About 4 percent of the 632 “superlative” trees — those taller than 65m — recorded in Taiwan over the past decade have vanished, a research team devoted to documenting the country’s tallest trees said on Saturday.
The team, which launched a map of “Taiwanese superlative trees” last year, said the trees have grown 30cm taller per year on average during the period, but that 21 trees have disappeared in what the team has described as an “ecological catastrophe.”
With only 2.1 percent of climate zones considered conducive for the existence of tall trees, their preservation has been made more challenging by the effects of climate change and logging, experts said.
Photo courtesy of National Cheng Kung University
Taiwan has been an ideal habitat for the growth of such tees, partly thanks to the relative difficulty of reaching their locations in the island’s interior mountains, but the decrease has raised a red flag, they said.
The team, led by National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) geomatics professor Wang Chi-kuei (王驥魁), alongside Taiwan Forestry Research Institute (TFRI) assistant researcher Rebecca Hsu (徐嘉君), said the tallest known tree in Taiwan is an 84.1m tall Taiwania cryptomerioides tree.
Located near the upper course of the Daan River in north-central Taiwan, the tree is also the tallest in East Asia, TFRI said.
The team is hoping that the map (http://www.no1tree.tw), created through high-tech such as airborne light detection, could help develop better knowledge of trees in the country taller than 65m.
There are about 950 million trees in Taiwan, Wang said, adding that the team has been keeping track of a total of 941 superlative trees discovered since 2011, many of which are in the country’s Central Mountain Range (中央山脈), Hsuehshan (雪山) and Alishan (阿里山) mountain ranges.
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