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Holy Oak

6/30/2016

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Basking Ridge, New Jersey is home to the oldest white oak tree in the country, and it is dying.  It’s not dying from neglect. The tree, sometimes referred to as “Holy Oak”, has been loved, cared for and revered since farmers first built a church beside it in 1717 when it was already nearly 300 years old. The town has  protected the tree ever since, and even in times of drought, citizens make sure that Holy Oak’s thirst is quenched. No one knows why the tree is dying, but at more than 600 years old, she has had a long, magnificent life. 

The Reverend Dennis Jones, who is the present pastor of the Basking Ridge Presbyterian Church and a township native, said “Our oak tree is something we’re all very proud of and we take the stewardship of that tree very seriously.”
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It’s unfortunate that humanity as a whole has not taken the stewardship of our planet’s forests as seriously. 

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) estimates that about 36 football fields worth of trees are lost every minute. 90 percent of the continental United State’s indigenous forest has disappeared since 1600. A major factor in global climate change, deforestation also causes countless other kinds of complications. Several diseases, for example, are believed to have spread to humans because of habitat destruction. With loss of habitat, animals are forced to move closer to humans who have little or no immunity to previously isolated diseases. Deforestation can set off devastating chains of events that often have global reach.

The causes of deforestation are many, and all of them are about us. Causes include land clearing for agriculture and cattle ranching, housing and urbanization, logging  for paper, furniture and homes, mining, tree harvesting for consumer items like oil from palm trees as well as forest fires. Forest fires are becoming more frequent as climate change toys with weather patterns, and a vicious cycle is set in motion.

Even the water cycle is affected by deforestation because trees absorb rain water, releasing water vapor into the atmosphere. Deforestation causes species extinction, soil erosion, flooding, water pollution, climate imbalance and increased global warming.

Clearly, the solution to the problem is to plant more trees. We can also ban clear cutting and control the felling of trees, but reforestation is the bigger solution. Reforestation restores ecosystems and reduces the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere if, and when, enough trees are planted. There are several initiatives under way, and many organizations are trying to plant as many trees as possible, but it has so far been impossible to keep up with the numbers of trees that are already lost. What we need is divine intervention.

Enter former NASA engineer, Lauren Fletcher and his company, BIOCARBON ENGINEERING. This company is fighting deforestation by planting trees with UAV (unmanned aerial vehicles) or drone seed planting technology. They work with ecosystem restoration groups as well as industrial interests, and they aim to plant 36,000 trees a day or 1 billion trees per year. Company leaders say that industrial scale deforestation requires industrial scale reforestation. “Our technology is making it easier … to plant the trees, where they need them, at a fraction of the time and cost”, says Fletcher.

Holy Oak has offspring scattered all over New Jersey from a time about 10 years ago when her acorns were collected and grown at a local college. People who bought the saplings took them home and planted them. They are between 5 and 10 feet tall now, and when Holy Oak’s days are over, her offspring are ready to take her place.

Now our planet’s forests need replacing. In what many of us would have once described as a science fiction world, it may very well take drone technology to bring us back from the precipice. In the meantime, I love the story of Holy Oak, and I hope that all of us learn to revere our trees as much as she has been revered over the years.



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Fanning the Flames

6/20/2016

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We all know about California’s drought and the impact it’s having on agriculture. We’ve all heard about the changes in behavior so many Californians have had to make to reduce their water usage. We’ve all heard the awful news about California’s seemingly endless wildfires. The extent to which trees are being affected in California is an environmental problem that may be insurmountable. An estimated 30 million California trees perished last year alone, and this is happening at a time when California (and the planet) needs forests desperately. This is the fifth year of California’s drought.
If the fires aren’t devastating enough, other crushing problems occur when trees don’t get enough water. They become so debilitated that they develop extreme susceptibility to parasites. The resin that flows through the cells in the inner bark of trees works very much like the blood that flows through our veins. Trees need water to produce resin. If they can’t make resin, not only do they starve, the resin can no longer do its job as a natural pesticide. 

The worst of California’s tree pests is the bark beetle, a tiny insect, no bigger than a grain of rice, which can be more devastating than fires. Bark beetles bore holes into trees, crawl in, and reproduce. They also bring fungi into the trees, causing them to rot from the inside out. The Stanislaus, Sierra and Sequoia National Forests in the Sierra Nevadas have been hit the hardest by the bark beetle, and it is estimated that bark beetles have killed over 29 million trees. They attack coniferous and hardwood trees, including Ponderosa pine, Jeffrey pine and pinyon trees.

It gets worse. Sudden oak death (SOD) is a plant disease (Phytophthora ramorum) that attacks California trees in epidemic proportions. SOD has primarily affected oaks and tanoaks. It started on the central and northern coast of California and has spread as far north as Curry County, Oregon. The pathogen can also infect rhododendrons, camellias, redwoods, huckleberry, as well as other plants and ferns but it doesn’t seem to kill them. Ironically, SOD has a much lower mortality rate in the drier areas because rain allows the disease to spread even faster - but as oaks and tanoaks die from SOD, they become fodder for more fires. It’s estimated that around 90 million trees have died from SOD since 2000.

It is beginning to look like California trees can’t catch a break. When trees are affected, everything is affected, including the rest of the country and ultimately, the entire planet.

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The Tallest Tree in the Tropics

6/13/2016

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Trees are awe-inspiring and glorious. It’s no wonder most of the world’s religions have tree stories and lore as part of their traditions. It’s not just the Druids who worship trees. Sacred trees figure in Buddhism and Hinduism and many folk religions are closely associated with trees. Because trees are among the largest and oldest living organisms on Earth, they are breathtakingly awesome. 

Only recently, an 89.5 meter (293.6 feet) tall tree was discovered in Malaysia. It’s a yellow meranti tree growing in the Maliau Basin Conservation Area in the northeast part of the island of Borneo. Conservation scientists from England discovered the tree while flying over the remote region. This region is also referred to as “Sabah’s Lost World” because it has so far remained untouched by logging companies. While measuring its exact height is difficult, it is thought to be the tallest tree in the Tropics.

The yellow meranti is a tree that Minecraft fans are familiar with because it’s one of the species of tree that players can grow while playing the game. As real-life researchers flew over the area they used a LiDAR scanner to create 3D images of the forest canopy as part of their biodiversity mapping project, and naturally the 89.5 meter tall tree stood out.

Because giant trees are essential to sustain a healthy forest ecology, conservation is imperative. The area has faced decades of forest loss and the Sabah government has now decided to begin a concentrated restoration and conservation program.
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Meranti trees are well known for their awesome heights, but they don’t even come close to the heights reached by the towering redwoods that grow in Redwood National and State Park, California. All of the top ten tallest trees in the world are in California, and four of the five tallest trees in the world are redwoods. The tallest of these titans is called Hyperion. It measures 115.61 meters (379.3 feet) tall and is between 700 and 800 years old. That's about as awe-inspiring as it gets.

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    Brenda Cummings

    The Green Machine

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