The extraordinary lives of coast redwoods | Hacker News Reader

The extraordinary lives of coast redwoods

noemamag.com

99 pointsPaulHoule33 comments

What's extraordinary is how ordinary massive trees used to be in North America.

http://www.oldgrowth.ca/the-past-isnt-what-it-used-to-be/

Even in Ontario we used to have forests where a large portion of trees were above 50m high, some close to the size of coast redwoods.

The entire west coast looked like this before clear cutting in the 1800s

That's wild, I had no idea (and I live in Ontario). Thanks for sharing!

Lived in North Idaho for a time and int the forests you can still see a ton of massive stumps that don't match anything currently surviving nearby. It's a surreal and saddening experience.

Assuming the trees were used for construction and are either still in place or in a landfill, at least cutting down the trees probably resulted in a larger net carbon sink!

Are there any swaths of land on Earth where old growth forests have not been clear cut? Perhaps parts of northern Canada?

sure- parks and such. maybe "swath" is bigger than I pictured....

Uh, Siberia and Russian European North.

Borneo has a huge area of primary forest, though it has been extensively logged. And of course the Amazon, the Congo, areas of Uganda, and many others.

Human habitation and influence on the landscape in the Amazon seems far more extensive in scope and duration than previously thought, based on recent discoveries.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Amazon+mounds+archaeology&t=ffip&i...

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Amazon+australasian+dna&t=ffip&ia=...

The significance of the second link is ancient peoples further north and in other parts of the Americas don’t share this genetic link, indicating a longer timeline of human habitation in the region than previously thought.

For sure! While there were definitely civilizations there, there are still huge areas that were likely never clear cut. And even the areas where pre-colonial civilizations had developed have been reforested for 600+ years, which by itself makes it interesting forest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Białowieża_Forest on Poland. Unfortunately, if some people have their way a good portion of it will be cut for profit. Battles over the wood have been going on for years. If you are ever in the region it's worth a visit.

Yes, huge swaths of them in Olympic National Park. Washington State, USA. Here's the giant spruce:

https://www.scenicwa.com/poi/quinault-rain-forest-worlds-lar...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_National_Park

The park is almost a million acres; it's enormous -- larger than small countries like Luxembourg. There are two entrances; most visitors go to the North entrance near Port Angeles to see mountains. If you want to see trees and beaches take the Southwest entrance at Lake Quinault instead.

I recommend the North Coast hike from La Push to Chilean Memorial. It's a multi-day hike, and you need to get a permit from the Park Service office at Lake Quinault beforehand. But it's worth it. Remember to get a copy of the tide charts so you don't get trapped by the tides.

https://www.wta.org/go-hiking/hikes/north-coast-beach-travel...

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/chilean-memorial

>> Even in Ontario we used to have forests where a large portion of trees were above 50m high

There are still some in Michigan:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartwick_Pines_State_Park

> Dropping the salamanders into a wind tunnel and using high-speed cameras, researchers showed that the reptiles assume a stable skydiving posture,

This sounds like something that needs to be in the IgNobels.

Hopefully even the IgNobels will insist that salamanders not be referred to as reptiles!

>”We still don’t know why they get so high, nor why they’re not even taller”

We do know why they don’t get taller - past a certain height the trees can no longer draw water and nutrients up to the top. Foggy conditions can help the physics/chemistry limits, up to a point.

They eventually reveal the same conclusion, but with less certainty:

> The answers to the “Why so tall?” and “Why not taller?” questions seem to involve water, as is the case for so much about trees.

> Ultimately, it’s most likely a matter of hydraulics: A tree’s height appears to be limited by the enormous effort needed to lift water through tiny tubes, or xylem — the transport tissue that constitutes most of its mass.

Given that the canopy itself modulates the moisture in the air, this explanation seems to provide a bound on the outlier of height relative to other trees more so than an absolute barrier.

Yes, there's a reason all the tallest trees recorded are a bit more than 100m high.

That's basically the upper limit to get water to the leaves up top

But we also don’t fully know how trees draw up water.

stomata open, light interacts with chlorophyll, water is moved and creates a tiny depression in the xylem tube, more water moves up through capillarity

> Foggy conditions can help the physics/chemistry limits, up to a point.

From what I've read, moist air from the sea is an important factor in these trees' water balance. And it's getting more rare / drier on average.

It's a good bet that these trees on average will grow shorter in response to moisture / heat stress (mentioned in article). Perhaps also in response to stronger winds (not mentioned). Tough times ahead for the already-tall ones out there, though.

Btw: trees don't need to be big to be awe-inspiring. Once had a Metasequoia growing in a pot, sitting on my desk. Just ~50 cm. high, a close look revealed 5 or 6 spiders had taken up residence in it. Some ants walking up & down its branches. Various species of moss growing at its base. And an assortment of creatures wandering the soil underneath (mostly harmless or beneficial). A whole ecosystem of its own.

Nature is awesome, period.

> the tallest carbon-bearing organisms on Earth.

What on Earth is outside of that qualifier??

They're trying to avoid the embarrassment of a retraction in case someone invents interstellar FTL travel and finds a counterexample.

Discussion of redwoods makes me think of The Elephant in the Brain, which offers a solid explanation of why they are so tall and why humans are so intelligent. Short answer: individuals are competing within the species to outdo each other having sapped resources from other species.

there's both majesty and tragedy walking through the california redwoods.

The old-growth trees are amazing giants.

The other redwoods are beautiful too, until you start understanding the pattern of a ring of redwoods, surrounding the stump or hole. This is where an old-growth redwood grew for thousands of years, and was clear-cut to rebuild san francisco after the 1906 earthquake. not just for the wood to build, but to just burn. sigh.

If you can, you should visit Redwood National Park.

I was happy to see the word “bolus” in this essay.

Stories like this need pictures.

Speaking of which, absolutely love that first and only picture at the top of the article. However, I am pretty sure that is a Sequoiadendron giganteum and not a Sequoia sempervirens which are the coastal redwoods the article speaks about.

Factual summary:

- There are only three remaining redwood species in the world (China's Dawn redwood, sequoia, and West coast)

- A mature redwood adds, on average, a ton of wood to its mass every year.

- 96% of West coast redwoods' habitat has been lost.

- "Albino" redwoods exist that make no/little chlorophyll, surviving by alternate means.

- Some West coast redwood trees are 2,200 years old and reach up to 400 feet in height.

- Tall redwoods exert two million pounds of hydraulic force raising water to upper leaves.

- A fallen redwood was weighed at 3,630 tons, more than 16 times heavier than the Statue of Liberty.

- The marbled murrelet (Brachyramphus marmoratus), an endangered seabird lives in the canopy. Its flight speed is up to a hundred miles an hour. The first nesting site was discovered in 1974 and nesting habits were completely unknown until then.

- Redwoods can endure fire, and appear to be evolving for greater heat endurance.

ai generated? what tool

> 96% of West coast redwoods' habitat has been lost.

To be clear, redwoods still grow in almost all of their former range. They were logged, but they grew back. About 4% was never logged and is old-growth.

You can see a map of the redwood range (light green) and remaining old-growth (dark green) here:

https://redwoodhikes.com

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