Increasingly frequent droughts, extensive deforestation and changing land use have made a tinderbox of Amazon rainforests — but some trees make out better than others.
Increasingly frequent droughts, extensive deforestation and changing land use have made a tinderbox of Amazon rainforests — but some trees make out better than others.
A new Yale-led study suggests a key variable in trees’ ability to survive fires is the thickness of their bark — the thicker it is, the more likely trees will survive.
The researchers, who analyzed trees in fire-ravaged regions of the Amazon rainforest, found that trees in wetter areas of the rain forest have thinner barks. The differences in thickness are substantial — ranging from as low as 0.5 mm of bark in the wetter regions (about as thin as a fingernail) to as much as 4 cm (about the length of a thumb) for trees in drier regions. This makes wet forests more susceptible to the ravages of fire than thicker-barked trees in drier forests.
Read more at Yale University
Image: Forest fire in Tanguro, Brazil.
