Ancient Oak Trees to Save World

June 29th, 2008

In an epic battle between Oak trees and Global Warming, the Oak trees have put up a fight for nearly 14,000 years. Recently, researches have discovered submerged oak trees in northern Missouri that may be some of the oldest ever discovered. As the war rages on, these Oak trees hold sources of carbon for thousands of years, and keep it the hell out of our atmosphere. Take that Global Warming!

“If a tree is submerged in water, its carbon will be stored for an average of 2,000 years,” said Richard Guyette, director of the MU Tree Ring Lab and research associate professor of forestry in the School of Natural Resources in the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources. “If a tree falls in a forest, that number is reduced to an average of 20 years, and in firewood, the carbon is only stored for one year.”

While I relax on my Orlando vacations, these guys talk about trees. Not the happy trees either. Just old ass trees.

“Carbon plays a huge role in climate change and information about where it goes will be very important someday soon,” said Michael C. Stambaugh, research associate in the MU Department of Forestry. “The goal is to increase our knowledge of the carbon cycle, particularly its exchange between the biosphere (plants) and atmosphere. We need to know where it goes and for how long in order to know how to offset its effects.”