Trees can live for thousands of years
Published: Thursday, Oct 3rd 2024, 20:20
Updated At: Thursday, Oct 3rd 2024, 20:30
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Trees have different strategies for reaching old age. This is shown by a Swiss-led research team with over 100 researchers from all over the world in a new study, for which they analyzed trees that live to be over three thousand years old.
Lalasia Bialic-Murphy from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich) told the Keystone-SDA news agency that the large-scale study has provided valuable insights that are particularly important in the context of climate change. She is the lead author of the study, which was published on Thursday evening in the journal "Science".
"Trees don't age like humans or animals, where the body starts to deteriorate at some point," explained Bialic-Murphy. Many trees even become more resilient in the course of their lives. The cause of tree death is usually external influences such as forest fires or droughts. "Although trees are among the longest-living organisms on earth, we don't know much about their life cycle," said the researcher.
Life expectancy of up to 3195 years
For the study, the 120 researchers from 97 different research institutions examined data from 3.2 million measurements from forests from northern Canada to southern Brazil. According to the study, the trees examined have a life expectancy of 1.3 to 3195 years, calculated from a tree diameter of 10 centimetres.
"Surprisingly, the oldest trees in tropical forests live just as long as the oldest trees in boreal forests in Canada," said Bialic-Murphy. Until now, it has been assumed that fast-growing trees have a short life expectancy and slow-growing trees have a long life expectancy.
The researchers have now been able to show that not all trees follow this pattern. Fast-growing species really do seem to have a comparatively shorter lifespan, whereas slow-growing species are divided into three groups with low, medium and high life expectancy. According to the study, there are many different evolutionary paths that trees have developed in order to survive under different ecological conditions.
CO2 circulation
These results are particularly significant in light of the fact that trees play a crucial role in the global carbon cycle. Trees that grow faster store carbon more quickly, but are often smaller and have a shorter lifespan. This in turn means that they absorb less carbon and release this carbon back into the atmosphere more quickly when they die.
According to the study, more species-rich forests, which contain a greater mix of short- and long-lived species, also tend to sequester more carbon. According to the researchers, these findings offer important insights for the protection of biodiversity and the mitigation of climate change.
©Keystone/SDA
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