California · Wired
California’s Tallest and Most Iconic Trees Are Getting Heatstroke
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This story originally appeared on Vox and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Key facts
- This story originally appeared on Vox and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration
- A grove of coast redwood trees is a forest of forests
- For millennia, redwoods have been the anchors of this incredibly stable ecosystem; they can even survive wildfires that devastate other tree species
- They’ve also been the source of plenty of human inspiration and drive millions of dollars to California’s tourist economy
Summary
These elevated ecosystems are home to creatures like the wandering salamander, which can spend its entire life cycle on top of a single tree, and the marbled murrelet, a seabird whose nesting habits were a mystery until one day in 1974, when a tree-trimmer stumbled upon a nest 150 feet above the ground. For millennia, redwoods have been the anchors of this incredibly stable ecosystem; they can even survive wildfires that devastate other tree species. A new study from researchers at the University of California, Davis, using measurements taken twice a month for two years, found that coast redwood leaves dial down their photosynthesis during periods of extreme heat. To understand what’s happening to the redwoods—and what that may mean for the species that rely on them—first they need to take a quick foray into tree anatomy.