View From The Canopy #5
Hello and welcome to issue #5 of View From The Canopy newsletter. In this week’s issue you can read news about mushrooms and fruit trees such as apple trees and the amazing Pawpaw tree. There is some good news regarding the wildfire disaster aid that California requested. And of course, much more!
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News articles
[CANADA]
National Forest Week - Photo Contest Winners
Each year National Forest Week (NFW) is celebrated across Canada by many individuals and diverse governmental and non governmental organizations.
see winning photos at Canadian Institute of Forestry
[CANADA, B.C.]
Horgan Could Be a Leader on Old Growth — but Time Is Running Out
For the first time in recent memory, old-growth forests were discussed in a televised B.C. election debate.
Issues like climate change, economic inequity and access to food have brought more attention to this creamy fruit and its resilient tree.
[UK]
Cider maker swamped by apples as orchard renaissance starts to bear fruit
Volunteers are reviving a legacy of fruit trees in the UK that stretches back to the Romans, hugely increasing biodiversity – and drinks production
[CANADA, B.C.]
Mushroom pickers find a Wild West in B.C. backwoods
Beneath B.C.’s forest canopies, a multimillion-dollar wild mushroom industry lies hidden.
Forest Fires Updates 🔥
[USA, CALIFORNIA]
Trump, in reversal, approves California wildfire aid
[USA]
In the West, Lightning Grows as a Cause of Damaging Fires
[USA]
As wildfires explode in the West, Forest Service can’t afford prevention efforts
[INDONESIA]
Nearly a third of Indonesia forest fires are in pulp, palm areas: Greenpeace
[AUSTRALIA]
'Unacceptable': Timber battles resume in fire-hit South Coast forests
read at The Sydney Morning Herald
Research Publications
Researchers attempt to piece together the puzzle of tree species diversity
Questions about the origin of nature have fascinated humans since the dawn of culture. One phenomenon of particular interest is the high diversity of forests in the tropics, relative to those in the temperate zone. Even Humboldt, pioneering polymath of the late 18th century, was already searching for possible explanations for this observation. One prominent hypothesis is that the greater stability of tropical forests allows greater prevalence of pests, each of which then can exert greater damage on its favored host tree than in the temperate zone, particularly when the tree species concerned becomes common. This gives rise to so-called negative density dependence, which prevents the more common species from completely dominating the forest and thereby protects locally rare species from extinction.
Soil fungi act like a support network for trees, study shows
Being highly connected to a strong social network has its benefits. Now a new University of Alberta study is showing the same goes for trees, thanks to their underground neighbors. The study, published in the Journal of Ecology, is the first to show that the growth of adult trees is linked to their participation in fungal networks living in the forest soil.
Forest production efficiency increases with growth temperature
Forest production efficiency (FPE) metric describes how efficiently the assimilated carbon is partitioned into plants organs (biomass production, BP) or—more generally—for the production of organic matter (net primary production, NPP). We present a global analysis of the relationship of FPE to stand-age and climate, based on a large compilation of data on gross primary production and either BP or NPP. FPE is important for both forest production and atmospheric carbon dioxide uptake. We find that FPE increases with absolute latitude, precipitation and (all else equal) with temperature. Earlier findings—FPE declining with age—are also supported by this analysis. However, the temperature effect is opposite to what would be expected based on the short-term physiological response of respiration rates to temperature, implying a top-down regulation of carbon loss, perhaps reflecting the higher carbon costs of nutrient acquisition in colder climates. Current ecosystem models do not reproduce this phenomenon. They consistently predict lower FPE in warmer climates, and are therefore likely to overestimate carbon losses in a warming climate.
Featured Forest
Avatar Grove, British Columbia, Canada
Photo by Josullivan.59 (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
This weeks featured forest is the Avatar Grove on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada. It is a 10-hectare stand of 80-meter tall old growth Douglas-fir and western red cedar where you can see 1000+ year old trees such as the iconic “Gnarliest Tree”. The Ancient Forest Alliance claims that this is one of the most spectacular and most accessible stands of ancient trees in a wilderness setting that remains on southern Vancouver Island, and that it is one of the only examples in the region of old growth forest on a valley bottom.
More info on Avatar Grove at the AFA
More info at Wikipedia
Miscellaneous
Treeswift’s Autonomous Robots Take Flight to Save Forests
Treeswift is building the next generation of forest monitoring systems. We provide forest stakeholders with precision data and analyses that are easily accessible and flexible. Our services are used in carbon capture estimation, timber value estimation, deforestation monitoring, advanced growth forecasting, and forest management.
read at Penn Engineering Today
go to Treeswift
Tree Of The Week - Series at The Guardian
Guardian readers on the leafy wonders that make their world a better place.
How trees talk to each other | Suzanne Simard (TED, 2016)
Selected Book
Tree Story: The History of the World Written in Rings
by Valerie Trouet
Children around the world know that to tell how old a tree is, you count its rings. Few people, however, know that research into tree rings has also made amazing contributions to our understanding of Earth's climate history and its influences on human civilization over the past 2,000 years. In her captivating new book, Tree Story, Valerie Trouet reveals how the seemingly simple and relatively familiar concept of counting tree rings has inspired far-reaching scientific breakthroughs that illuminate the complex interactions between nature and people.
Trouet, a leading tree-ring scientist, takes us out into the field, from remote African villages to radioactive Russian forests, offering readers an insider's look at tree-ring research, a discipline formally known as dendrochronology. Tracing her own professional journey while exploring dendrochronology's history and applications, Trouet describes the basics of how tell-tale tree cores are collected and dated with ring-by-ring precision, explaining the unexpected and momentous insights we've gained from the resulting samples.
Editors Note: This book won the Jan Wolkers Prijs (2020) for best Nature Book this week.
Until next week
I hope you enjoyed the view from the canopy. If you've come across any interesting articles or you've written something yourself please hit reply and let me know about them.
See you next week!
Cheers,
Johan
🌳