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posted by martyb on Thursday June 18 2020, @07:40AM   Printer-friendly
from the treetotallers dept.

Bedrock type under forests greatly affects tree growth, species, carbon storage:

A forest's ability to store carbon depends significantly on the bedrock beneath, according to Penn State researchers who studied forest productivity, composition and associated physical characteristics of rocks in the Appalachian ridge and Valley Region of Pennsylvania.

The results have implications for forest management, researchers suggest, because forests growing on shale bedrock store 25% more live, aboveground carbon and grow faster, taking up about 55% more carbon each year than forests growing on sandstone bedrock.

[...] To reach their conclusions, researchers analyzed forest inventory data from 565 plots on state forest and game lands managed by the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and the state Game Commission in the Appalachian Ridge and Valley Region. They used a suite of GIS-derived landscape metrics, including measures of climate, topography and soil physical properties, to identify drivers of live forest carbon dynamics in relation to bedrock.

Those forest plots contained more than 23,000 trees, ranging from 20 to 200 years old, with most being 81 to 120 years old, according to the most recent available forest inventory data. In the study dataset, 381 plots were on sandstone bedrock and 184 were on shale—a similar ratio to the amount of Pennsylvania public land on each bedrock type in the Ridge and Valley Region.

[...] While forests underlain by both shale and sandstone bedrock were oak dominated, the tree communities are quite different, Reed pointed out. Northern red oak is more dominant on shale bedrock, and chestnut oak dominates on sandstone. Most species in the forest tend to be more productive on shale, and the diversity of tree species is higher in sites on shale bedrock.

Journal Reference:
Warren P. Reed, et al. Bedrock type drives forest carbon storage and uptake across the mid-Atlantic Appalachian Ridge and Valley, U.S.A., Forest Ecology and Management (DOI: 10.1016/j.foreco.2020.117881)


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  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday June 18 2020, @01:44PM (2 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 18 2020, @01:44PM (#1009519) Journal

    Couldn't trees evolve mechanisms for their roots to slowly break up bedrock and thus grow deeper roots?

    Shirley, many generations of trees over many mega years could out evolve many generations of bedrock that might evolve counter defenses to tree roots.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 18 2020, @05:41PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 18 2020, @05:41PM (#1009609)

    Stop calling me Shirley. Also, rocks don't evolve. If the Earth "wants" to make rocks that are "vulnerable" or not; it's just going to do whatever. The evolution is all on living stuff. If the trees can't evolve to do equally well on sandstone, that suggests that it's too hard to do that. It's kind of like how viruses haven't evolved to survive the 70% ethanol-water solutions we use to kill them, or humans haven't evolved to live without water. There comes a point where all the refinement of your genome doesn't help.

    • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday June 19 2020, @07:47PM

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday June 19 2020, @07:47PM (#1010169) Journal

      What do you mean rocks don't evolve.

      What kind of a rock have you been living under? One that didn't evolve into a CEO or politician obviously.

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      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.