Crane to study old growth: Seattle Times

mdvaden

First, didn't anyone read the online Seminar article on urban forests and climate change - no comments yet in that sub-forum?

About this thread though, there are people studying old growth forest in the Pacific NW of the USA, using a tall crane to suspend a gondola above the forest canopy.

Local News | Trees giving bizarre clues to climate change | Seattle Times Newspaper

This should provide some interesting discussion over the next year. May even give them a chance to learn some other related facts.

Odds are, they will find that the cause is other than global warming. May just be a fertile year.

If they can say where the exact location is, we may be able to look at climate tables to see if there was any kind of mini-drought in the area previously.

Those trees hold so much water on their needles, they may even affect the soil moisture by how many needles they hold from year to year.

Mike Poor

Thanks for posting this one mdVaden! They're talking climate change here in the midwest u.s. There's talk of changing our U.S.D.A. climate zone from 5 to 6? over the last hundred years my area has seen many zone 6 trees thrive, only to die 30 years later (ooops, back to zone 5!) I can't tell if it's climate change or natural weather paterns?

Eric Frei

Should be interesting to see some hard data come out, will take some years though.

There could be many influencing factors.

Just like crown of thorns starfish which was going to destroy the barrier reef. Still no hard core information on what causes the cycle.

Cone densities, and fruit for that matter have been known to vary over time, yet nailing the why is the hard part.

Only data will lead to some sort of solution.

Be a good job cruising in that gondola.

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Sean Freeman

mario I've got some good links and interesting points to make (well I think they're interesting anyway!!) but I'm down South right now will post them next week...