shows rapid 21st century warming may spell doom for tree species in Peruvian cloud forests with species
This means the vast majority of trees and plants only can live in a range that extends a few hundred meters.
I could be standing among a group of one tree species and throw a rock completely across their ranges says David Lutz the paper's lead author and a former postdoctoral associate at Wake Forest University.
Lutz who is now a postdoctoral research associate at Dartmouth College in New hampshire says this means cloud forest trees are particularly sensitive to climate change.
The problem with this is the trees can only go so far as higher elevation grasslands bar the path upslope.
Unlike the cloud forest beneath it Silman says the transition between trees and grassland called an ecotone is stationary over most of the landscape
however is that cloud forest trees can't go through or around the ecotone. Previous work we've done shows that the trees in the forest are migrating upwards
but this work shows the ecotone isn't Silman says. The ecotone presents a wall to species migration.
#Climate change may speed up forests life cyclesmany climate studies have predicted that tree species will respond to global warming by migrating via seed dispersal to cooler climates.
Instead most trees are responding through faster turnover--meaning they are staying in place but speeding up their life cycles in response to longer growing seasons
To test whether trees are migrating northward having faster turnover or both the scientists went through decades of data on 65 dominant tree species in the 31 eastern states compiled by the USDA Forest Service's Forest Inventory and Analysis program.
They used computer models to analyze the temperature and precipitation requirements of the trees at different life stages and also considered factors like reproductive dependence of young and adult trees.
The patterns we were able to see from this massive study are consistent with forests having faster turnover where young trees tend to be more abundant than adult trees in warm wet climates.
This pattern is what we would expect to see if populations speed up their life cycle in warming climates said lead author Kai Zhu a doctoral student of Clark's at Duke.
It gives a very different picture of how trees are responding to climate change. The fact that most trees are not yet showing signs of migration should increase awareness that there is a significant lag time in how tree species are responding to the changing climate Zhu said.
The study was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Zhu was supported by an NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant.
whether they are celled single organisms like amoeba or enormous entities like Giant Redwoods (in which millions of cells make up the body of the organism).
#Bacteria enhance growth of fruit trees up to 40 percentimprovement in reforestation and agriculture is possible thanks to the work of scientists in the Center of Research
and health in trees which have enabled them to accelerate growth of different species up to 40 percent.
Hence the importance of microorganisms that provide benefits to the trees for example increasing their development giving more stability
We proved that in a period of three years oaks pines mesquites and acacias between two and three meters high can be obtained
which generally occurs in six or seven years. When this process is applied to fruit trees (citrus guava
or lemon) fruit development is reached in three or four years which normally happens at six says the researcher of the Department of Biotechnology and Biochemistry of the Cinvestav.
When in contact with the roots a biochemical communication starts that allows the trees to adapt with no problems
At the same time all physiological processes change resulting in rapid developing trees. However not all bacteria or fungi perform with the same efficiency.
For this reason a very important part of the research consisted in selecting the best strains specific for oaks pines mesquites acacias and fruit trees.
The replacement is a thin layer of carnauba wax obtained from the leaves of palm trees. That wax also gives sugar-coated chocolate candy an appealing gloss.
The deliberate tasteful chemistry experiment begins with dense American white oak wood usually harvested from forests in the South
--though to the dismay of traditionalists some newer distilleries are branching out to maple wood and softer French oak used in wine-and cognac-making.
#Pest-eating birds mean money for coffee growersthis is the first time scientists have assigned a monetary value to the pest-control benefits rainforest birds can provide to agriculture.
In recent years Stanford biologists have found that coffee growers in Costa rica bolster bird biodiversity by leaving patches of their plantations as untouched rainforest.
Worldwide scourgeby some accounts coffee is the world's most economically profitable crop and its harvest supports the livelihoods of some 100 million people globally.
and has made its way into nearly every major coffee-producing country. It arrived in Hawaii two years ago
and coffee plantations there are already experiencing 50 to 75 percent less yield. It's the only insect that competes with us for coffee beans Karp said.
and agriculture in Costa rica since the 1990s in part because of the vast amounts of land in that country dedicated to coffee production.
Specifically smaller stands of trees--roughly the size of a few football fields--situated throughout crop fields provided better levels of beetle protection than the much larger forest preserves set on the outskirts of farms.
but distant preserves versus small local stands of trees--Karp thinks the study could provide a framework for introducing similar efforts in agricultural zones around the world.
#Juniper essential oil characteristics determinedthroughout the western United states Canada and Mexico Rocky mountain juniper (Juniperus scopulorum Sarg.
The juniper's wood#ighly valued for its durability rich color and pleasant aroma#s popular for use as interior paneling furniture and fence posts.
For centuries the leaves and berries of Rocky mountain juniper which contain strongly aromatic essential oil have been used extensively by native people of North america to treat a number of medical conditions.
A recent study evaluated several aspects of variations in essential oil composition and content of the popular tree.
and in female trees and also may be affected with seasonal changes throughout the year Zheljazkov explained.
The team evaluated one male and one female Rocky mountain juniper tree over the course of 1 year.
%The team also determined that at most of the sampling points the oil content in the biomass of the male tree was greater than that in the biomass of the female tree.
This study demonstrated that there are seasonal differences in essential oil content and composition within male or female trees.
Also at any given sampling point the concentration of some oil constituents may be higher in the oil from the female trees
whereas the concentration of other oil constituents may be high in the oil of male trees Zheljazkov said.
Based on more than 300000 references to individual trees within colonial-era property records the researchers found that logging agriculture
While most varieties of trees persist modern forests are distinct from those in pre-colonial times.
Beech oak hemlock and spruce are less abundant with the sharpest decrease seen in beech proportions in Vermont western Massachusetts and northern Pennsylvania.
Once forming an average of 22 percent of pre-colonial forests only about 7 percent of forests now are composed of beech.
Fir cherry and maple trees increased in abundance with maples experiencing the highest absolute change in proportions from 11 percent in the past to 31 percent in modern forests.
despite these changes and opportunities for species invasion or loss the varieties of trees in modern forests are remarkably similar to pre-colonial forests.
Thompson elaborates If you only looked at a list of tree species you'd have the impression that Northeast forests haven't changed.
But once you start mapping the trees and counting them up a very different picture emerges.
#Scientists encounter holes in tree of life, push for better data storagewhen it comes to public access the tree of life has holes.
A new study co-authored by University of Florida researchers shows about 70 percent of published genetic sequence comparisons are not publicly accessible leaving researchers worldwide unable to get to critical data
Scientists are using the genetic data to construct the largest open-access tree of life as part of the National Science Foundation's $5. 6-million Assembling Visualizing
and Analyzing the Tree of Life project. Understanding organismal relationships is increasingly valuable for tracking the origin
The study appearing today in PLOS Biology describes a significant challenge for the project which is expected to produce an initial draft tree by the end of the year.
These are really really important for long-term use as we're seeing now in our efforts to build a tree.
#Red cedar tree study shows that clean air act is reducing pollution, improving forestsa collaborative project involving a Kansas State university ecologist has shown that the Clean Air Act has helped forest systems recover from decades of sulfur pollution and acid rain.
The research team--which included Jesse Nippert associate professor of biology--spent four years studying centuries-old eastern red cedar trees or Juniperus virginiana in the Central Appalachian mountains of West virginia.
By studying more than 100 years of eastern red cedar tree rings the scientists found that the trees have improved in growth
One is in terms of how we interpret data from tree rings and how we interpret the physiology of trees.
The other level of significance is that environmental legislation can have a tremendous impact on an entire ecosystem.
The findings appear in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences or PNAS in the article Evidence of recovery of Juniperus virginiana trees from sulfur pollution after the Clean Air Act.
For the study the scientists collected and analyzed data from eastern red cedar trees ranging from 100 to 500 years old.
The researchers wanted to better understand the trees'physiological response and the growth response to long-term acid deposition or acid rain.
The team focused on red cedar trees because they are abundant long-lived and a good recorder of environmental variability.
Red cedar trees grow slowly and rely on surface soil moisture which makes them sensitive to environmental change.
Their abilities to live for centuries meant that researchers could analyze hundreds of years of tree rings Nippert said.
The researchers analyzed the stable carbon isotopes within each tree ring as a recorder of physiological changes through time.
Researchers analyzed tree rings back to the early 1900s when sulfur dioxide deposition throughout the Ohio river Valley began to increase.
By studying the stable isotopic signature in each tree ring the researchers were able to compare the trees'growth patterns and changes in physiology to changes in atmospheric chemistry during the 20th century.
--which tends to increase plant growth--tree growth and physiology declined for the majority of the 20th century
Our data clearly shows a break point in 1982 where the entire growth patterns of the trees in this forest started on a different trajectory Nippert said.
Another interesting finding from the tree ring analysis: Results from the Great depression era in the 1930s were very similar to the results from post-1980.
Similar to the post-1980 data data from the 1930s showed improved tree growth and physiology.
For example warming generally stimulates insect herbivory at higher latitudes as seen in outbreaks of the Mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) that has destroyed large areas of pine forest in the US Pacific Northwest.
#Red spruce reviving in New england, but why? In the 1970s red spruce was the forest equivalent of a canary in the coal mine signaling that acid rain was damaging forests
and that some species especially red spruce were particularly sensitive to this human induced damage. In the course of studying the lingering effects of acid rain
and whether trees stored less carbon as a result of winter injury U s. Forest Service and University of Vermont scientists came up with a surprising result--three decades later the canary is feeling much better.
Decline in red spruce has been attributed to damage that trees sustain in winter when foliage predisposed to injury by exposure to acid rain experiences freezing injury and dies.
Paul Schaberg a research plant physiologist with the U s. Forest Service's Northern Research Station in Burlington Vt. and partners studied red spruce trees in Vermont New hampshire and Massachusetts.
They found that the influence of a single damaging winter injury event in 2003 continued to slow tree growth in New england for 3 years longer than had been expected
and had a significant impact on carbon storage. They also found something they did not expect.
The shocking thing is that these trees are doing remarkably well now said Schaberg a co-author on the study.
Researchers found that diameter growth is now the highest ever recorded for red spruce indicating that it is now growing at levels almost two times the average for the last 100 years a growth rate never before achieved by the trees examined.
whether the red spruce turn-around can be credited to reductions in pollution made possible by the Clean Air Act of 1990
Another possibility is that red spruce may be one of nature's winners in the face of climate change.
For red spruce warmer winters mean less damage to foliage which limits growth. Questions for future research also include
The rebound in red spruce growth is described in a study co-authored by Schaberg with Alexandra Kosiba Gary Hawley and Christopher Hansen all from the University of Vermont.
The study Quantifying the legacy of foliar winter injury on woody aboveground carbon sequestration of red spruce trees was published earlier this year in the journal Forest Ecology and Management.
and its impacts and it is enormously gratifying to be at the forefront of discovering this amazing turn-around in red spruce growth in New england said Michael T. Rains Director of the Northern Research Station and the Forest Product Laboratory.
In addition to finding the surprising rebound in red spruce growth Schaberg and his colleagues also answered the question they set out to answer--how did the foliar damage associated with the 2003 winter injury affect carbon storage?
They found that the winter injury event reduced the growth of red spruce trees for at least 3 years
Historically red spruce has been an important timber species in the United states . While it remains a major commercial species in Canada in the United states acid rain
and land use changes have resulted in the loss of many red spruce trees. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by USDA Forest Service-Northern Research Station.
PSW Research Wildlife Biologist Dr. Hartwell Welsh and Garth Hodgson examined two species of woodland salamanders across four stages of tree development at Mill Creek--a disturbed
old-growth redwood forest in northern California. They found that the numbers and body condition of two common species of salamander tracked closely with forest stand growth development and structural changes.
and body condition and aspects of forest advancement including stand age tree size ambient moisture canopy closure
Mill Creek is an old-growth forest located in Del Norte Calif. in a geographically limited coastal redwood forest bioregion
A very significant change will be the emergence of forests where there are currently only four species of trees
and European trees and bushes will be able to grow in Greenland in the future. In fact the analysis points to the fact that a considerable number of species would already be able to grow in Greenland today.
This is supported by actual experiments where various species of trees have been planted in Greenland including Siberian larch white spruce lodgepole pine and Eastern balsam poplar.
The new opportunities for trees and bushes may oust Arctic animals and plants but could also be beneficial to the Greenlanders.
Forests like the coastal coniferous forests in today's Alaska and western Canada will be able to thrive in fairly large parts of Greenland with trees such as Sitka spruce and lodgepole pine.
Trees spread slowlywhy are the trees not already in place in Greenland? Partly because most trees only spread slowly by themselves
but also because Greenland is isolated very. The researchers'models show that it will take more than 2000 years for Greenland's indigenous species of trees to spread to all those areas of the country that will have a suitable climate by 2100.
In Greenland some species arrived relatively quickly after the last Ice age while other species that rely on dispersal by birds
when trees and bushes naturally spread so slowly. People often plant utility and ornamental plants where they can grow.
#New technique for measuring tree growth cuts down on research timetree growth is measured to understand tree health fluxes in carbon sequestration and other forest ecosystem functions.
Yet the traditional method to measure tree growth is awkward and time consuming. Scientists have developed a new resourceful way to take repeated tree growth measurements safely and accurately.
Dendrometer bands are metal straps that wrap around a tree trunk to measure its growth. Bands are fashioned by bending banding material into a collar
and install on trees. Detailed instructions for the new method are published in the September issue of Applications in Plant sciences.
Anemaet and Middleton were inspired to create an easier method by their field research on baldcypress tree swamps.
We wanted to be able to look at how baldcypress trees respond to changes in their environment such as differences in temperature water salinity
The traditional method and new method of measuring tree growth were compared in ideal non-field conditions and in the baldcypress swamps.
when tens to hundreds of trees are tagged which is common for environmental field studies that measure variation in tree growth among individuals of one tree species
or multiple tree species. Saving time and easier band installation are also crucial when working in non-ideal field conditions.
Our work in baldcypress swamps is carried often out under flooded and/or muddy conditions and we the field team did not want to get cuts on our hands (from handling the traditional banding material) that were very likely to get dirty and infected comments Anemaet.
The fruits studied here include indigenous species such as lobeira also called'wolf apple'tucum a variety of palm and other fruits
#First scientific method to authenticate worlds costliest coffee, from the feces of the palm civetthe world's most expensive coffee can cost $80 a cup and scientists now are reporting development of the first way to verify authenticity of this crã me de la crã me the beans
of which come from the feces of a Southeast Asian animal called a palm civet. Their study appears in ACS'Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
Eiichiro Fukusaki and colleagues point out that Kopi Luwak (Indonesian for civet coffee) is the world's costliest coffee often fetching $150-$200 per pound.
The price makes Kopi Luwak a tempting target for fraud with ordinary coffee sold as Kopi Luwak
and distinguish pure Kopi Luwak from Kopi Luwak that has been mixed with cheaper coffee. This is the first report to address the selection and successful validation of discriminant markers for the authentication of Kopi Luwak the scientists state.
#Ancient cycads found to be preadapted to grow in grovesthe ancient cycad lineage has been around since before the age of the dinosaurs.
More recently cycads also coexisted with large herbivorous mammals such as the ice age megafauna that only went extinct a few tens of thousands of years ago.
Cycads that are living today have large heavy seeds with a fleshy outer coating that suggests they rely on large bodied fruit-eating animals to disperse their seeds.
Fossil cycads are recorded from 280 million years ago around the time coniferous forests first arose.
The ecological distribution pattern of many living cycads today suggests they have limited and ineffectual seed dispersal.
For example Macrozamia miquelii a cycad endemic to Australia is found in highly clumped dense numbers where it dominates the understory.
whether cycads might be a type of plant that forms such colonies. The main idea behind our research Hall clarifies is to ask the question:
Australian cycads once coexisted with megafauna that could have dispersed their large heavy seeds--such as giant ground birds bigger then present day emus
Female cycads produce one to two cones that contain multiple large seeds each covered with a thin outer fleshy sarcotesta.
By tagging ten large seeds from the single cone of 12 plants with a small steel bolt the authors were able to track how many of the seeds were removed from the parent cycad
Moreover although most of the seeds ended up under the parent cycad almost no seedlings were found within a 1. 5 m radius of adult cycads suggesting that most seeds within the vicinity of the parent perish.
despite their large seed size the primary dispersers of these cycads today are bodied smaller animals;
Since their potential Australian prehistoric megafaunal dispersers became extinct around 45000 years ago why haven't Australian cycads begun to evolve smaller seeds that would be dispersed more readily by flying birds or possums for example over the interim?
We argue that the answer to this question is that cycads are disadvantaged actually by dispersing as lone individuals that may travel long distances
Moreover Hall points out that cycad plants are born all either male or female and rely completely on host specific insect pollinators--so a lone cycad that dispersed a long way from others of its kind would probably be disadvantaged rather than advantaged in terms of reproduction.
Thus if cycads evolved to be dispersed by large-bodied frugivores these animals would most likely have deposited many cycads seeds in their dung at once
and thus these plants may be adapted to grow in groves--an aspect that plays to their favor today despite the loss of these megafauna dispersers.
There's no doubt that cycad ancestors were contemporary with herbivorous dinosaurs for many hundreds of millions of years
so it's plausible that cycad seed dispersal ecology and colony forming behavior may be extremely ancient
Hall's interest in the spatial ecology of'colony'forming plants does not stop at cycads;
During drought periods they fed on a restricted mixture of plants including more than 30%of shrubs and trees.
When food was plentiful gemsbok specialised exclusively on grasses and more ephemeral succulent species. In contrast springboks fed on a higher proportion of shrubs and trees than grasses and succulent plants irrespective of environmental conditions.
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