Latest news with #trees
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Trees can help detect volcano eruptions: Study
(NewsNation) — A recent study says trees may now be able to help detect when a volcano is about to erupt. The study by NASA and the Smithsonian Institution, looking at carbon dioxide levels around Mount Etna in Italy, compared data from sensors around the volcano with satellite imagery and discovered a strong relationship between more carbon dioxide and greener trees. 'There are plenty of satellites we can use to do this kind of analysis,' said Nicole Guinn, a volcanologist at the University of Houston. Dozens sickened in expanding salmonella outbreak linked to recalled cucumbers Across the course of two years, Guinn and a group of researchers found 16 clear spikes in carbon dioxide and the NDVI, matching magma movements underground. The patterns of the spikes were even observed farther away from faults in the mountain. When volcanoes become more active and near eruption, they push magma up closer to the surface while also releasing increased levels of carbon monoxide. The carbon monoxide boosts the health of the surrounding trees and makes the leaves greener. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
CBC
5 days ago
- General
- CBC
Tent caterpillars taking over Edmonton
The 80s were notorious for the infestation of the tent caterpillar. Today, we're seeing another rise in the number of insects popping up on trees. CBC's Tristan Mottershead went to find out how bad this situation really is.
Telegraph
20-05-2025
- Telegraph
‘They're like humans': Why we grieve the loss of a special tree
This is a fairy tale about trees. It has good knights and shadowy rogues and great gnarly oaks and elms of Olde England. But it is a modern story, so there's also conceptual art, existential environmental angst, and, of course, the double-edged sword of social media. My search for the source of our national obsession with trees begins in the North of England, under the noisy kittiwakes of Tyne Bridge, as two men go into the dock at Newcastle Crown Court. The trial of Daniel Graham and Adam Carruthers, the two men accused of felling the Sycamore Gap tree – an historic landmark of northern England – was set to be a spectacle. These unlikely criminal masterminds had triggered the rage of a nation. I attended the first two days of the trial, as the jury was selected and sworn in and the prosecution opened its case – with Richard Wright KC railing against the pair's 'moronic mission' to fell the 200-year-old sycamore next to Hadrian's Wall in 2023 – and couldn't help feeling that the whole affair was rather sad and surreal. Here were two individuals, found guilty a fortnight later, that might face jail time when they are sentenced in July. It would be the first time anyone has received a custodial sentence in Britain for tree felling. But, of course, this was no ordinary tree, this was a symbol. But of what? Locals in Newcastle had plenty to say about the case, but only on assurance of anonymity. That tree is a tricky subject about which to sit on the fence. Film of the felling was shown, and the judge repeatedly counselled jury members to recuse themselves if they felt too emotionally distraught. The man next to me in the public gallery told me he had proposed to his wife at Sycamore Gap. But outside of the courtroom, responses were nuanced. 'Locals hardly thought about the tree until it was gone,' said one man, adding that they only got angry when others got angry on X and Facebook. One Newcastle business owner thought that the response was absurd. 'We need to keep it in perspective. It's had more press than the murder of a local teenage girl,' she claimed. 'But I don't want a brick through my window for being a tree hater.' Tree haters and tree huggers: have trees now become another part of our polarised discourse? Could there be an element of virtue signalling to this outpouring of grief? 'Tree people are good people,' observes artist Nancy Cadogan whose Lost Trees series of paintings (which go on view at the Garden Museum in London this June), memorialise some 20 felled trees. The last in the series features Sycamore Gap. 'This project started to germinate back in 2022 as a result of HS2 felling trees within my area. I was struck by an extraordinary intensity of emotion and grief surrounding the felling of the trees, and a feeling of powerlessness that accompanied this,' says Cadogan. 'I then realised that the felling of trees affects people in communities around the country, in both urban and rural areas and wanted to explore the effects of that in my work.' The result is a series of stylised and elegiac landscapes. Cadogan's project is just one of several current art projects that highlight the importance of our trees. But it was ever thus. It seems that our emotional attachment to trees is firmly rooted in Britain's cultural output: trees feature in our poetry, prose and television shows. They provide the scaffolding to the verse of Shakespeare, Hardy, Larkin and Longfellow and stand proud in the paintings of Constable, Turner and Palmer. The villains in this arboreal fairy tale fit into three camps. There are the 'morons' like Graham and Carruthers, who cut down trees on a whim or a grudge. Then there are councils who, some critics claim, are chopping down trees at the same rate they are monetising – and littering – our pavements with forests of e-bikes. Finally, there is the classic malefactor: the greedy property developer. Historically, cutting down trees was an act of war. Caesar destroyed the sacred oaks of the Druids and, in more recent times, Israeli settlers have targeted Palestinian olive trees in the West Bank. 'It has reached a crescendo,' stated a spokesperson for Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights organisation in 2010. 'What might look like ad hoc violence is actually a tool the settlers are using to push back Palestinian farmers from their own land.' Today, in Britain, the motives behind tree vandalism are often unclear. Having pleaded not guilty, Graham and Carruthers failed to explain their actions. Similarly, the felling by the Toby Carvery restaurant chain of a 500-year-old oak at Whitewebbs Park in Enfield this spring has left everyone confused. Was the tree dead, as Toby Carvery has claimed, or alive as the council insists? Investigations continue. While cutting down any unsightly, unwanted or inconveniently-placed tree is unlikely to see you in a Crown Court, the Northumberland sycamore was exceptional. Not only well known, and eminently photogenic – Instagrammable, we might say – it was supposedly worth the extraordinarily specific sum of £622,191. It was valued using the Capital Asset Value for Amenity Trees (CAVAT) system, which is the recognised methodology for assigning a monetary figure to a tree in a public space. (It is distinct from Tree Preservation Orders, or TPOs, which are often cited in development disputes.) The metrics by which CAVAT arrives at its magic number are, arguably, somewhat subjective. A tree is judged on its health, age, crown size and, less scientifically quantifiable, its contribution to public welfare. The most expensive tree in Britain is in Berkeley Square – known as the Berkeley Plane – with a reported value of £750,000. A tree's fame, location and owner all play a part. It's a class system for trees and the truth is that we value some more than others. To address this disparity, the Woodland Trust launched a Charter for Trees, Woods and People in 2017. Some 70 organisations and 300 community groups collected more than 60,000 stories, delving into what people love about their local trees. From these, a set of principles was formed, including planting for the future, making trees accessible to all and protecting irreplaceable specimens. While the Woodland Trust, along with the National Trust and English Heritage, does much to educate the public about the beauty and wellbeing of the nation's woodland there is also the Downton Abbey factor. Downton did for towering oaks what Eastenders does for cockney pubs. Heritage television broadcasts sweeping vistas of sculpted parks and arboretums into our living rooms. Location scouts seek out atmospheric forests, coppices and thickets: they provide the perfect backdrop for moody meetings and passionate trysts. And their moment in the limelight – the Sycamore Gap's cameo in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is another example – is well deserved and telling: the stately homes of Britain are the custodians of much of the nation's ancient woodland. 'I recognise how important trees are to everyone's existence,' says Dave Cullum, the parks and gardens manager for Boughton Estate in Northamptonshire, seat of the 10th Duke of Buccleuch. Cullum is responsible for the 'pretty stuff' surrounding the house – nicknamed 'The English Versailles' – including most of the 'veteran' trees and a network of tree-lined avenues that link to some 2,500 acres of woodland. The avenues have been devastated by Dutch elm disease, but Cullum is gradually reintroducing elms, as well as planting poplars and lime trees. The estate's trees are much loved by the Montagu family, who have owned the property since the 17 th century. 'They're amazing custodians,' says Cullum. 'If it were purely financial, you'd probably not provide the care that we give to some of the trees; you'd probably just cut the tree down and start again. But we obviously recognise the importance of maintaining that backbone. They harbour everything – memory and ecology – they connect to each other.' The Boughton estate works with the Rural Crime Team, a dedicated section of the British police force, as well as government bodies such as the Environment Agency and Natural England, to safeguard the trees and other elements of the landscape. So, does Cullum have his favourite trees on the estate? 'There are some, but don't tell the others. In particular, we have a fantastic oak that sits in an area we call Weekley Park. Not only does it carry great age, it has a magnificent crown structure. It defines itself.' Cullum also likes a small, knotty field maple – 'almost a hollow stem' – that sits quietly at the edge of the garden. 'No one really takes it in, but it has its own merit,' he says. And there are many more. 'I've been here for 22 years and I couldn't leave them. That's how it becomes, it gets you. You become a little bit like one of the elves from Lord of the Rings.' Of course, Britain is not alone in its love of trees. 'In every country there should be laws that protect trees,' says Giuseppe Penone, the Italian conceptual artist whose tree-related retrospective, Thoughts in the Roots, is on view at the Serpentine Gallery in London. Penone says we should take a leaf out of The White Goddess, Robert Graves' famous book on myth-making: 'He says that the decadence of humanity began when the penalty for cutting down a tree was no longer capital punishment.' For half a century, Penone has created sculptures and installations that riff on the fluidity of trees, an obsession dating back to his youth growing up in the mountains of Italy. 'I remember a hollow thousand-year-old chestnut tree, which you could access from a small opening and several children could fit inside,' he tells me. 'It was a constant stimulus for the imagination of our games.' Penone's show coincides with the inauguration of the 2025 Serpentine Pavilion, A Capsule in Time, by the Bangladeshi architect Marina Tabassum, which features a semi-mature Ginkgo tree at its heart. The gallery has security in place to contend with vandals. In Nordic countries, trees are a part of daily life. Disagreements about trees are the most common conflict between neighbours in Norway, observes Lars Mytting, the bestselling author of Norwegian Wood: The guide to chopping, stacking and drying wood the Scandinavian way. 'We have several rules that try to lower the tension, but they come up very often. One of the rules is that if a third of your tree could fall onto the neighbour's ground if felled, you can be forced to cut the top of the tree.' Mytting visited Sycamore Gap during an author tour to a bookshop in Corbridge. 'The felling must be one of the crudest, most stupid and culturally sadistic acts I ever have heard about,' he tells me. 'I guess we are so connected to trees because they are a bit like humans – alive, individual, stout but also fragile – and because they can outlive us by many generations.' Scandinavians largely consider trees as agricultural features rather than emotional trigger points. 'However, one tree of great significance was the 'Royal Birch' in Molde on the west coast of Norway, where a famous photo was taken of King Haakon and Prince Olav in 1940 before they went on the ship to London. That became an emblem of our wartime resistance. But, in 1981, stupid vandals almost managed to cut it down and the tree did not survive.' A new birch was planted by King Olav in 1982, Mytting tells me, but that later fell during a storm. 'And so we planted another, which is still there,' says Mytting. 'I guess you have to do the same with the Sycamore Gap Tree. It may be another tree but it will still be the Sycamore Gap Tree.' All fairy tales need sages. Enter, from woodland right, two of our national treasures. In 2017, Dame Judi Dench explained her adoration of trees in a BBC documentary. 'My life now is trees and Champagne,' she said. Michael Morpurgo, the beloved author of War Horse, is equally enamoured. In 2023, Morpurgo published My Heart Was a Tree, a collection of tree-related poems and stories. 'Every day that I can, I go for a walk in the bluebell woods behind our house,' he writes in the introduction. 'I know every one of the trees I pass. They hear me coming, they listen to me. I listen to them, to the whisper of them, the roaring of them, the creaking of them.' At his house in the heart of Devon, Morpurgo takes me on a tour of the trees in his garden: vigorous camellias, a mulberry, a large Bramley apple tree. Over their canopies, one can see the crest of Dartmoor. 'We notice them more than any other flower, they're always there,' Morpurgo says. 'They age like us, they wrinkle like us, they fall to pieces like us.' In the mid-1970s, Michael and his wife Clare founded Farms for City Children, a charity based in a local Victorian manor and a nearby farm, which introduces youngsters from urban environments to country ways. 'We've done a lot of planting of trees down on the farm. It's a work task which we've indulged in for the last 50 years when the kids come down,' says Morpurgo. 'Because we want them to feel that what they do will live on.' Morpurgo's friend and Devon neighbour, the late poet laureate Ted Hughes, equated trees with kin in his poem My Own True Family. The poem delivers a warning from the trees themselves: Hughes' theme of nature's reproach proved prophetic. Trees have become a totem for issues surrounding the climate crisis. They are often seen as the answer. 'Trees change everything,' says MIT Professor Sheila Kennedy, whose TREE FORM project is showcased at this year's Venice Biennale of Architecture. It proposes the use of branching tree forks in the building industry rather than relying on carbon-intensive materials, in the same way that chefs champion 'whole animal butchery'. A composition of branching trees, says Kennedy, 'can create new spaces for working, gathering and living that benefit people, forests and the spaces that each inhabits.' Kennedy also suggests that living trees might one day be incorporated into the structure of buildings, where they could provide 'oxygen, shade, wellness and inspiration, if they have generous access to sunlight, soil and water,' she says. 'There's a long history of using trees to support building structures, so it's fascinating to imagine an architecture of living trees and maybe one that cooperates with sustainable harvested branching trees.' There is a view that trees are becoming secular icons of worship. 'I think they always have been,' says Morpurgo. 'It's interesting how we get taken back to our earlier times. Down here there is a great tradition of carvings in churches of the Green Man [a pagan tree person and symbol of fertility which also appeared on the invitation to King Charles' coronation]. It's a growing person and a tree talking together and becoming one. It's the whole business of our shared life on this planet. Trees are an emblem for that. In a way, they've been the polar bear or the elephant of how we see our local nature.' A seismic, but much needed, shift has occurred in attitudes towards trees, says Morpurgo. 'That all trees are doing some good to us on this planet has been a late realisation amongst us all.' And perhaps that recognition – one that requires constant reinforcement – is as close as we will get to a fairy tale ending to this story.
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
'This should not be published': Scientists throw shade on study claiming trees 'talk' before solar eclipses
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The idea that trees communicate with each other during an eclipse and synchronize their behavior — as has been widely reported recently — is a compelling one. The fascinating idea sprang out of research detecting bioelectric signals in spruce trees (Picea abies) in Italy's Dolomite mountains during a 2-hour-long partial solar eclipse. But many researchers aren't convinced, saying the number of trees studied is tiny and that there are more plausible explanations for the results. Some 6,600 feet (2,000 meters) above sea level, Alessandro Chiolerio, a physicist at the Italian Institute of Technology, Monica Gagliano, an ecologist at Southern Cross University in Australia, and their colleagues attached remote sensors to three healthy spruce trees — two of about 70 years old and the other around 20 years old — and to five tree stumps. The sensors were there to detect electrical currents created when charged molecules travel through the cells of living organisms. "Our results demonstrated that spruce trees exhibited synchronized changes in their bioelectrical activity in anticipation of a solar eclipse," Gagliano told Live Science. "Remarkably, this synchronization began several hours before the eclipse occurred, suggesting not just a passive reaction to darkness but an active, anticipatory response." "The strongest signs of this early response were observed in older trees, hinting at a memory-like capacity linked to their age and environmental history," she said. "This study provides the first evidence that trees in a forest can behave as a coordinated collective system — functioning more like an integrated network than just as isolated individuals." So, what exactly is going on in this work published April 30 in Royal Society Open Science, and how seriously should we take it? "There is strong concern among my colleagues that this paper was published," James Cahill, a plant ecologist at the University of Alberta in Canada, told Live Science. "The paper doesn't meet what I would say are the basic standards needed for science. Its sample size is three, which is very low and they have a super large number of variables that they're testing — over 10 — and you're always going to find a pattern if you do something like that." Related: Tropical tree in Panama has evolved to kill its 'enemies' with lightning Many plants and animals respond to the day-night cycles of light and dark, so plants responding to approaching darkness shouldn't be a surprise, he said. "If you turn off the lights in a greenhouse or at night, every plant will show reduced water transpiration and reduced photosynthesis. Is that coordination?" asked Cahill. This would also alter their bioelectrical signals, and every biological material has bioelectrical signals, he added, so there's nothing fancy in detecting changes to these. It's also unlikely there's an evolutionary survival advantage to responding to an eclipse, Cahill pointed out, given how briefly and infrequently they occur. Instead, he thinks the plants are responding with capabilities that have evolved for a different reason. "It is very easy to imagine that sensory systems evolved for other purposes that are then hijacked in an eclipse. Plants respond to darkness and an eclipse causes darkness. But it doesn't mean that the eclipse caused the response to darkness." And when it comes to the bioelectrical signals changing before the eclipse rather than during it, there's also a simple possible answer, he said. "Plants have elaborate sensory systems for detecting light and a lot of plants can detect UV light and blue light changes and those tend to come first across the horizon. A lot of plants will start changing their photosynthetic machinery before sunrise," said Cahill. "I'm not sure this is anything different." "It's disappointing that this paper is getting so much press because it's just an idea and there's not much here other than assertion," said Cahill. "This could have been replicated, it should be replicated. There's no understanding of why they are focusing on electrical signals instead of the photosynthetic rate. They also didn't compare this to just night and day, which is the obvious thing to do and that's very worrisome to me." Other researchers approached by Live Science said similar things. "I don't think anything can be concluded from an experiment that does not include replicates," Justine Karst, a forest ecologist at the University of Alberta in Canada, told Live Science. Researchers in the field are also skeptical about the idea that older trees responded more strongly. There are three living trees in the study and there are assertions about young versus old, said Cahill, "but they only have one young plant and it's in a different site. And it's not even young, it's 20 years old." Asked about the small sample size, Chiolerio told Live Science how difficult it was to spend whole days working at almost 7,000 feet above sea level to attach sensors to trees when temperatures go down to 5 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 15 degrees Celsius). "Due to the complexity of the field setup — monitoring trees 24/7 in alpine conditions — we focused on a small number of carefully selected individuals. Despite the sample size, the data were robust and consistent across trees and sites," said Gagliano. "Still, this is an early study, and we view it as a foundation for broader research." Karst compared the new findings to experimental studies that seemed to reveal a wood-wide web in which trees communicate and share resources via underground networks of mycorrhizal fungi. She was a co-author of work published in 2023 showing that there was insufficient evidence for the idea. "I hoped that after the wood-wide web fell apart, journalists would be more skeptical about research claiming that 'trees talk'," said Karst. RELATED STORIES —Scientists find the best crops to grow during the apocalypse —'Gossiping neighbors': Plants didn't evolve to be kind to each other, study finds —'Alien plant' fossil discovered near Utah ghost town doesn't belong to any known plant families, living or extinct Cahill is in favor of studying plant behavior to probe whether these organisms have cognition — he is doing work in that area himself — but says the level of evidence needs to be very high before claims are made. "How would we test cognition in plants? I'm sympathetic to the idea of a different approach, but papers like this make it really hard to do very strong science in a controversial area," said Cahill. "It's very disappointing because the Royal Society has had a great reputation. But this should not be published." In response to questions about the study's publication, The Royal Society Open Science sent Live Science the following comment. "All research published by Royal Society Open Science goes through thorough peer review before being accepted." They also noted the role post-publication discussion plays in their process. "We encourage academic debate and constructive criticism of the research published in our journals. Any reader is able to submit a comment on research published in Open Science, this will be peer reviewed and published alongside an invited reply from the original authors." Editor's Note: This story was updated at 1:10 p.m. EDT to include comment from the Royal Society Open Science.
Times
16-05-2025
- Times
Trees find their voice in AI-powered Chelsea garden
Hermann Hesse once wrote: 'Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth.' The Chelsea Flower Show will be taking Hesse's words literally this year, with a garden that tells people how it is feeling. Visitors will be invited to ask the 12 trees of the Avanade Intelligent Garden how they are. Through the power of artificial intelligence, the trees will tell them. So far, as they endure the driest spring in almost 70 years, their main response has been: 'Thirsty.' Each of the 12 trees, which include a Sichuan pepper, white willow, purple walnut, river birch and hawthorn, have been fitted with sensors that monitor everything from the pH balance and
