#How Ancient Life May have Come about A family tree unites a diverse group of individuals that all carry genetic vestiges from a single common ancestor at the base of the tree.
The implication is that we all belong to some universal tree of life. And at the base of this tree some have imagined there sits a mild-mannered microbe that lived more than 3 billion years ago unaware that its genes would be the starting point of an entire planet's worth of highly differentiated life.
However this organism the so-called last universal common ancestor (or LUCA) may be just a fantasy.
If every snippet of DNA was solely the product of descent with modification then every organism could be placed on a tree of life stemming from a single ancestor.
In his work Gogarten has shown that horizontal gene transfer turns the tree of life into a thick bush of branches that interweave with each other.
Two giant sequoia groves survived the flames as did the Big Oak Flat entrance on Highway 120 where more than 60000 visitors pass through each month in the summer.
The U s. Forest Service prefers to thin trees or conduct controlled burns instead of letting forest fires run their course.
and fewer small trees to fuel the fire once it reached Yosemite so the blaze slowed.
Tree ring studies show California's mountain forests evolved with frequent low-intensity fires every 10 or 15 years.
and rarely were hot enough to kill big trees such as ponderosa pines and giant sequoias. In these forests the tall long-lived trees drop their lower limbs
so fires can't crawl up into their crowns. Now after a century of fire suppression grazing logging
and replanting many of California's mountain forests are dense and overgrown with too many trees crowded together
and dead dry wood and debris piled up on the forest floor according to studies by fire ecologists such as Stephens. Fires today burn hotter and higher up into the big trees (so-called crown fires).
As the Rim Fire incinerated parts of Stanislaus Forest Stephens evacuated a four-person research crew studying an old-growth stand of trees that included sugar pine incense cedar ponderosa pine
and Douglas fir with diameters up to 4 feet (1. 2 meters) thick he said. I think this whole place is gone now Stephens said.
However if fuels treatments had been used in this area we would not have had the tree mortality that has occurred probably.
William S. Bigelow an American physician living in Japan and botanist Charles S. Sargent sent cherry trees to the Morris Arboretum in Philadelphia in the 1890s for example and the Imperial Botanic Garden
In Washington D c agriculture department official David Fairchild imported 100 Japanese cherry trees in 1906 to his own Maryland property to see how well they grew.
Stages of Cherry Blossom Blooms Three years later the Japanese sent more than 2000 young trees to be planted near the Potomac river as a symbol of the growing friendship between the two nations.
The trees were infested unfortunately with roundworms and insects. President William Howard Taft acting on advice from agriculture officials ordered the trees burned and destroyed.
Seeking to avoid a rift the U s. Secretary of state swiftly sent his regrets to the ambassador from Japan.
Those trees were healthy and were planted as planned. Expanding across the United states The Washington cherry trees have attracted their share of both positive and negative attention over the years.
The first cherry blossom festival there took place in 1935 but in 1941 four cherry trees were cut down shortly after the Japanese invaded Pearl harbor.
Officials began referring to them as Oriental trees to try to prevent such incidents in the future.
Meanwhile cherry trees began sprouting in other U s. locations. The Brooklyn Botanic Garden planted its cherry walk in 1921.
A realtor in Macon Ga. decided to expand the number of cherry trees in his hometown after visiting Washington D c. in 1952.
He was awed by the tree's unique beauty according to the city's cherry blossom festival website.
In honor of its 175th anniversary Ohio University received 175 trees from Chubu University (a sister location in Japan) in 1979.
Chubu renewed the gift in 2004 for Ohio's bicentennial. Cherry blossom (sakura in Japanese) festivals are held now every spring in these cities as well as other locations in the United states. The trees stand as not only a symbol of friendship but also as a glimmer of the fragility of spring.
Sakura is a symbol of...continuation of resilient life and the fragile and momentary aspect of natural beauty because sakura flowers do not stand well against harsh natural elements like rain
and the Great Barrier reef in Australia. 7 Amazing Places to Visit with Google street view Researchers focused on the pine processionary moth (Thaumetopoea pityocampa)
whose caterpillar is one of the most destructive animals targeting pines and cedars in southern Europe Central asia and North africa devouring the foliage of these trees.
These social caterpillars spin large communal white silk nests which are highly visible making them potential targets of surveys via Google street view.
but many could be such as common tree problems whose symptoms are identifiable from the road including the horse chestnut leaf miner or ash dieback fungus.
The data collected by using Google street view may be useful in monitoring diseases or invasive organism expansion Rossi told Livescience.
#How Sandy Storm Damage Became NYC Playground NEW YORK Thousands of trees collapsed across New york city during Hurricane Sandy last year causing tangled messes that have left gaping voids throughout city sidewalks and parks.
Officials still have not finished clearing up all of the trees in an ongoing cleanup effort that has cost more than $12 million according to a New york times report last year.
From debris to playground Christian Zimmerman vice president of design and construction with the Prospect Park Alliance spearheaded a new playground built from a small portion of the 500 trees that fell in Prospect Park during the storm.
and ogle at trees that rest upside-down. The response has been told amazing Zimmerman Livescience. I go there every day just to check it out
Climb and oversized nest Several blocks away from Prospect Park at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden another tree-repurposing effort has taken shape in the form of a nestlike structure that visitors can climb inside.
If you drive at speed down a tree-lined road the trunks move quickly past your eyes
If you drive slowly the trees appear to move slower. The same is true for a flying bee.
#How'Truffula'Trees Will Preserve the Sahel (Op-Ed) William Foote is founder and CEO of Root Capital is an Ashoka Global Fellow
For decades people have clear-cut Sahelian trees the gum shea baobab and acacia to expand cattle land
and agricultural land or provide firewood accelerating the region's harsh conditions. But the Sahel's native trees like Dr. Seuss'fantastical colorful truffula trees in his tale The Lorax are far more than they appear.
Present efforts to conserve them and harvest their products offer hope for not only attenuating climate change impacts but for providing economic security and better livelihoods for some of the world's poorest farmers.
Take the gum arabic and gum karaya trees of southern Mali. For generations villagers cleared the trees for cattle land.
Since 2008 an agricultural business named Produits du Sud has trained village youth to conserve and tap the trees for their high-value resins which the company exports to Europe to meet the rising need for such materials in products from pharmaceuticals to cosmetics to baked goods.
Produits de Sud works with village leaders to train unemployed youth creating an entirely new stream of income for rural Malians to supplement subsistence millet farming
while payments to tree tappers have jumped from $17000 in 2008 to more than $1 million in 2012.
Strongest Case Yet for Human-Caused Global Warming Produit du Sud's farmers have been stunned to realize the seemingly ordinary trees of the Sahel are drivers of economic growth.
They had no idea that there was'gold'in the trees they'd grown up with all their lives.
Conserving the gum trees provides myriad benefits that help mitigate climate change from absorbing carbon to creating feedback loops that increase the amount of rainfall.
As Andy Coghlan described in the New Scientist Trees create a virtuous circle of benefits.
and spreads tree seeds so new trees grow. The trees also provide shelter for crops
and help prevent soil erosion. In times of drought firewood can be sold and food purchased to tide families over.''
''Conserving gum trees contributes to an overall vision of creating a green wall across the Sahel to serve as a barrier protecting the semiarid agricultural lands from the Sahara desert's southward creep.
Conserving and wild-harvesting the products of the Sahel's trees also offers a path for peace and prosperity in a highly troubled region.
And Produits du Sud is but one example of an enterprise investing in wild harvesting and tree conservation.
Other enterprises producing agroforestry crops from the Sahel like the baobab shea nut and cashew trees other such truffula-like trees offer similar potential.
Just think of what hundreds more Produits du Sud companies could do to offer a bulwark against climate change
This article is adapted from'Truffula'Trees The IPCC and Climate Changeon the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship a premier international platform for accelerating entrepreneurial approaches and innovative solutions to the world
It s a story that begins thousands of miles away in the Russian Far east where loggers are illegally chopping down the largest and most valuable oak ash elm and linden trees and shipping them across the border to China.
In 2010 alone the volume of Mongolian oak logged for export was twice the amount legally authorized for harvest from the region meaning that at least half of the oak shipped across the border to China that year was stolen.
For products made with Russian oak ash elm or linden companies should exclusively purchase FSC-certified products to ensure they are sourcing products from legal and responsible sources.
If FSC-certified products are not available companies should establish rigorous legality and traceability confirmation systems.
Nearly half or 48 percent of the runs occurred on open grasslands 28 percent were carried out around large trees
Although trees and shrubs may offer cheetahs better means to stalk prey the researchers did not find significant differences in the speed
The researchers examined fossil pollen in the sediment core and discovered traces of Douglas fir and hemlock.
To get Douglas fir and hemlock that far north of the Arctic circle you have to have pretty warm summers
and warm winters in order for those trees to establish there Brigham-Grette said. Previous research suggests the proportion of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere in the middle Pliocene
and Early Pleistocene was similar to the levels that are recorded today and attributed to man-made sources.
These outbursts spewed a giant plume of ash that spread unusually far and stayed for an oddly long time in the atmosphereforcing widespread flight cancellations for days.
and after the eruption in areas directly influenced by the plume of iron-rich ash.
and could really look at the immediate effects of the ash falling into the ocean Achterberg said.
In about a third of the global ocean a scarcity of iron limits the abundance of life so ash supplying this metal could spur booms in biological activity.
Beneath the plume the scientists found that peak dissolved iron levels were up to about 20 to 45 times higher after the plume than they had been before the ash came along.
A model of ash dispersal rate that the researchers developed along with measurements of iron dissolution suggest that up to 220000 square miles (570000 square kilometers) of North Atlantic waters might have been seeded with up to about 100 metric tons of iron.
Since phytoplankton use carbon dioxide just like plants do volcanic ash falling on the ocean could reduce levels of the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.
For that to happen the researchers suggest ash emissions have to be much larger and longer in duration
In the future researchers could investigate the effects of volcanic ash on the Southern Ocean which is relatively rich in nitrate.
when you add extra iron via ash Achterberg said. However you'd have to be lucky to be at sea
#If A Dry Tree Pops Sap Bubbles In The Woods (ISNS)--The crackling sounds wood makes as it burns are familiar to anyone who has roasted marshmallows before a campfire
but as trees get dry they mysteriously crackle as well. Now scientists find these noises are apparently due to bubbles that loudly pop into existence within trees.
These findings could lead to noninvasive means of testing tree health during droughts. Just as microscopes and telescopes help researchers see more about the world microphones can help them learn more about their surroundings via sound.
For instance researchers often stick microphones onto bridges to listen for ultrasonic sounds they make to check
Such work revealed trees made sounds in both the audible and ultrasonic ranges. These acoustic emissions are very faint only exerting 10 to 1000 pascal in pressure in comparison atmospheric pressure is about 100000 pascals explained physicist Alexandre Ponomarenko at Grenoble University in France.
The flow of sap in trees is done through a huge amount of vessels of sizes typically 10 to 100 microns in diameter Ponomarenko said.
Physicists may look at trees as a gigantic microfluidic system transmitting sap. Past research suggested the sounds from trees might be due to bubbles that form in their sap.
Drought causes sap to dry reducing the pressure that sap exerts in the tree. This negative pressure can make some of the sap go from liquid to gas
much as high temperatures can make liquid water turn into water vapor. These gas bubbles can obstruct the flow of liquid in plants significantly disrupting their lives.
However maybe there are other culprits for sounds from trees instead or as well for instance fractures in the wood or collapse of the channels in which the sap travels.
To find out the origins of the sounds trees make Ponomarenko and his colleagues gathered very thin samples of wood from three-year-old pine
and larch trees slices 50 microns wide thin enough to see through. The scientists then placed these samples in a transparent hydrogel a material akin to ones used to make contact lenses.
The gel helped replicate the moisture conditions within trees. As the wood dried the researchers used microphones to hear what happened
and microscopes to see what occurred. The researchers found bubbles within the sap were linked to about half the sounds from the wood.
Ultimately researchers could use microphones to listen to trees to help diagnose when they are dry.
You could also think of a self-running system that would pour water on trees when it measures that the tree is too dry Ponomarenko said.
Ponomarenko and his colleagues Olivier Vincent and Philippe Marmottant detailed their findings on March 21 at an American Physical Society meeting in Baltimore.
Those tortoises kept Madagascar's unique ecosystem in check by munching on low-lying foliage trampling vegetation and dispersing large seeds from native trees like the baobab.
and dispersing large seeds such as those from the baobab tree. Without their crucial landscaping services including grazing on plants
The bacteria are spread from tree to tree by a tiny insect called the Asian citrus psyllid The New york times reports.
A tree affected by citrus greening may not show symptoms for years. Eventually however the leaves turn yellow
and fall while the tree's fruit fails to mature falling to the ground prematurely before the tree slowly dies.
This is a tree killer. There is no known cure for citrus greening (which also affects grapefruit lemons
Striking Images of Locust Swarms To detect the pests agriculture officials in California have placed about 100000 traps across the state.
And in the sugar maple forests near the Great lakes the churning worms actually compact the upper soil layers instead of loosening them Resner said.
The net result is a loss of understory plants the young trees ferns and wildflowers that grow in the spaces between big trees.
And without the duff layer some animals lack a place to live. It's like they've been pushed out of their homes Resner said.
Still the charismatic birds maintain stable populations by holing up in branchless dead trees that carnivores struggle to climb.
The team thinks the woodpeckers have adapted to feed on the forest floor rather than holing up more cautiously in trees
and removals (such as carbon trapped by trees). The IPCC's new methodology report updates the methods for estimating man-made greenhouse gas emissions
For example in the western United states drought and higher temperatures have doubled the rate of tree mortality
Pinyon pine an iconic and dominant species in the West has suffered nearly 100 percent mortality at sites in Colorado
and Arizona where climate change has made trees more susceptible to bark beetle outbreaks that in turn result in increased wildfires.
For more than 30 years a consortium of researchers has examined how genetic variation in the cottonwood tree can affect entire communities of organisms from microbes to mammals.
That's because olives were growing on trees in people's backyards; it was plentiful and cheap.
The Origins of the Olive tree Revealed Waning quality Studies show that as days weeks and months go by after harvest the polyphenol content
The first gymnosperm genome the common Christmas tree (i e. Norwegian wood) has been sequenced. The coniferous Norway spruce (Picea abies) is one of the most widespread and important plants in Europe.
The gymnosperms belong to a group of seed-producing plants that includes conifers cycads Ginkoplants and woody plants called gnetophytes.
Conifers have some of the biggest genomes (most DNA) of all organisms making them rather tough to study.
The Norway spruce genome contains 20 billion genetic letter-pairs but has roughly the same number of genes (stretches of DNA that code for a specific protein) as the widely studied plant Aradbidopsis
whose genome is 100 times smaller. Studying the spruce's genome could provide new tools for conifer breeding.
The findings were detailed today (May 22) in the journal Nature. Follow Tanya Lewis on Twitterâ and Google+.
#Israel Escapes Locust Plague For Now MITZPE RAMON Israel A menacing swarm of locusts that entered southern Israel earlier this week has been largely smitten according to the Israeli government and local reports.
or on the weekend said Keith Cressman a senior locust-forecasting officer in Rome for the Food and agriculture organization (FAO) of the United nations. The desert locusts
According to the Bible swarms of locusts were the eighth plague sent into ancient Egypt as a punishment for suppressing the Jews said Hendrik Bruins a researcher who studies the archaeology and environmental aspects of desert peoples at Israel's Ben-Gurion
Because there have been so many plagues throughout history not every locust plague can be classified in that way he said laughing.
See Images of the Desert Locust Swarms Gregarious grasshoppers All locusts are grasshoppers or in the grasshopper family but not all grasshoppers are said locusts Amir Ayali a researcher at Tel aviv University.
About 15 species of grasshoppers can be classified as locusts essentially meaning they can fly and create swarms.
The creatures are usually solitary and avoid each other but in the right conditions they congregate in large groups exhibiting
and the locusts moved on once the area started to dry out in early February he continued.
There were many thousands of locusts in the swarms that have arrived in southern Israel but the exact number is unclear according to officials.
 Locusts are passive fliers and can't get far flying into the breeze; however under the right conditions they can fly up to 90 miles (150 kilometers) per day Cressman said.
 Zapping locusts The only way to deal with large locust outbreaks is to spray them with pesticides Cressman said a process that has become increasingly safer and more environmentally friendly over the years.
The chemicals are sprayed also directly on locusts instead of on vegetation or the ground are used only in small quantities
Such specialists increasingly rely on a new family of bio-pesticides such as a chemical called Green Muscle that comes from a naturally occurring fungus that only attacks locusts.
and resources and informed farmers and other parties so they were prepared for the locusts Cressman said.
The locusts may not be all bad however. The locust is the only kosher insect meaning it is acceptable to eat under Jewish law Bruins said.
I've never eaten them but they seem to be quite tasty. Cressman however has sampled the critters.
I have eaten desert locusts roasted on the fire boiled dried and fried rather a poor man's version of shrimp he said.
Generally however the locusts are the ones doing the eating. A swarm the size of Cairo which is not unusual for the desert locust could in one day eat the same amount of food as 15 million people could consume Cressman said.
That's about twice the population of Cairo he added. This article was generated during a reporting trip paid for by Ben-Gurion University.
So far scientists have deployed about 25 of these GPS-equipped javelins in Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier
Preliminary measurements show that the Pine Island Glacier's march to the sea is speeding up Gudmundsson told Ouramazingplanet.
The Pine Island Glacier is thinning faster than any other glacier in Antarctica and it's important to find out why
Like many glaciers in polar regions the Pine Island Glacier's expanse of ice doesn't stop
And behind the Pine Island Glacier is an even larger section of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet one of the largest in the world.
Impossible Animal of Story & Legend A devil is said to haunt the wooded Pine Barren of southern New jersey.
and legend but that doesn't mean that late at night in the Pine Barrens forest people might not see
and watched colossal tree-cutting operations clearing thousands of acres of trees flying over miles of virgin forests that had already been leased for new mines.
But soon there would be millions more acres of clear-cut trees and millions more gallons of toxic waste that would leach into the rivers from tailings ponds
and a pest as it coils over trees and shrubs often sealing their death by blocking out sunlight.
Sequoia and Kings Canyon National parks Giants live in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National parks. Soaring mountains rocky foothills deep canyons more than 200 marble caverns and the world's largest trees call these side-by-side parks home.
The highest mountain in the contiguous 48 states Mount whitney (with a peak at 14491 feet or 4417 meters) stretches across the Sequoia border.
The world's largest tree the General Sherman Tree soars 275 feet (83.8 m) above Sequoia soil.
The General Sherman tree grows in the Giant Forest home to five out of the 10 largest trees in the world.
Giant Forest is connected to the General Grant Grove of Kings Canyon National park home to the 267-foot-tall (81.3 m General Grant tree the world's third largest.
The adjacent parks are in the southern Sierra nevada Mountain range east of California's San joaquin valley. The parksrecently held a photo contest to celebrate their beautiful and diverse landscape.
What's more he said Lidar data could help conservationists showing as it does everything from natural water features to topography to the size of trees in the forest.
and they typically sleep in trees. Sauther and her colleagues found that ring-tailed lemurs in Tsimanampesotse National park
and it was not from the trees Sauther said. We were baffled. But when we began arriving at the study sites earlier
In this area most of the trees are lined with woody spines starting near the ground making for easy climbing for predators.
In areas where lemurs sleep in trees the branches are high off the ground and form a safe canopy.
and his colleagues placed light temperature and moisture sensors on spruce fir trees in the southern Appalachian forestsstretching from Virginia to the Great Smokey Mountains.
Unsurprisingly on the few sunny days the trees were exposed to bright light and completely cloudy days were very very dark.
But these sky island trees see a boost in their energy harvesting into midday perhaps to take advantage of a period
The team also measured how easily air bubbles form in the xylem the water-transporting vascular system of trees.
The more easily such embolisms form the more sensitive trees are to drought. Despite being enshrouded in mist all the time the trees
which grow at higher and potentially dryer elevations didn't form embolisms easily and so tended to be more drought-resistant than similar trees in other ecosystems.
 These trees might not be designed for when the clouds are there but when the clouds are not there Reinhardt said.
These are relatively high elevation sites so when the clouds are not there it can get pretty dry.
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