Forests of the World

Most interest in forests relates to living trees. Or with what you can build from wood, or how warm fires are. No regrets However when a book comes along that describes how sugars and rarer chemicals in wood flavor (even define) foods and drinks, it is my job to give notice. Here it is, printed on paper that was trees probably last year:

Or one could use kindle (TM)

 

Rosewood. Wish I had happier things to say, in particular about the main global consumers of it:

The fight to protect the world’s most trafficked wild commodity

 

Fires in Amazon forests are in the news. this year's season can be compared with others since 2003 here:

Forecast - Global Fire Emissions Database

(tip: mouse pointer over years below graphs to highlight)

See in some regions fire #s equal 2005 which was a strong drought. I really don't know if this year has been very dry. These are initiated for land clearing, because soybeans and cows.

Brazil President is getting media blame over this.

Also mentioning a 2018 article about 1400-year drought history

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2017WR021788

Showing (Figure 5b) that multi-year drought were common there in earlier centuries.

 

On a happier note, being a 'level 1' citizen scientist is easy:

Smithsonian Scientists Are Using Ginkgo Leaves to Study Climate Change—They Need Your Help | At the Smithsonian | Smithsonian

Going to 'level 2' and actually counting stomatal pores take more effort. To me, their leaf photomicrograph looks like something that could be classified by image analysis automata, but project leaders seem not to agree.

 

There is also a recent article on National Geographic web site about Amazon fires. Asserted there that 2019 has not been a dry year.

 

Photosynthesis in forests generates a lot of oxygen. Decomposition in forests consumes it. If forest burns instead, it get consumed to the same extent*, but thousands of times faster.

This is important to realize when talking about metaphorical lungs. So, read this and get you fix of fixed oxygen.

Destructive Amazon Fires Do Not Threaten Earth's Oxygen, Expert Says - Scientific American

Aha! it is the buried undecomposed organic matter that accounts for Earth's oxygenated atmosphere. To put a finer point on it, the coal, oil, and geologically stored methane that is not burned.

So, while there are many excellent reasons not to burn forests, oxygen is not one of them.

*not quite to the same extent. Some burnt forest gets converted to charcoal (biochar in 'the business') that decomposes thousands of times slower than plant debris. During its long residence in soils, it can enhance soil fertiity. Burnt forests are complicated...

 

Forest photosynthesis gets allocated to three main areas. One part leaf production (or else there would be no photosynthesis), one part wood production (gotta push those leaves up because everybody else is doing it), and two parts to below ground. The last makes roots, their exudates to soil, and their 'payments' to fungi for delivering nutrients and water. I thought y'all might be interested in how that pie gets sliced.

There are surely variations in those fractions across forests of the world. I just started working on that.

 

Many trees make early spring leaves by sending up carbohydrates from fat roots. Timing, initiation, and hormonal signals for this may be (sorta kinda) known, but I don't read that literature. It is a wrinkle in global stem/root carbon trafficking (in the eyes of some).

Plant enzymes for starch/sugar conversions are not rare and not 'costly'. Strings and sheets of sugar polymers lay open to hydrolytic enzymes without steric interference. I don't get excited thinking about that stuff.

Perhaps more interesting is that if shallow soils are still frozen, only deeper roots can supply liquid water to send carbohydrates up for new-leaf making. That is also what tappers tap, so if you are in the biz, pile snow around stems of your tap trees mid winter. Makes a blanket so shallow soils won't freeze.

 

"I never was too interested in plant physiology during my college"

This is exactly the problem. Students get lectures on and exams related to simple-to-test ideas, while fun subtle things dwell beyond your Profs. Many are simply not up to the task. But forests sing and dance like crazy and it is extremely interesting.

 

Perhaps I protesteth too much. But making science as boring as possible seems quite widespread to me.

Salamanders are lucky to have ya.

I had a plant physiology prof (not named here) who was sure that negative pressures in plant vascular systems were actually negative.

 

Global forest leaf litter (I prefer to say retired photosynthetic machinery) is known from many local studies. Data collection is easy, but results, being so many, no longer appeal by novelty for mid-and-high-level journal publication.

How well is it known? Previously published summaries have missed much by poor search strategies. My gang of litterbugs are now being crushed by responses to our data requests. Next crushing stage will be creating and populating data structures. This has been troubled me for years, and right now it is moving forward, into a vast unknown of can we do it well?

What does it mean? Static ecological hypotheses relate to what forests are where, and what where means. Dynamic ecological hypotheses relate to how forest structures may be modified by humans, and how other anthropogenic changes (T, CO2 and nitrogen supply) change forests.

I guess most readers here are in N hemisphere autumn and raking fallen leaves off their estates. Spare a moment to consider what that trash represents.