Trees help to mitigate climate change by taking carbon out of the atmosphere
and storing it.
The bigger the tree, the more carbon it stores.
We recently found the tallest known tree in the Amazon
and at 88 meters it really is a
magnificent thing to see.
Such a giant tree can store as much carbon as an entire hectare of
rainforest elsewhere in the Amazon.
My name is Toby Jackson and I'm a research
scientist at the University of Cambridge Conservation Research Institute.
I'm interested in rainforests, how they work and why they're changing.
This surprisingly tall tree was discovered by Professor Eric Gorgens using LIDAR, which
is a method of remote sensing using a laser scanner on an aircraft.
LIDAR can tell us a lot about the 3D structure of the forest but there's also plenty it
can't tell us, including what species the individual trees are.
The only way to find that out
and to verify the height measurements is to go and see them for
ourselves so that's what we did.
The expedition started at Laranjal do Jari,
in the state of Amapá in Northern Brazil.
There were no roads anywhere near the trees
we wanted to see which meant travelling 220 kilometers up the river Jari by boat .
We were often waist-deep in the river hauling our heavy wooden boats up
through the rapids.
It took us five days sleeping in
hammocks by night and making as much progress upriver as possible by day to
reach the right location.
The forest on either side of the river
showed almost no signs of human activity or influence.
Imagine going 10 days without even seeing
the streak of an airplane in the sky.
It was a real privilege to travel in such a pristine environment
and to see some amazing wildlife.
The rainforest here is a vital habitat for many animals.
After traveling as far as possible by river, we continued our journey into the forest on foot.
On reaching the giant trees, we found that they were actually all the
same species::Dinizia excelsa,
known in Portuguese as Angelim vermelho.
The height measurements were collected by LIDAR were
verified in the old-fashioned way by climbing to the top of the tree, dangling
the rope down to the ground and then measuring the length of the rope.
The tallest tree we found, at 88 meters is the equivalent of 20 double-decker
buses. It dwarfs the previous record holders by almost 30 meters.
But perhaps more excitingly,
it's probably not the only one out there.
We are here in a very unique region
because we don't have any records
about these kind of trees, this kind of size, this kind of height.
happening in other parts of the Amazon.
So we really need to understand
what makes this site so unique and so
successful to host such giant trees.
LIDAR is an important tool in our research
here at the Coombs Lab.
It's transforming the way we see forests
by allowing us to create detailed maps and compare how these
change over time.
The Guiana Shield of north-eastern Amazonia,
accounts for nearly nine percent of the world's marine in tropical forests and may
contain lots of these gigantic trees which means that it could be a largest
carbon sink than previously thought.
But this trip also raises more questions.
How long did it take for these trees to grow to such immense heights?
Did these trees grow so large because there's something special about the environment? or was it
simply because they were too remote too be logged?
Will these trees still be capable of growing so large in a changing climate?
The fact that discoveries like these are still being made,
even while parts of the forest are being destroyed by logging,
burning and agricultural expansion
Demonstrates how much there is still to learn about this mysterious ecosystem.
Giant trees like the one we found,
are simply awe-inspiring.
They remind us how amazing the
Amazon rainforest is,
and how important it is to preserve it.