trees (Page 3)

We know that global warming causes more hurricanes, but do trees have anything to do with global warming?

Biologist Jeffrey Chambers discovered that the losses inflicted by Hurricane Katrina on Gulf Coast forest trees were enough to cancel out a year’s worth of new tree growth in other parts of the country. And trees absorb carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas.

Chamber says, “The carbon that will be released as these trees decompose is enough to cancel out an entire year’s worth of net gain by all US forests. And this is only from a single storm.” Investigators estimate that 320 million large trees were killed or severely damaged by the August 2005 storm.
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U.S. cities have lost more than 20% of their trees in the past 10 years, due to urban sprawl and highway construction. This has contributed to environmental and health problems that have cost an estimated $234 billion, according to the group American Forests. Gary Moll says, “America’s cities are developing a huge tree deficit.”
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But Not the Way You Think – Pollution in New York City is affecting trees?it’s making them grow bigger than the same kind of trees growing in the country. Ecologist Jillian Gregg says, “City-grown pollution, and ozone in particular, is tougher on country trees.”

Ground-level ozone is created by the action of sunlight on pollutants created in cities. However, in the city, other chemicals, such as nitric acid from cars, react with the ozone and cause the levels to drop to almost zero at night and in the winter. But this doesn’t happen to pollution that’s blown into rural areas.
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Something strange is going on in the 23,000 acre Yellowwood State Forest in Indiana. At least 5 large rocks are sitting in the tops of tall trees, wedged in the branches. The first one was discovered a few years ago, 30 feet off the ground in an 80-foot-tall chestnut oak tree and has been named Gobbler’s Rock, because it was found by a turkey hunter. The triangular rock is about 4 feet wide and a foot thick and weighs around 400 pounds. How did it get up there?

About five miles away from Gobbler’s Rock, more sandstone boulders are wedged in the upper branches of two tall sycamores that stand 100 yards apart. One boulder is nearly 45 feet off the ground, and the rocks weigh about 200 pounds each.
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