Victoria’s mountain ash forests could lose a quarter of ‘giant’ trees as temperatures rise | Environment

The research is rapidly studying as Victoria’s mountain ash forests, as the world warms, and may lose one quarter of the “giant” trees that grew up to 80 meters in the next decades.

Forests Eucalyptus regnans -According to a study led by the University of Melbourne, one of the longest tree species in the world-loses approximately 9% of trees for the degree of heating. Published on Nature Communications.

Chief Author “These are giants, Rap said Raphael Trove. “They are the longest flowering plant in the world – that is, they regularly reach 60 to 80 meters.”

Researchers analyzed the data collected from mountain ash forests more than 50 years ago to determine tree mortality rates and forest carrying capacity – the maximum number of trees of a certain size that the forest can maintain.

They found that the growing forests in the hottest conditions have the lowest carrying capacity and this decreased with increasing temperatures.

“For each extra temperature, we found that the number of trees that the forest can maintain has decreased by 9%,” he said. “Until 2080 – with three extra degrees as we expected – it goes up to a quarter of these trees.”

Estimated forest loss did not include the additional effect of forest fires expected to grow as the world warms.

Forest thinning was thought to be the result of increasing competition for limited resources. “A growing tree needs space and resources to survive, Tr Trove said. “Under limited conditions, such as water stress, a large tree will leave the surrounding trees behind and cause their deaths.”

The changes in forest transport capacity will probably have effects. “Not only about the trees, but the carbon they hide, the planet we need, the water we drink,” he said.

Mountain ash forests are considered one of the world’s most carbon intensive ecosystems that storage more carbon per hectare from Amazon. But as more trees died and separed, the forests would eventually pass from carbon sinks to emissions.

“Climate change emphasizes forests all over the world and may exacerbate this thinning rate,” he said.

Bowman said that climate change-and heat waves, increasing temperatures and chronic droughts have been globally under tremendous stress, and especially the latitude affect the moderate, temperate environments.

Giant trees were particularly vulnerable. “They get tired,” he said.

Later, as the forests died and thinned, they became more open and more flammable in the form of a leaves accumulated in the forest, garbage, thin branches and stems.

The risk of Bushfire has become a “nightmare scenario için for large trees that will then compete to heal.