Citola Blog
A Cosmic Year Ahead
Hello.
It’s a new year, with huge challenges ahead. At Citola, we’re very much aware of the need to act positively to combat climate change, and that’s just what we’re doing. The problems are immense, but we believe that 2010 promises great things.
Citola is built on the belief that the maintenance and growth of forests provides an unparalleled opportunity for positive impact on the environment and communities, and sustainable profit. Forests are our focus. A recent study with thought provoking implications for forestry has captured our attention.
Researchers at the University of Edinburgh recently published interesting findings which indicated that tree growth rate is correlated with levels of cosmic rays. Dengel, Aeby and Grace studied the growth rings of freshly-felled spruce tree trunks, initially with the intent of observing the relationship between climatological factors and growth rate. Their results were surprising; the correlation between growth and cosmic ray intensity was moderately high. In those periods where the level of cosmic rays reaching Earth was higher, the rate of tree growth was faster.
The fundamental question arising from the findings is, simply, why? Why do cosmic rays affect tree growth rate? Dengel et al offer two potential explanations for the findings. One is that the cosmic rays have some direct effect on tree growth. The other involves another variable – cloud cover.
In Citola’s upcoming blogs we’ll untangle some of the implications of these findings. We’ll look at how they sit within climate change science and debate, and what specific implications they have for forestry. In our next blog, we’ll look more closely at the enigmatically named ‘cosmic rays’…
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