New York City should carefully measure a new tree | Hacker News Reader

New York City should carefully measure a new tree

blog.willmeye.rs

80 pointswillmeyers16 comments

I didn't get to mention this in my post, but what I love most about being alive today is being able to walk outside and ask a question like "where's the tallest tree?" Then come up with some answer after a couple days of analysis. Questions that you thought were impossible to answer are now in a way answerable.

I wonder how accurate the locations are in this LiDAR dataset and/or the Queens Giant Wikipedia article. The Alley Pond Park candidate looks suspiciously close to the the Queens Giant, so I wonder if it's actually picking the same tree?

The (typically government) agencies that pay for these scans create specifications for the data to meet. This is not hard to find. IIRC the accuracy is generally less than 0.1m (though the precision is usually 0.01 meters or feet).

knowing how tall the tallest tree is instead of which is the tallest tree seems useful

Lidar is an awesome way to find tall trees!

[flagged]

We should still have some public monuments even with the risk of them being vandalized.

Heck the Pyramids were vandalized by the Romans...

You genuinely think that we should never measure trees because it might increase the risk of people cutting them down?

>You genuinely think that we should never measure trees because it might increase the risk of people cutting them down?

no, parent said that the list isn't a great idea, not the act of measurement.

Okay, so we should measure the trees, but not write down what we find out (or write it down and hide it from everyone)? That framing isn't any less bizarre to me

Maybe. There is a "great tree" list and all of them are still standing: https://www.nycgovparks.org/facilities/great-trees

One of these is on my usual walking route and I had no idea. After reading this, I looked at it carefully and was wowed. These things can hide in plain sight, but I appreciated having my attention drawn to it. It's great!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus_(tree)

> The tree was at least 4,862 years old and possibly more than 5,000. It was cut down in 1964 by a graduate student and United States Forest Service personnel for research purposes. Those involved did not know of its world-record age before the cutting, and the circumstances and decision-making process remain controversial.

I remember reading about another tree that was thousands of years old but it was cut/burned after its age was published/popularized..

The article at least shows it's very plausible that the people who cut it down didn't know that this particular tree was record breaking, only that the type of trees in that area were known to be extremely old

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiidk%27yaas

Kiidk'yaas, also known as the Golden Spruce is an example.

The article conveniently links to a list of individual trees.

> Kiidk'yaas was felled in January 1997 by Grant Hadwin as an act of protest against the logging industry.

What a fucking moron

Ah but there's hope:

> In 1977 a group of botanists from the University of British Columbia (UBC) visited Haida Gwaii to take cuttings of Kiidk'yaas.[5] These cuttings were grafted onto ordinary Sitka spruce, resulting in two golden saplings.

The Tree of Gondor!

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