The secret of giant trees and how climate change is affecting their existence

At the beginning of this year, the University of Redlands’ 2021 field course identified, located and measured 16 Mother Trees around the Mamoní Valley, some of them measuring up to 44 meters tall.

Like Mother Trees and other tall specimens, giant trees in tropical forests are fantastic witnesses to centuries of civilization, but little is known about them, because they are extremely rare in field surveys, since they are hard to measure the circumference above the buttresses. It takes a long time and often ends up excluded from analysis.

The biggest trees store half of the carbon in mature tropical forests, but now according to a report in Nature Plants, they could be at risk of death as a result of climate change, releasing massive amounts of carbon back into the atmosphere.

Little is also clear about the relationship between the cause of death of these giant trees and their size, or about disease, insects and other biological causes of death.

Evidence shows that trees are dying faster in tropical forests than ever before. This is affecting the ability of forests to function and in particular, to capture and store carbon dioxide.

In large parts of the tropics, climate change is resulting in more severe storms and more frequent and intense droughts. Because big trees tower above the rest, they may be more likely to be hit by lightning, or damaged by wind, and because they have to pull ground water higher than other trees, they are most likely to be affected by drought.

The good news is that a combination of drone technology and satellite views of the forest should help to find out how these big trees die and perhaps help us find a way to avoid it, but this approach will only work if it’s combined with intense, standardized, on-the-ground observations.

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