Earth Equity News

Extensive 22-Year Field Project Finds Trees Growing Faster in Mid-Atlantic States. By David A. Fahrenhold, WashPost, February 20, 2010. "Jess Parker, a forest ecologist at the Smithsonian Institution, has spent the past 22 years on a research project so repetitive, so time-consuming, that it impresses even researchers with the patience to count tree rings. Since 1987, he and a group of volunteers have embraced thousands of trees, slipped a tape measure behind them, and wrapped it around to measure the trees' girth... He tracked about 50,000 trees on 55 plots between the Washington DC and the Chesapeake, typically returning every three years to measure them as they grew. His volunteers included an emergency room doctor in search of peace, trained scientists in search of a hobby and retirees following orders from their wives...

"Last year, when Parker analyzed the mountain of data his team had collected, he found something surprising: Their trees were adding bulk at a surprisingly fast rate. Parker said the best explanations for this all seemed to relate to climate change. Temperatures in the area have risen by three-tenths of a degree; the growing season has lengthened by 7.8 days; and the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen. All of those might speed up photosynthesis, the engine of tree growth. Which sounds, at first, like a good thing. It would appear that trees were helping more than expected to reduce the world's greenhouse gases, sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and using it to make leaves and branches.

"'The danger of that, of course, is that this can't go on forever,' said Kenneth Feeley, a professor at Florida International University. He meant that, even if there was enough carbon dioxide to support more fast growth, the trees would eventually run out of water or plant food. Their growth would slow down, and they would stop absorbing so much carbon. Other researchers, such as Feeley, say it wouldn't have been possible to notice this trend in the mid-Atlantic if Parker and his crew had not measured so many trees over so much time. This month, when Parker and his team published a paper on their work, it was received as a key piece of evidence about the ways that climate change could be having subtle but important effects on forests. Others have found similar growth in different parts of the world, as warmer weather and more carbon dioxide fuel tree growth. In the tropics, however, some studies have seemed to show trees growing more slowly: It might now be too hot for some trees there."