The birds nest in tree hollows that are favoured also by species introduced to Tasmania-such as the European Starling
Are Eucalyptus trees to Blame? The wildfires that are now threatening Sydney and other parts of New south wales Australia are burning out of control despite intensive firefighting efforts.
Dry windy conditions are expected to worsen through Wednesday (Oct 23) making the task of battling the infernos even more demanding according to the Associated press. The fires are finding fuel in Australia's eucalyptus forests
and other places where eucalyptus trees native to Australia but now found throughout the world have spread as an invasive species. Raging Western Wildfires in Photos Looking at the eucalyptus forest outside my window in Tasmania I see a gigantic fire
Designed to thrive after fires Like many plants native to fire-prone regions eucalyptus trees (aka gum trees in Australia) are adapted to survive
Fallen eucalyptus leaves create dense carpets of flammable material and the trees'bark peels off in long streamers that drop to the ground providing additional fuel that draws ground fires up into the leaves creating massive fast-spreading crown fires in the upper story of eucalyptus forests.
Additionally the eucalyptus oil that gives the trees their characteristic spicy fragrance is a flammable oil:
This oil combined with leaf litter and peeling bark during periods of dry windy weather can turn a small ground fire into a terrifying explosive firestorm in a matter of minutes.
That's why eucalyptus trees especially the blue gums (Eucalyptus globulus) that are common throughout New south wales are referred sometimes to wryly as gasoline trees.
And after a bushfire sweeps through an area the eucalyptus trees have an advantage over other plants.
when burned and the seedlings thrive in freshly burned ash-rich soils. Give a hillside a really good torching
and the eucalyptus will absolutely dominate Bowman told KQED. They'll grow intensively in the first few years of life and outcompete everything.
Thousands of homes torched The threat posed by eucalyptus groves spreading beyond Australia was highlighted in 1991
and was blamed primarily on the thousands of eucalyptus trees found throughout the Oakland Hills. Despite their well-earned reputation as a firefighter's worst nightmare eucalyptus trees remain a favorite landscape specimen renowned for fast-growing stands of tall shade trees that according to some research help repel insects through the same fragrant eucalyptus oil that's blamed for fueling wildfires.
Amazing Video: The Speed of a Wildfire That's why some Bay Area residents are opposing a plan proposed by FEMA the University of California Berkeley
and the city of Oakland (plus other local agencies) to clear the Oakland Hills of eucalyptus trees and other nonnative trees.
 A'dangerous plant'But local experts are steadfast in declaring eucalyptus trees public fire enemy No. 1. Eucalyptus groves on steep hillsides like those in the East Bay hills are extremely flammable
Eucalyptus trees also aren't winning any friends among ecologists concerned about invasive species. The California Invasive Plant Council (Cal-IPC) considers the eucalyptus a moderately serious problem considering its rapid spread
And its worldwide spread eucalyptus trees are now found on every occupied continent presents a worrisome scenario in the face of global warming
changes that come with fall with trees shedding their leaves and animals preparing for hibernation. Fall can bring an especially noticeable change to the high-attitude-living male Siberian hamster.
and hiding them in hundreds of different spots in trees and on the ground. At the same time the tiny bird's hippocampus balloons by 30 percent as new nerve cells pop up in this part of the brain which is responsible for spatial organization
Fall's cool nights and sunny days also help to trigger trees like the sugar maple to store their anthocyanins temporarily in their leaves giving leaf peepers a show of red.
But if global warming leads to warmer nights paired with autumn's shortening days trees may not use their sugars to make red pigments
Climate change may also alter suitable habitats for trees like the sugar maple known to be big players in fall's vibrant colors. 5
Holly Jarman does not work for consult to own shares in or receive funding from any company
It does so by triggering droughts that subject trees to water stress which reduces their resistance to bark beetle infestations much the way that starvation reduces the resistance of people to infections.
In fact these instruments may measure the individual tree heights leaf area and leaf chemistry of 15 million trees in a single flyover.
and condition of surviving vegetation plant species ash cover soil properties and other factors are being incorporated into high-definition 3-D images as well as other types of rich ecological data covering the study area.
and are filled with trees and bamboo. With mother serving as drill sergeant each new panda recruit learns survival skills such as how to forage for food
the goal is to discourage residents from chopping down trees in panda habitat for use as firewood.
I help manage a coffee farm and our yields as well as world prices can vary as much as 30 percent or more from year to year.
-and nut-bearing trees and wind-dispersed seedlings take root instead according to a study published today (March 19) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The seedling communities of the forest floors are really different in a hunted forest compared to a well-protected forest said study co-author Ola Olsson an ecologist
what they do today The hunting could also impact the people who rely on fruits from the trees for food Olsson added.
and his colleagues surveyed trees and mammals in the Nigerian rain forest bordering Cameroon. Park rangers protected some forested areas
Whereas similar large trees dominated both types of forest the seedlings looked very different. Well-protected forests had many seedlings such as the bush mango that rely on primates to spread their seeds.
Many of these trees bear fruits or nuts that humans also eat. Hunted forests held seedling species that relied on wind to disperse their seeds.
And whereas gorilla and monkey meat does provide protein for local people the fruit trees the primates maintain may be an even bigger economic benefit to people Olsson said.
and trees but more bees Cote said. While not everyone in New york's beekeeping community agrees the better-informed beekeepers do agree he said.
Caffeine occurs naturally in the nectar of coffee and citrus flowers. Bees that fed on caffeinated nectar were three times more likely to remember a flower's scent than bees fed sugar alone.
In their study Wright and colleagues measured how much caffeine was in the nectar of three different species of the Coffea plant including the robusta plant used to make freeze-dried coffee
and the arabica plant used to make espresso and filter coffee. They also measured the amount of caffeine in four species of the Citrus plant:
All of these plants contained caffeine. 10 Things You Need to Know About Coffee Plants produce caffeine as a defense mechanism a bitter-tasting brew to fend off insects.
A recent study by scientists at the U s. Department of agriculture indicates that the common calorie counts of two tree nuts pistachios
when studying the two tree nuts. Â They took 18 volunteers and fed them a base diet for three weeks.
#Can a Tornado Blow Straw Into a Tree? There are a lot of tall tales surrounding tornadoes some rooted in fact and others based on fiction.
However NOAA does concede that the intense winds generated by a tornado are capable of twisting trees
If the tree straightens with the straw still wedged in one of these cracks it might appear as though the straw pierced the bark of the tree.
 Discovery Channel Mythbusters Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman put this bit of folklore to the test in 2006 in an experiment involving an enormous air gun a piece of straw and a palm tree.
The straw reached speeds of 320 mph (515 kilometers/hour before wedging itself just a quarter of an inch (0. 6 centimeter) into the trunk of the palm.
Among the common plant life were pines mosses oaks and grasses. Flowering plants and edible crops dominate the landscape in the later part of this era as humans cultivate the land h
Shortly after the radiation leaks from Chernobyl occurred the trees in the woodlands surrounding the plant were killed by high levels of radiation.
because the dead trees turned a bright ginger color. The trees were bulldozed eventually and buried in trenches.
The damaged reactor was sealed hastily in a concrete sarcophagus intended to contain the remaining radiation:
Only a handful of radiation effects such as stunted trees growing in the zone of highest radiation
#Citizen Scientists Key to Halting Sudden Oak Death (Op-Ed) Matteo Garbelotto is an extension specialist and adjunct professor in the Department of Environmental science Policy and Management at the University of California Berkeley.
and part-time mycologist working on among other projects Sudden Oak Death (SOD) an exotic forest disease that is forever changing the composition of coastal forests in Northern California and Southern Oregon.
(and preventing) oak infections as the pathogen will infect oaks only if they are within a couple of hundred meters of infected trees.
Those results would be unimaginable from simply hiring three or four technicians per year. Volunteers have stepped definitely up with the SOD blitzes
In other areas closely packed trees overgrown with younger saplings may provide ladder fuels that allow fire to ramp up easily Dennison said.
#Cloned Giant Redwoods Planted Around World California's giant redwoods will now be found in six foreign countries.
A new nonprofit group is shipping 18-inch (46 centimeters) saplings of the trees for people to plant to help fight deforestation
The trees are actually clones of enormous redwoods that were cut down more than a century ago.
But these hardy trees have kept sprouting shoots from which these trees were cloned by Archangel Ancient Tree Archive a nonprofit group spearheading the project.
This is a first step toward mass production David Milarch the group's cofounder told USA Today.
The trees will be planted today (April 22) Earth Day in Australia New zealand Great britain Ireland Canada Germany and the United states. The idea is that these trees amongst the largest on record are genetically superior to other redwoods (though some scientists disagree).
And if all goes right their descendants will grow large one step toward creating forests and consuming carbon dioxide.
To do that it just makes sense to use the largest oldest most iconic trees that ever lived Milarch was quoted as saying.
Among them was the cocoa frog a tree-climber of the genus Hypsiboas named for its chocolate-colored skin.
#Coffee Farms Falter as the World Heats Up (Op-Ed) Peter Lehner is executive director of the Natural resources Defense Council (NRDC.
Growing coffee is a proud 200-year-old tradition in Costa rica. About half of Costa rica's coffee is produced by small farmers many of whom run small shade-grown coffee operations.
But Costa rica's coffee industry is shrinking over the past decade thousands of coffee farmersthere have left the business.
I help run a Rainforest Alliance-certified coffee farm myself and I can vouch for how tricky coffee farming is.
Coffee is a finicky plant extremely sensitive to fluctuations in rainfall and temperature. The international coffee market is finicky too unpredictable and subject to extreme fluctuations in price.
Every season seems to pose a new challenge but one trend has been marching steadily on for the past few decades:
The cool mountains where coffee grows are getting warmer as a result of climate change; and in places like Costa rica farms lower down on the mountains are producing less coffee.
Climate change will have pronounced impacts on agriculture as average temperatures climb and precipitation patterns alter. In the past those impacts seemed like they might turn out to be mixed a bag across the globe some crops might do better in a warmer climate
and some regions might find new opportunities opening up in agriculture. But a leaked draft of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report to be released officially in March 2014 warns that the impacts of climate change on agricultural overall will end up squarely in the minus column.
Evidence is mounting that plants are not adapting to the rapid changes especially in tropical regions.
This growing season Costa rica's coffee production is expected to fall 10 percent largely because of a fungus called coffee rust or la roya
The fungus is attacking coffee berries throughout prime coffee-growing regions in Latin america and Africa as well.
And while some farmers are starting to plant coffee higher up on the mountains to take advantage of the temperature shift at some point they're going to run out of room.
Giving up coffee-growing will be difficult. Coffee trees last 40 years and farmers yself included are reluctant to start over.
Learning how to grow a new crop is not easy and losing the investment in the plants
Costa rica with its venerable coffee industry as well as a flourishing ecotourism industry to protect has taken a proactive stance on climate.
The government and corporations like Starbucks are also working with coffee farmers to adapt growing techniques to the changing climate such as planting more shade trees
Last year Coopedota a Costa rican coffee cooperative produced the world's first crop of carbon-neutral coffee
and smell the coffee but I think more than 20 years after the first IPCC report people are finally awake.
Because Costa rica no matter how much coffee it makes (or does not make) cannot wake up the world on its own.
In a rural Guatemalan village coffee growers who once earned their living by simply selling sun-dried beans now market coffee that is brew-ready:
By selling a finished product the growers not only earn more money they also have need less to clear land for additional coffee plants
Greenland</a p><p></p><p>In June 1908 a mysterious blast occurred above the remote Russian forests of Tunguska Siberia with 1000 times more power than the Hiroshima bomb flattening trees over an area
when it's in short supply living trees make noises when they are running out of water
what a human can hear in slivers of dead pine wood bathed in a hydrogel to simulate the conditions of a living tree.</
<a href=http://www. livescience. com/29177-tree-drought-sounds. html target=blank>Thirsty Wood's Distress Call Heard in Lab</a p
</p><p>Caffeine occurs naturally in the nectar of coffee and citrus flowers. Bees that fed on caffeinated nectar were three times more likely to remember a flower's scent than bees fed sugar alone.
Even trees and plants fizz with the sound of tiny air bubbles bursting in their plumbing.</
<a href=http://www. livescience. com/27802-plants-trees-talk-with-sound. html target=blank>Sound Garden:
For instance scientists have seen crocodilians eating wild grapes elderberries and citrus fruit directly from trees. I had found seeds in crocodiles before but
This was compared then with the entire genome of organisms from the other main groups at the base of the animal tree:
Finally and most profoundly the shape of the evolutionary tree of all animals has taken on a new shape.
The earliest branch of the animal tree belongs to Ctenophora now confirmed to be the sister lineage to all other animals.
The work was funded in part by the International Tree Nut Council Nutrition Research & Education Foundation
The findings were similar for consumption of peanuts as well as tree nuts including walnuts hazelnuts and almonds.
One of the explanations focuses on whitebark pine an important food as grizzlies bulk up for hibernation in the fall.
Grizzlies eat caches of whitebark pine seeds embedded in the tree. Van Manen's team completed surveys of the whitebark pine population finding a marked decrease (74 percent) in the number of trees in the past few years.
As these pines are high-altitude trees growing best above 8000 feet (about 2400 meters) some have proposed that the warming climate might facilitate outbreaks of native mountain pine beetles
which kill off the trees. Climate change could mean the trees'high altitude can't protect them from infestations any longer.
The winter temperatures aren't cold enough to break the cycle for the beetles. One hypothesis is that we're going to see more frequent outbreaks
and more severe outbreaks van Manen said. It's unclear how greatly this is affecting the grizzly bears though.
In response to lost pine trees the animals could switch to eating more meat or find other plants as a substitution van Manen said.
Changing forests Native forests are being destroyed rapidly in Chile to make way for pine and eucalypt plantations
The gorgeous pink blooms of the cherry trees that dot the National Mall in Washington D c. have reached finally peak bloom officials announced yesterday (April 9).
when 70 percent of the blooms on the Yoshino Cherry trees (there are many different types of cherry trees) have opened fully according to the website of the National Cherry Blossom Festival.
The seeds of palm trees have evolved rapidly to be smaller. The change is the result of a domino effect that begins with human agriculture and hunting
and cotingas locally extinct or barely hanging on the palm trees have no way to disperse their largest seeds.
Combined with climate change the result could be devastating for palms said study leader Mauro Galetti an ecologist at Paulista State university in Brazil.
That's a major problem for this palm. Images: Palm trees and Lost Birds of Brazil Shrinking seeds The Atlantic Forest runs along the coast of Brazil starting at the easternmost tip of South america and continuing approximately to the country's southern border.
The region has been altered heavily by human agriculture with only about 12 percent of the original forest remaining.
Galetti and his colleagues studied seed sizes in 22 populations of palm trees some in fragments where hardly any large birds survive
or larger had nearly no chance of being dispersed away from their parent tree. Other factors such as soil fertility forest cover and climate could not explain the change in seed size the researchers reported.
and his colleagues created computer models to figure out how long it would have taken trees to evolve smaller seeds in bird-free zones.
Trees absorb greenhouse gases and carbon emissions. They produce oxygen and perpetuate the water cycle by releasing water vapor into the atmosphere.
Without trees forest lands can quickly become barren land. Location Deforestation occurs around the world though tropical rainforests are targeted particularly.
Common methods of deforestation are burning trees and clear cutting which is the controversial practice of complete removal of a given tract of forest.
This destructive practice entails cutting down a patch of trees burning them and growing crops on the land until the soil becomes too degraded from overgrazing and sun exposure for new growth.
Without trees more carbon and greenhouse gasses enter the atmosphere. To make matters worse trees actually become carbon sources
when they are cut burned or otherwise removed. oetropical forests hold more than 210 gigatons of carbon and deforestation represents around 15 percent of greenhouse gas emissions according to the WWF.
Trees play an important part in the water cycle grounding the water in their roots
Without tree roots to anchor the soil and with increased exposure to sun the soil can dry out leading to problems like increased flooding and inability to farm.
or burning like soy coffee and palm oil can actually exacerbate soil erosion because their roots cannot hold onto the soil the way trees can.
Life Quality: Soil erosion can also lead to silt entering the lakes streams and other water sources.
and a tree Ragland searched the area where the boy was last seen and to her surprise found a home
and tree matched those in her visions even though she lived 60 miles away and had never been there.
and discovered Smith buried in a shallow grave near the tree. The case is strange and intriguing but not unexplainable.
Therefore the fact that a house and tree in her vision matched the house and tree where Smith was finally found is not surprising
and merely evidence of her not remembering where she saw an image not psychic powers.
instead what she and her children found near a tree on the Smith property was described as a blackened bloated head with half of the nose and an eye missing.
Hydrological studies in the Rocky mountains involving the tiny mountain pine beetle a species of bark beetle have big implications for water resource management in Colorado and elsewhere.
Scientists say bark beetles have killed about 90 percent of Colorado's lodgepole pines 4. 5 million acres of trees.
The loss of trees and tree canopy affects processes important to the water cycle including the buildup and melting of the snowpack under trees.
But with warming temperatures and trees weakened by drought there have been massive outbreaks. With so many dead trees available as fuel forest fires are a concern.
And so are changes to the quality of drinking water. Decomposing pine needles on the forest floor mix with runoff to create a pine tree tea foul tasting and smelling.
Scientists have found evidence that the fallen needles affect the natural chemical makeup of Colorado's drinking water
Water Dead Trees & Dirty Water in the Rockies. It is one of seven videos in a sustainability
so they drew from across the tree of life comparing aging patterns in 11 mammals 12 other vertebrates (animals with backbones) 10 invertebrates 12 plants and a green alga.
In comparison a white mangrove tree at the same so-called terminal age (123 years for mangroves) is less than half as likely to die than the average adult of its species. The Southern fulmar (Fulmarus glacialoides) a seabird becomes more likely to die with age.
Organisms that grow with age without stopping at a certain size like some trees may be less vulnerable in old age to environmental fluctuations or other threats.
whether a plant is a tree or a shrub? Do certain environments promote longevity? There's good evidence that a lot of these plants that live a very long time tend to live in arid regions Jones said.
#Drought-Weakened Trees More Likely to Die in Fires Prolonged droughts are causing more trees to die in forest fires in the western United states according to a new study that looked at decades of controlled fire data.
and drying up the American West and these two changes are weakening trees which makes them less able to resist the effects of fire the authors of the study conclude.
Dry conditions kill with caveats In higher altitudes of the western United states (where trees tend to grow) temperatures jumped as much as 0. 9 degrees Fahrenheit (0. 5 degrees Celsius) per decade
Van Mantgem's team studied the effects of controlled fires on trees because the information about these forests before and after these events is entered into an ecological database called FFI (FEAT/FIREMON Integrated).
They extracted records of tree fire injuries and fire-related deaths between 1984 and 2005 that occurred after controlled burns by the National park service.
From surveying thousands of trees in more than a dozen western parks they found that a tree burned in dry conditions was more likely to die than a tree similarly burned in wet conditions.
(which carry water from the ground through the tree) are damaged by the fire so that water cannot transport efficiently through the tree.
There were a few limitations with the work: Climatic conditions were largely based on estimates from nearby weather stations not direct measurements as many parks
and effects such as bark beetles or parasites on stressed trees were measured not. Different than uncontrolled burns Predicting the effects of climate change on trees is difficult
because some of the data is not hard numbers said Philip Higuera a fire ecologist at the University of Idaho who did not participate in the study.
Ecologists typically use the term fire severity for example to describe how a tree is hurt a measurement that relies on qualitative observations and less on quantitative measurements.
and at intensities not necessarily meant to kill trees. Uncontrolled fires often in the upper reaches of a forest burn more intensely
Meanwhile western dwarf lemurs hide out in drafty tree holes where their body temperature fluctuates with the chancing temperature of the outside air the scientists found.
The researchers suspect these clawless lemurs might make do with trees because they simply can't bury themselves safely in western Madagascar's hard and dry soils;
As a consequence some tree species may not be able to survive a rapid decline in the litter layer.
In a way these earthworms determine which trees will grow there in the future. Knowing the problems invasive earthworms bring the researchers chose to study two invasive species one from Asia and one from Europe.
If the statues were walked into place then the islanders didn't need to cut down the island's palm trees to make way for moving the massive carvings the researchers argue.
that a crazed maniacal group destroyed their environment by cutting down trees to transport gigantic statues said study co-author Carl Lipo an anthropologist at California State university Long beach.
Though the island was filled with a giant palm forest when Polynesians first arrived in the 13th century the first European explorers found massive megaliths on a deforested rock-strewn island with just 3000 people.
In the past archaeologists proposed that a lost civilization chopped down all the trees to make paths to roll the megalithic structures horizontally for miles on top of palm trees used as rolling logs of sorts from the quarries where they were created to ceremonial platforms.
and the palm trees essentially hardwood with a soft foamy material inside would be crushed by the rolling statues Lipo said.
and through the rats inadvertently brought to the island that ate palm nuts before they could sprout into new trees.
The palm trees were probably not economically useful to the islanders anyway Lipo said. Controversial conclusion It's an entirely plausible hypothesis said John Terrell an anthropologist at the Field Museum in Chicago who was involved not in the study.
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