From carbon dioxide to carbon dioxide - lesson from the tropics

Here in the rain forest life is a pretty dramatic process. While the great towering giants of wood have a aura of permanence about them, the tree turn over in a wet tropical forest is 2 to 3 times as fast as in temperate forests. Trees are great store houses of carbon dioxide, relatively short term reservoirs, and it is hard for people to rap their brains around the fact that all that stuff is primarily built out of a colorless, tasteless gas that only makes up a fraction of one percent of the atmosphere.

In the temperate zone we are used to seeing mushrooms pop up out of the ground, reproductive structures that are dwarfed by the huge filamentous organisms hidden from sight. And of course such fungi are the primary recyclers of cellulose and the other stuff trees and plants are built from. So you might expect to see lots of fungi on the ground in rainforests, but such is not the case. Decomposition is so fast here, no organic material builds up in or on the soil. Most of the fungi you see are growing right out of decomposing plant material. The fungi shown here are called "dead man's fingers", cute, eh? And they are growing out of a log that is pretty far along in terms of decomposition. The Phactor is not an expert on fungi, but he seems to remember that this fungus is called appropriately enough Xylaria, after xylem, wood. And so after being stored in this log for decades or in some cases even centuries, all that carbon dioxide is going back into the air. And if, as some of the best data indicates (see for link), even a slight increase in temperature causes a higher rate of tree mortality, then you have a very scary scenario where an increasing concentration of carbon dioxide is driving an increase in tree mortality and more carbon dioxide is being released.

Frightfully Beautiful Destruction

This morning dawned to the frightfully beautiful destruction of an ice storm here in Lincolnland. No one can deny the beauty of a glistening, glassy, but very brittle world. It's a wonderland of light with a clacking and cracklely sound. But the destruction wrought by this beautiful sight is so very sad for us tree people. We get emotionally invested in nurturing a tree into an aesthetic component of our gardens and lawns, and the destruction of trees is a real loss not the least of all because a tree that has grown for many years cannot just be replaced. The value and beauty added by time has been lost.

While trees are nearly immortal, they are unfortunately sessile behemoths of biomass and beauty and they cannot escape any environmental ravages that engulf them. Trees have perpetually juvenile tissues, meristems, and they essentially grow a new tree each year around and on top of the old ones.

But no matter how big or how small, wood, that remarkable stuff that trees build as both a vascular and support system, is only so strong. Wood is capable of withstanding some pretty remarkable loads, but the sudden application of a half-inch of ice can stress the support system beyond the breaking point.

Although not a large tree, this quite handsome Japanese maple was shattered beyond any hope of repair. All but one limb was ripped off by the icy weight. This tree had already survived the ravages of yard rats (squirrels), who gnawed off enough bark to nearly girdle the tree. And years later it survived a very late hard freeze that killed all the new foliage and limb growth. But it didn't escape the ice. This fall was its swan song, but who knew what was to befall it.

Decorum and decency, concepts mostly absent from the web, prevent me from posting an image of this maple's dismembered body. RIP Acer japonicum.