OLD GROWTH TREES

Plant a tree, save the Earth?

Though planting a single tree will do little to combat the amount of emissions our University emits each year, a whole forest sequesters significant amounts of carbon. Over its lifetime, a single giant sequoia, Sequoiadendron giganteum, is estimated to sequester up to 400 tons of carbon (Robbins, 2012). When considering how little funding sustainability projects get, investing in old growth trees might be our best bet. A single sequoia, currently costing around $1,000, provides an estimated $162,000 in ecosystem services per tree per lifetime (Robbins, 2012). This includes services like air pollution control, carbon sinking, and soil erosion control. 

 

Where would we get these Giant Sequoias?

 

David Milarch, of Archangel Ancient Tree Archive, has promised to donate as many trees to the University as the University can handle. Our 391 Project group has created a proposal for the University to start with a small 5-10 acre plot, which could be used for research proposes, food production, recreation and much more in Ann Arbor.

 

Wait, you want to plant Sequoias in Michigan?

 

Yes! It is strange to think of sequoias growing anywhere besides the Pacific Coast as they are so iconic of that region, but there has been a sequoia growing in Michigan for almost a century now!

 

Alright, but why use clones?

 

In the industrial world, and in our case, people who plant trees do not want to waste time with the offspring of a great plant specimen because sexual reproduction might have altered some of the traits the planters are looking for. Plants produced by sexual reproduction are “highly heterozygous, and therefore [offspring] are likely to exhibit variability” (Korrban & Sul, 2007). Clones, one the other hand, will have exactly the same phenotypes as their counterpart (Korrban & Sul, 2007). Through years of painstaking research, David Milarch and his team have perfected the technique of cloning some of the world's oldest trees, trees which many leaders in the field of horticulture said would never be able to be cloned. Some are skeptical that these “Champion Trees" as Milarch dubs them, a tree that “has the highest combined score of three measurements: height, crown size, and diameter at breast height,” are the best trees overall. Many factors go into how much a tree grows, but most agree that genetics do play a large role (Robbins, 2012).

 

There are potential downsides to using clones. A population gets resilience from the diversity of the genetics within it: if every tree has the same genes, a single disease which might be fatal to that one genetic type would be fatal for all the trees.

 

But using clones does not mean we have to use clones only from one tree. David Milarch original non-profit, The Champion Tree Project, had the goal of finding trees best fit for certain jobs (e.g. carbon sequestration, soil retention, water filtration, etc.) and labeling them as "Champion" trees. With this catalogue of trees, the old growth forest we produce can plant clones from a variety of "champion" sequoia trees, deriving the benefits of having great genetics for carbon sequestration while maintaining genetic diversity. Read more on clones and cloning here.

 

You Said Something About Permaculture? What's That?

 

Charles Mollison, “father of permaculture," first coined the term in 1978, defining it as, “The conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the biodiversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems. It is the harmonious integration of landscape and people providing their food, energy, shelter and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable way" (Mollison, 1979). In our case, we would be designing an entire forest around giant sequoias so that the forest not only sequesters carbon, but also provides food, ground cover, nitrogen fixation and even medicinal plants. Though it was defined back in 1978, relatively little research has been done on permaculture. This means that the forest could, on top of offsetting carbon emissions, provide groundbreaking research opportunities on permaculture. Read more on permaculture here.

 

 

Sources:

 

1. Robbins, Jim. The Man who Planted Trees. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2012. Print.

2. Korban, S. S., and Sul, I.-W. “Micropropogation of Coast Redwood.” Protocols for Micropropagation of Woody Trees and Fruits. Jain, S.M., and Häggman, H. Springer, 2007. 23-32. Print.

3. Mollison, Bill. Permaculture A Designers Guide. 2nd. Tasmania: Tagari Publications, 1979. Ix 552. Print.