Citola Blog
The Cosmic And The Terrestrial
Welcome to the fourth and final part of our commentary on the findings of the academics Dengel, Aeby and Grace, and what they might mean for climate change.
Let’s forget for a moment the puzzling question of why cosmic rays are correlated with tree-growth rate, and just sit with the fact that they are. What an amazing finding! And, importantly for Citola and the forestry industry, what can it mean for forestry?
It certainly has implications for planting methodology. Solar winds, and hence cosmic-ray intensity, fluctuate around an eleven-year cycle, ergo the rate of tree growth changes around an eleven-year cycle. In sustainable, bio-diverse forests, decisions about the timing of planting could be mapped so that the highest rates of growth occur at the most crucial times for specific species at different points in their life span.
A key part of Citola’s business offering is our understanding and management of tree growth, and our management of tree-growth rates and management systems.
In plantation forestry, the cycles of harvesting and replanting could be designed so that the early years of a new crop fall within the period in which growth is at its highest rate, allowing for the most rapid replenishment of the forest, and the most sustained sequestration of CO2.
As Dengel and colleagues intimate in their report, there is still a lot of research to be done. Indeed, much larger data groups need to be observed and analysed before serious inferences can be drawn and incorporated into forestry practice.
In the meantime, a fundamental message to be gained from this science is the importance of trees: Trees as the barometers, and lungs of the world.
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