Forests of the World

Manhattan was forest, before it was New Amsterdam and before later additional modifications were made. Dutch, by the way, traded it to British in exchange for a small Indonesian island that had a lot of 'nutmeg' trees.

But what about that (prior) New York forest? It was probably typical of its locality. Remnants persist in the New York Botanical Garden, so I thought some might want to look back 500 years:



Probably how you expected. In some (subtle?) ways different from Central Park, which was reshaped and intentionally planted.

Even though climate is ill suited, I wish that nutmeg trees could be planted in NYBG facilities so that folks could think about ... things.

But wait, there's more. Manhattan is not just a prior forest, it has now I think the densest, tallest collection of metal structures to be found anywhere. Under (forest and) soil are very sturdy metamorphic rocks. Very close to surface because of glacial scrapings. This matters a lot if one desires to install >200,000 ton structures on 2500 m^2 footprints. In many places, foundations for such structures can be built at great cost. In Manhattan it is much easier. Good bones.

Tying back to topic, this forest happened to be at an excellent port, where people chose to build an empire, and geology aided large construction. It really had no chance.

 

You can read about what forests do globally

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-018-0490-x#author-information

And in US in particular

Reforestation can sequester two petagrams of carbon in US topsoils in a century | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

In the recent 2 paywalled articles linked above. Not that paywall is such a big barrier

US forests are very well studied by 'Forest Inventory and Analysis.

Forest Inventory and Analysis National Program

Any national forest study and many at smaller scales use data from >100.00 permanent plots which interestingly have secret locations. I guess 'they' just don't want people removing plot markers or what not. Plot data are available though. Lots of data

 

Elephants affect forest distributions in several ways. Africa is losing elephant numbers and those remaining are 'supposed to' stay in Reserve areas.

Elephant declines imperil Africa's forests: As elephant populations shrink, forest composition and structure will undergo dramatic change -- ScienceDaily

 

Cloud forests:

Cloud forest in Peru

Relatively small in area. Oozing with biodiversity. More climate-sensitive than many others. I like Metcalfe's baggie although it is small and not replicated. Science is challenging way out yonder!

Larger canopy critters like birds and monkeys may suffer exclusion. Smaller ones, like mice and ants probably won't. Quite interesting work though for a few of us odd bods.

 

While it is embarrassing to recently dominate posting around here, compulsions are...what they are.

You have no doubt (?) wondered what were the most abundant types of forest trees, ever. Answer is simple. Lepidodendron was the first tall plant, by expressing genes for lignin (much sturdier than cellulose, those genes having been prior present in marine algae that did not use them because algae is floaty and does not need sturdiness). Youneeda picture:



For reasons that remain controversial, 'Leps' did not entirely decompose after death - and there's your coal.

For about 80 million years, 'Lep' defined forests. First to reach upwards and at a time where much continental area had suitable climate. They had the whole thing nailed until -CO2 changed climate and conifers innovated into the picture. Perhaps because conifers were sexual innovators as well Their subsequent forest domination (of similar duration) featured broad proliferation of species. No single group held an upper hand.

Then, more earth-changes and angiosperms (oaks and many others - you know them) came to tree making. And to sex because 'angio' use animals to transfer genetic information. Brings us to where we are now; angios have diversified broadly, conifers have not gone away but some retreat into colder areas. Forests now have so many types of trees that no one approaches bigness of past Lepidodendron .

Earth's forest has had three thirds of similar duration. Only the first was species-narrow. So, concede that game to the leps.

And what about Lepidodendron now? Their group persists as tiny little tombstones, scarcely hinting at terrestrial earth's biggest carbon thing ever. Youneedanother picture:



In forest walks, you may very well have seen lycopods at your feet. Perhaps not read inscription on tombstone. Thus it falls to me; weird over-poster.

 

First forest @26. Also there were tree ferns way back then, which retain their arboreal stature. Especially in tropics. Not a good idea to grab a tree fern though because they usually have serious spines on their stems.

First forest also had liverworts; the little plant that couldn't. By which I mean they never did the lignin thing and never got tall. New research reveals liverworts may have been infected by fungi from the get-go:

Research shows first land plants were parasitized by microbes

Leads us to another useful perspective on forests. They are never just trees. They always have some fungal action, whether helpful or parasitic.

 

Sure. photo@29 shows epiphytic moss and fungi. Latter are doing wood decomposition. That tree is at least partially dead. As long as it stands it can keep being a trellis.

 

Forests consist of trees that did an 'odd' lignin-vertical thing; much changing how earth biology has progressed. Story here:

Thanks to Plants, We Will Never Find a Planet Like Earth - Scientific American

suggests it may not be common for biological planets to go thisaway. I guess we'll find out, in a century or few.

 

And yet, lignin-making genes were in marine red algae before 400 million years. They had no use and did not express those genes, but it does seem odd.

You just need to get a handle on how earth biology ran in the old days. Marine bacteria from >3 billion years until ~ 600 million. Then (we don't know why/how), multi-cellular marine critters came along. Many different types crawled ashore ~ 400 million years ago, and then the fun really began.

Since then, plants seem to have had a ~ smooth evolutionary path while animals have gone through vast revolutions. In our pride we see top mammals (primates) bigly, but dino-times spanned much longer here.

I reckon we have little basis to suppose how life might look on other planets. Except that there ought to be a lot of life out there.

 

New forests in China are mostly plantations with one or a few tree species:

Survival and restoration of China's native forests imperiled by proliferating tree plantations -- ScienceDaily

How bad monoculture is for other species is more complicated than it might appear from this report. One would need to read a lot to cover that topic.

Here it may be enough to recognize that managed forests are the way of the future. Except at very high northern latitudes.

 

Forests host animals including primates. Including the very rare primates:

World's rarest ape on the edge of extinction | EurekAlert! Science News

I do hope that Laurance & company are doing something more direct concerning Batang-Toru dam.

 

Heights of forests can be measured with LIDAR. There are 'returns' from top of canopy all the way down to open ground (where it can be seen). Speed of light is known and if your clocks are good enough, data comes.

So far this has been done from a few airplane platforms, with incomplete global coverage. A new LIDAR will go to International Space Station and achieve more coverage:

May the forest be with you: GEDI moves toward launch to space station -- ScienceDaily

Assuming all goes well, it may function for as long as ISS stays up and occupied. With limitation of ISS orbital inclination of 52 degrees means it does not pass over far-northern boreal and taiga forests. The gadget may look enough 'to the side' to catch such forests which extend to 72 degrees north.

This page:

Instrument Overview - GEDI

suggests very little off-nadir imaging, so that's out. Further that they intend to operate for only two years. Further that it is already installed. So, somewhat confusing.

I disagree that 1 light-nansecond is 15 cm though. Have always been told it's 30 cm. Space folks should know that, right?

 

I've not linked to this before:

How Fungi Saved the World — Feed the data monster

Says things that I've said before which of course makes it worth mentioning

In comments see a mention of Nelson et al 2016, providing evidence that fungi were not clearly responsible. Actual situation was probably a mix of fungal evolution and trees growing in swampy places. The latter, such as you'd see in natural history museum dioramas. However, trees that currently do well in usually waterlogged soils have specialized rooting structures that have not been reported for 'coal forests' of yore. So it's a confusing situation.

Andrew Tomes' writing predates Nelson so it's OK for him not to mention it. Krulwich was mentioned in comments and here also:

The Fantastically Strange Origin of Most Coal on Earth – Phenomena: Curiously Krulwich

Gets excused on the same basis.

 

The bigness of global forests, and other living things:

Plants outweigh all other life on Earth | Science | AAAS

Links to non-paywalled source article in PNAS.

 

Which tree species lurk in your favorite patch? You could go out and look, or fly over with a multi-spectral scanner:

New approach boosts effort to scale up biodiversity monitoring: Measuring the plant diversity using spectral data promises to improve efforts to predict how well ecosystems function -- ScienceDaily

Handy if your patch is large and your budget is also.