Why Ancient Trees are Important

Photo credit - Johan Larsson/Flickr
Written and researched by Sen Toyotoshi ^ VivaEthical Data Analysis & Operations Support

Viva Ethical Financial Advice Pty Ltd 

Ancient Trees - Climate Change Heroes?

Forests are sucking up 25% of our carbon emissions in the atmosphere. However, the productivity of forests is sensitive to climate, and the faster forest death events have the potential to release a lot of carbon back into the atmosphere.

Recently, scientists have been able to quantify the role of ancient trees in storing carbon:

We used to think that as trees age, their growth age slows but that’s not true. The biggest trees are actually putting on the most growth every year and they are disproportionately important in total carbon dynamics in the forest.

Also, as ancient trees comprise < 1% of the tree population, they’ve actually won the resilience lottery i.e. these trees have survived centuries of climate change!

Trees as old as time

Unlike animals, trees can live for 1000’s of years under ideal conditions.

Some individual trees on our planet are estimated to be more than 5,000 years old, and, clonal species can live for at least ten times as long! That’s OLD!

You see, trees don’t age like we do - they don’t die from getting older, they die from accidents like fires or from being attacked by insects or fungus, and senescence ie a gradual slow-down of all functions. And it’s hard to track a tree over 5,000 years.

Even dead trees are helpful for storing carbon!

New research from Prof. David Lindenmayer* has found that:

• About 73 gigatonnes of carbon is currently stored in dead wood globally, i.e.15-25% of the yearly carbon release from soils worldwide

• What’s interesting here is that 85% of that carbon stays on the forest floor rather than going up into our atmosphere.

What’s happening to our Ancient Trees?

Forests are dying at a faster rate across the world…

• There are more droughts and heat-related death events; as well as

• More wildfires from the trees being drier than before; and

• Warmer climates mean faster evaporation and the atmosphere being able to hold more vapour before it releases as rain.

What does this mean for plants?

• Because of these changes, plants have to go longer without water, stressing the forest and making it more susceptible to insects and disease, on top of the dryness.

What our scientists are doing…

Scientists can predict:

• a tree’s stress level, depending on how much water is available; and

• levels of forest die-off.

This information can assist in forest conservation to assist in fighting the effects of climate change.

Why it’s important to protect old forests (& new trees growing in them)

• In an old forest, there’s a balance between storing and releasing carbon because trees are dying and decomposing.

• Maintaining a balance of old and new trees in forests is crucial but it’s important to maintain the health of the old trees because they hold more carbon.

You may also be wondering, can’t scientists simply pick the strongest trees to reproduce?

• Since it’s hard to predict the future environment, it’s difficult to know which tree gene will be a survivor in future climates.

• Dr Chuck Cannon* * says that the best way to protect these forests is to diversify and let the unknown future select the successful trees through natural selection.

• Nevertheless, the Ancient Tree Archive report a really encouraging 95% success rate in propagating all the different trees they’re trying to grow, which includes 60 - 70 of the largest and oldest living Redwoods, which will help in repopulating the forests.

Why tree decay is a problem for us right now

• During the wood decay process, a lot of carbon goes into the soil as nutrients for other plants and not into the atmosphere.

• However, in insect populations there’s been a recent catastrophic decline – this disrupts the carbon cycle as 1/3 of the decomposition of deadwood is caused by insect activity.

There are a couple of ways decomposition is affected by human-caused climate change:

• Some systems are experiencing more rainfall, whilst others are having drier climates, both of which affect living insect populations; and

• In severe droughts, the largest trees are at the highest risk of dying because it gets harder to pump water to the very top of the tree itself.

So, what should we do?

We need to focus on keeping our current forests intact, especially our big ancient trees.

That’s because, forests with a full-functioning ecosystem of living trees, deadwood, and decomposition, aids to fight against climate change by storing carbon naturally.

Credit: For more information, check out the ABC Ancient Trees broadcast

* ANU Professor, The Fenner School of Environment and Society

** Director of the Center for Tree Science, The Morton Arboretum

List of oldest trees - Wikipedia

^ Sen Toyotoshi is interning as Data Analyst and Operations support at VivaEthical

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