Reading view

Trees may store less planet-heating carbon than hoped, study suggests

Photosynthesis does not always result in wood growth, a key factor in carbon dioxide sequestration

Trees may not be able to store as much planet-heating carbon as hoped, a study suggests, with researchers finding photosynthesis does not always lead to wood growth.

Scientists studied 137 sites across the US and found trees stopped growing months before the point in the year at which photosynthesis stopped.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Drbouz/Getty Images

© Photograph: Drbouz/Getty Images

© Photograph: Drbouz/Getty Images

  •  

Republicans add measure to strip forest protections to wildfire bill, endangering Dem support

Republican senators have thrown a wrench into an effort to pass a wildfire prevention bill, adding a controversial amendment seeking to nullify Clinton-area forest protections. It’s a move that Democrats say makes the underlying legislation less likely to pass, since they won’t get behind the move to strip protections from 59 million acres of national…

  •  

Republicans add measure to strip forest protections to wildfire bill, endangering Dem support

Republican senators have thrown a wrench into an effort to pass a wildfire prevention bill, adding a controversial amendment seeking to nullify Clinton-area forest protections. It’s a move that Democrats say makes the underlying legislation less likely to pass, since they won’t get behind the move to strip protections from 59 million acres of national…

  •  

Toby Carvery to fund orchard replanting as settlement for felling ancient oak

Enfield council in north London took legal action against restaurant chain after outrage over damage to tree

The UK restaurant chain Toby Carvery has settled a legal dispute over taking a chainsaw to an ancient oak tree without permission, by agreeing to pay to restore a lost orchard.

The unauthorised partial felling of the 500-year-old oak next to a Toby Carvery car park in Whitewebbs Park, Enfield, north London, in April last year, prompted widespread public outrage and questions in parliament.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

© Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

© Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

  •  

Taiwan’s tallest tree found with help of citizen science

Deep in Taiwan’s misty mountains, researchers have confirmed the tallest tree in the country: a thousand-year-old fir tree higher than a 20-story building, which they’ve named “the heaven sword of the Da’an River.” Climbers scaled the tree and dropped a measuring tape from the top to the forest floor during the Lunar New Year holiday in January 2023. The tree measured 84.1-meters (276-feet). The findings have been published in Frontiers in Forests and Global Change. A team of ecologists, geologists, remote-sensing specialists, professional climbers and Indigenous people that calls itself the “Taiwan tree seekers” began the search in 2014. “The common characteristics [of the team] are probably that we are all tree lovers and like adventures,” Rebecca Chia-Chun Hsu, lead author from Division of Forest Ecology, Institute of Taiwan Forestry Research, told CNN. ‘The Heaven Sword’, Taiwan’s tallest tree, measures 84.1 meters. Photo courtesy of Steven Pearce. Taiwan is one of the few places on Earth where trees can grow this tall. The island sits where the tropics meet the subtropics, and its mountains host several giant conifer species. The species behind the new record, Taiwania cryptomerioides, is known to the Indigenous Rukai people as “the tree that hits the moon.” Although nearly 60% of Taiwan is covered in forest, loggers cleared much of the island’s old-growth forest between 1912 and 1991. However, its steep slopes were too dangerous to reach, and pockets of ancient forest survived. Still, finding the tallest tree amid the rugged terrain was a task. Taiwan…This article was originally published on Mongabay

  •  
❌