Month: November 2018

Yet it isn’t the gold that I’m wanting
So much as just finding the gold.
It’s the great, big, broad land ‘way up yonder,
It’s the forests where silence has lease;
It’s the beauty that thrills me with wonder,
It’s the stillness that fills me with peace.

― Robert W. Service

• Salvage logging, planting not necessary to regenerate Douglas firs after Klamath fires (Phys.org)
• Tasmanian heritage forests at risk of ‘catastrophic’ bushfires, study finds (The Guardian)
• EU states call for tough action on deforestation to meet 2020 UN goal (NPR)
• Part of the Answer to Climate Change May Be America’s Trees and Dirt, Scientists Say (The New York Times)
• Megafires More Frequent Because Of Climate Change And Forest Management (NPR)
• Trump Says California Can Learn From Finland on Fires. Is He Right? (The New York Times)
  
• Make America Rake Again: Finland baffled by Trump’s forest fire raking claim (The Guardian)
• ‘Greenwash’: oil giant under fire over plan to protect tropical forests (The Guardian)
  

From Smithsonian Magazine:

For around 300 years, the Tree of Ténéré was fabled to be the most isolated tree on the planet. The acacia was the only tree for 250 miles in Niger’s Sahara desert, and was used as a landmark by travelers and caravans passing through the hostile terrain. The tree sprouted when the desert was a slightly more hospitable place, and for years was the sole testament to a once-greener Sahara.

From AmusingPlanet:

The Tenere region was not always a desert. During the prehistoric Carboniferous period it was a sea floor and later a tropical forest. Dinosaur roamed the region and it was once the hunting ground of a crocodile-like reptile nicknamed the SuperCroc. Tenere was inhabited by modern humans as long ago as the Paleolithic period some 60,000 years ago. They hunted wild animals and left evidence of their presence in the form of stone tools. During the Neolithic period about 10,000 years ago, ancient hunters created rock engravings and paintings that can still be found across the region.

From Conde Naste Traveler:

How did a tree manage to bloom in this harsh environment? When the well near the tree was dug in 1938, the tree’s roots were observed descending through more than 100 feet of sand to reach water. This “living lighthouse” of Niger was so well-known that it was always marked on national maps, no matter how small their scale.

From Wikipedia:

The Tree of Ténéré was knocked down by a drunk Libyan truck driver in 1973. On November 8, 1973, the dead tree was moved to the Niger National Museum in the capital Niamey.  It has since been replaced by a simple metal sculpture representing the tree.

From The Atlantic:

Officials assigned the trees ID numbers and email addresses in 2013 as part of a program designed to make it easier for citizens to report problems like dangerous branches.

“As I was leaving St. Mary’s College today I was struck, not by a branch, but by your radiant beauty. You must get these messages all the time. You’re such an attractive tree.”

From NFS:

Standing as ancient sentinels high atop the White Mountains of the Inyo National Forest, the Great Basin bristlecone pines rank as the oldest trees in the world and have achieved immense scientific, cultural and scenic importance.

Bristlecone pine wood that has fallen to the ground can remain intact for thousands of years in the cold, dry climate of the White Mountains. Using a cross-dating technique that overlaps tree-ring patterns of living trees with the still intact patterns of dead wood, scientists have assembled a continuous tree-ring chronology extending nearly 10,000 years. This bristlecone pine chronology, developed here in the White Mountains by University of Arizona researchers and Dr. Henry Michael of the University of Pennsylvania is the longest in the world and provides an unequaled look into past climatic and environmental conditions.

From bishopvisitor.com:

A millennium older than the Giant Sequoia trees in the nearby Sierra, many are well over 2,000 years old and the “Methuselah” tree in Schulman Grove is dated at more than 4,773 years old. These trees were young and growing at the time stone axes were being used in Europe, the Great Pyramid of Khufu (Cheops) was being built, and cuneiform clay tablets were being used in northern Syria. Bristlecone pines (Pinus longaeva & aristata) grow in the White Mountains at elevations 9,000 to over 11,000 feet. The oldest trees grow on outcrops of dolomite, an alkaline calcareous, low nutrient soil. Only on the alkaline dolomite will you find pure, relatively dense stands of Bristlecone pine.

From YouTube: Patriarch Grove of Bristlecone Pines, by drone

From Mapsmith:

This map came about when I read Marty’s post on MapHugger entitled “The Cartographic Aesthetic.” He posited that maps intentionally retain a precise visual language in order to appear authoritative, “rejecting the inclusion of any appearance of human touch” due to it’s inherent imperfection.

From Phys.org:

Researchers with the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have discovered that communities of microbes living in and around poplar tree roots are ten times more diverse than the human microbiome and produce a cornucopia of novel molecules that could be useful as antibiotics, anti-cancer drugs, or for agricultural applications.

From NASA Earth Observatory:

Every autumn, the leaves on deciduous trees change colors as they lose chlorophyll, the molecule that plants use to synthesize food. Chlorophyll is not a stable compound, and plants have to continuously produce it—a process that requires ample sunlight and warm temperatures. When temperatures drop and days shorten with the changing seasons, levels of chlorophyll do as well.

Chlorophyll makes plants appear green because it absorbs red and blue sunlight when it strikes leaf surfaces. As concentrations of chlorophyll drop, the green fades, offering a chance for other leaf pigments—particularly carotenoids and anthocyanins—to show off their colors. Carotenoids absorb blue-green and blue light, appearing yellow; anthocyanins absorb blue, blue-green, and green light, appearing red.

From The New York Times:

This is “the Trembling Giant,” or Pando, from the Latin word for “I spread.” A single clone, and genetically male, he is the most massive organism on Earth. He is a forest of one: a grove of some 47,000 quivering aspen trees — Populus tremuloides — connected by a single root system, and all with the same DNA.

The study, consisting of recent ground surveys and an analysis of 72 years of aerial photographs, revealed that this unrealized natural treasure and keystone species — with hundreds of dependents — is shrinking. And without more careful management of the forest, and the mule deer and cattle that forage within him, the Trembling Giant will continue to dwindle.

From The Guardian:

Researchers from the University of Queensland (UQ) and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) have for the first time produced a global map that sets out which countries are responsible for nature that is devoid of heavy industrial activity.

The UQ and WCS study, published in the journal Nature, identifies Australia, the US, Brazil, Russia and Canada as the five countries that hold the vast majority of the world’s remaining wilderness.