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Subscribe to RSSFRESNO, Calif. -- Deep in the Sierra Nevada, the famous General Grant giant sequoia tree is suffering its loss of stature in silence. What once was the world's No. 2 biggest tree has been supplanted thanks to the most comprehensive measurements taken of the largest living things on Earth.
Steve Sillett via AP
In this 2009 photo, The President towers behind other trees at Sequoia National Park.
The new No. 2 is The President, a 54,000-cubic-foot gargantuan not far from the Grant in Sequoia National Park. After 3,240 years, the giant sequoia still is growing wider at a consistent rate, which may be what most surprised the scientists examining how the sequoias and coastal redwoods will be affected by climate change and whether these trees have a role to play in combatting it.
"I consider it to be the greatest tree in all of the mountains of the world," said Stephen Sillett, a redwood researcher whose team from Humboldt State University is seeking to mathematically assess the potential of California's iconic trees to absorb planet-warming carbon dioxide.
The researchers are a part of the 10-year Redwoods and Climate Change Initiative funded by the Save the Redwoods League in San Francisco. The measurements of The President, reported in the current National Geographic, dispelled the previous notion that the big trees grow more slowly in old age.
It means, the experts say, the amount of carbon dioxide they absorb during photosynthesis continues to increase over their lifetimes.
In addition to painstaking measurements of every branch and twig, the team took 15 half-centimeter-wide core samples of The President to determine its growth rate, which they learned was stunted in the abnormally cold year of 1580 when temperatures in the Sierra hovered near freezing even in the summer and the trees remained dormant.
But that was an anomaly, Sillett said. The President adds about one cubic meter of wood a year during its short six-month growing season, making it one of the fastest-growing trees in the world. Its 2 billion leaves are thought to be the most of any tree on the planet, which would also make it one of the most efficient at transforming carbon dioxide into nourishing sugars during photosynthesis.
"We're not going to save the world with any one strategy, but part of the value of these great trees is this contribution and we're trying to get a handle on the math behind that," Sillett said.
After the equivalent of 32 working days dangling from ropes in The President, Sillett's team is closer to having a mathematical equation to determine its carbon conversion potential, as it has done with some less famous coastal redwoods. The team has analyzed a representative sample that can be used to model the capacity of the state's signature trees.
More immediately, however, the new measurements could lead to a changing of the guard in the land of giant sequoias. The park would have to update signs and brochures — and someone is going to have to correct the Wikipedia entry for "List of largest giant sequoias," which still has The President at No. 3.
Now at 93 feet in diameter and with 45,000 cubic feet of trunk volume and another 9,000 cubic feet in its branches, the tree named for President Warren G. Harding is about 15 percent larger than Grant, also known as America's Christmas Tree. Sliced into one-foot by one-foot cubes, The President would cover a football field.
Giant sequoias grow so big and for so long because their wood is resistant to the pests and disease that dwarf the lifespan of other trees, and their thick bark makes them impervious to fast-moving fire.
It's that resiliency that makes sequoias and their taller coastal redwood cousin worthy of intensive protections — and even candidates for cultivation to pull carbon from an increasingly warming atmosphere, Sillett said. Unlike white firs, which easily die and decay to send decomposing carbon back into the air, rot-resistant redwoods stay solid for hundreds of years after they fall.
Though sequoias are native to California, early settlers traveled with seedlings back to the British Isles and New Zealand, where a 15-foot diameter sequoia that is the world's biggest planted tree took root in 1850. Part of Sillett's studies involves modeling the potential growth rate of cultivated sequoia forests to determine over time how much carbon sequestering might increase.
All of that led him to a spot 7,000 feet high in the Sierra and to The President, which he calls "the ultimate example of a giant sequoia." Compared to the other giants whose silhouettes are bedraggled by lightning strikes, The President's crown is large with burly branches that are themselves as large as tree trunks.
The world's biggest tree is still the nearby General Sherman with about 2,000 cubic feet more volume than the President, but to Sillett it's not a contest.
"They're all superlative in their own way," Sillett said.
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I believe the article was meant to say 93 feet in circumference not diameter.
That is almost certainly correct since the largest tree in the world, The General Sherman tree, has a circumference of over 98 feet. It has a diameter is 25 feet, and has a height of 275 feet. It is estimated to be 2,300 – 2,700 years old.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Sherman_(tree)
"...stunted in the abnormally cold year of 1580."
Wow. Talk about a whole different time frame.
There are a number of pictures available online which show massive trees being cut down in the earlier days when harvesting wood for buildings and other projects took place. It would have been fascinating to have measurements of some of those trees from that time. Though it is also unfortunate that man didn't realize the natural treasures he was losing. If not for the foresight of a small group of determined individuals, even today we would not have what is remaining. Often it is not the majority, but minority which sees what is best for the whole.
When I visited the Park, I read how the giant sequoias had such brittle wood the only thing they were good for was roofing shingles. When they cut them down, they had to dig a ditch for them to fall into to soften the blow or the tree would shatter. What a waste.
This is not just an interesting article for me but the comments even more so :) Now, I have a question, the "warming" word was used, and since I, personally, vehemently disagree with the ill-educated but emotionally off-the-board when many well-intentioned (or not so) use the term "global warming" to refer to millions of naughty folks today who use fossil fuels.
When I did some research on the term (which, in high school I'd been taught referred to the favored hypothesis of the Ice Age cycles of development by Planet Earth), it seems that Global Warming was a time period which lasted as much as 15,000 through 25,000 years between the peaks of ice cold all over earth... 100s sub-zero Farenheit as examples...
I prefer what I was taught, not the Bollywood (of fantasy stories) well-intended (and not so well-intended) by folks who think we must stop getting energy from fossil fuels.
The superb treatise of those giant redwoods, exquisitely beautiful in their protected woods where I viewed their incredible forests in Mill Valley, California, lends credence to the true definition of "global warming."
The carbon dioxide, I understand, is that naughty use of fossil fuels which is a crux of our energy today... The Environmentalists seem to think it's limited to our driving cars and if I understand them correctly, we are scolded not to walk to work, or, perhaps, bicycle there, nor to exercise ourselves grocery shopping somehow, and the problem would be solved.
I have to laugh at such ineptitude ... although I should apologize; it's not kind of me. Still, they seem to overlook 1st, the enormous supplies of the oil preserves (which its usage by us they blame); 2nd, the way to create electricity (wind and water doesn't hack it even fractionally); and 3rd, the absolute largest source of Carbon Dioxide ... that element we so wickedly condemn ... is, frankly, 24/7 utilized by over 8 milions of human beings in the world.
Can the Environmentalists understand that production by the 800,000,000s of us humans exhaling in the world today?
What to do? What to do? I think I'd rather not know the answer to that.
Those "folks" you speak of are the world's population of climatologists with advanced degrees. Enjoy your theories constructed of thin air and delusions of grandeur. Countless scientists have been conducting research for decades from every angle. Federal, State, and local governments and private companies are all using their data to plan for the future using the best available science. You go on denying and laughing because it makes no difference to those living in the real world.
SecondSight: I think you need to do a lot more research into the subject before deciding this is going to be your opinion on it.
Unfortunately, there is a lot of imprecise childish discussion around global warming and CO2. The human population breath out "a lot" of CO2. Fossil fuels release "a bunch of CO2. Volcanoes emit "a whole lot" of CO2. Trees and vegetation absorb "enormous amounts" of CO2.
Therefore to the childish mind, things must be in some type of "natural balance". To the childish mind, there is no way a gallon of gas weighing about 6 pounds can produce almost 20 pounds of CO2. Even when you explain it in that the Carbon released is about 5.5 pounds but each Carbon atom has combined with two Oxygen atoms adding the vast majority of its new weight, there is a hesitancy to accept this. It often leads to all sorts of of emerging ideas related to this "huge quantity" of Oxygen being converted. Then if you go on to explain some of the complex roles of Oxygen in the environment and about how Oxygen appeared on the scene over the geological history of Earth, you can begin to see the confusion beginning to develop.
The beauty of developing this confusion and doubt in non-believers is the first step. Often it is what drives some to research a bit more and not just accept things at some simplistic, childish level. All of a sudden it may not be quite as simple as one thing making it and another using it up. It isn't such a simple thing. CO2 and other atmospheric gases are not just some single elements but are the byproducts of many different processes. Understanding that it doesn't exist in some finite quantity to be constantly recycled is key to understanding the complexities of the "natural balance" that they often propose. They can begin to see that the processes are extremely important.
The trouble is that often people who don't understand something tend to look for very simplistic solutions. They think in relative terms like "big", or "a lot". If you truly want to get quantitative, you need touse math. If you want to understand the Earth, geology and the constantly occurring processes going on around us, you must understand both math and chemistry. Physics doesn't hurt either. But these are the tools of science and to many who are deniers, science is just some kind of mythical hocus pocus design to fool you.
SecondSight, I must confess that about all I was able to glean from your rambling and nearly incoherent epistle was that you're in the camp that holds anthropogenic climate change ("global warming" caused by human activity) to be some sort of colossal hoax, a scientific fraud on a scale which has no precedent... except for maybe the U.S. real estate bubble of c. 2001- 2008.
I've heard some in this minority group advance some fantastically convoluted theories as a way of explaining away the evidence in favour of the majority's conclusions, often involving some sort of plot on our President's part to establish a "one world government", with blue- helmeted U.N. troops rappelling out of black helicopters to force your sons to marry men and your daughters to have abortions and practice witchcraft... or some such Doggamned bloody bollocks as that.
For my part, I think it's a bit of a stretch to imagine such a vast and all- encompassing conspiracy being carried out by a bureacracy that seems to be unable to agree, on any given day, on much of anything. Even the question of whether genocide is a bad thing seems to be a little too much for the deputies of that august body.
May I modestly suggest that, if you've that much time on your hands, there's bound to be a volunteer program in your hometown that could use some help? For example: If, like me, you live within yards of the mighty sea, you could spend a couple of afternoons a week filling sandbags- the smart money is betting that the demand for those is about to go way the hell up...!
Peace!
... and as for YOU, 1Newday- you can't fool me! I happen to know that it's turtles all the way down!
(HAR! I slay me.)
When visiting Yosemite, Redwood NP and the Seirra Nevada this summer our guide told us that sequoia actually aren't good building wood, they splinter...so all of those trees were wasted...We were in awe of both the sequoias and the redwoods....
Don't tell Republicans about this tree, they will want to chop it down and turn it into some temporary profit.
Oh BTW second sight, you're looney, you are trying to speak like you are intelligent but you just come off sounding fooloish. You are exactly the type of person who would chop this tree down for money.
Yeah, 93 feet, LOL! A little proof reading maybe.
I wonder how many toothpicks that tree can be made into. I think about 1million might be the right number although I could be wrong.
"... scientists examining how the sequoias and coastal redwoods will be affected by climate change and whether these trees have a role to play in combatting it."
I don't expect the trees to have any"role" in combatting anything. They just ARE. The trees don't watch TV or read idiotic climate change propaganda pushed by self-styled "environmentalists" and "climatologists" whose main concern is to get money and exert unwarranted power over the rest of us.
Dave, I have an idea: Why don't you take your next vacation in the South Pacific island paradise known as Kiribati? Getting there is far from convenient, but for just that reason, you won't find these sun- dappled isles overrun with loudmouths from Anaheim or Garland.
A helpful hint, though: If you want to visit Kiribati- do it soon! You see, the government of that small republic, with the virtually unanimous endorsement of its citizens, has purchased a large tract in central Fiji, in the expectation (supported by daily measurements and observations at the critical point) that their little nation will soon be swallowed up by the same warm sea from which it was born...
Say, come to think of it, a smart guy like yourself, who knows what's really going on, could probably make a killing on the real estate that's being abandoned!
Send us a postcard.
Wow Dave... since you are from Arkansaws and your mommie and her brother (your daddy) supported you in your quest to quit school in 4th grade. Please edumacate us some more on how you were to come about being so ignorant of your surroundings and knowledge of how the trees have nothing to do with climate?
What magnificent living life forms these giant trees are.
Just one of these giants is worth more to the world than all of the corrupt, blow bag jerk wads in Washington, especially the congressional idiots.
I have visited these trees before and hope to do so again in the future.
They and the Redwoods are what make up the soul of California, not the people or the politicians.
Just don't you dare call it the General Obama or someone will burn it down
Living in California you can't believe the people that live in the suburbs and plant Sequoias in their front and back yards when they are only saplings.They discover that the tress dropped needles kill off their lawn and are in sticker shock when they find out how much it is to remove them.We're talking thousands to remove one of these as the trunk alone after two decades is.they are beautiful trees but best left in the forest.