Disappearance of the face of eastern hemorrhoids. A small fly can save them

Deciduous forests are made up of many types of trees that lose their leaves in winter: oak, birch, ash, maple, poplar. When an ash disappears from a deciduous forest – perhaps because it has been killed by emerald ash – other deciduous trees pick up the carnage. Hemlock is dominated by a type of tree. They grow in massive, fluctuating homogeneous greens that are alive 365 days a year. When the hemlock disappears from the forest, there is not much left.

Hemocks are a basic species, which plays a key role in structuring ecological communities. Their biggest contribution is the deep shadow they create. 1 percent of the sunlight that hits the Hemlock canopy reaches the forest floor. The feathered branches of the trees descend to the ground instead of rising to the light, creating a smooth dome. The temperatures below this green tent can be 10 degrees Fahrenheit colder than the outside world at the top of the tree and another 5-10 degrees colder at the base.

In winter, the snow in the tent is kept off the ground. The deer gather on the circumference of the hemlock branches, except for the deep snow that accumulates under the leafless deciduous trees. Nightingales and barn owls nest in the upper campaigns of the hemlock. The hares of the snowshoe bite their green branches. Porcupines scrape the skin of its rich tannin. In the spring, while the sun casts a ray and melts snow and ice elsewhere, the heme retains snow circles on the trunk, which slowly flow into the surrounding rivers and streams and keep them cool. Trout are dependent on these refrigerating infusions of frozen water, as are many species of salamanders, frogs, toads and flies.

Humans know it too, even if they don’t know it. Hemules use water more conservative rather than deciduous tree species, because the dense branches produce moist, cool microclimates. “If you have hammers with streams that are replaced by hardwoods that use more water, you have a chance to dry them out at least in the summer,” said Orwig, a Harvard Forest environmentalist. These streams are used for swimming, fishing and recreation — the main part of the Northeast regional identity. No matter where they grow, hemoles offer the economic and aesthetic benefits that humans have. A examination which examined the decline in nine regions in central Connecticut and central Massachusetts, which found a decline in property values ​​of $ 105 million.

“Most people look at hemos like this green thing,” Whitmore of Cornell said. “But then you go deeper and you see some very important ecosystem functions related to cooling and the climate that they create.”

And hemlocks are not good for the animals and humans that live around them. They are also very good at capturing carbon dioxide.

Hemlock can seize approximately 12 metric tons of carbon dioxide in two and a half acres, according to a 2002 study he compared hemuga to other tree species. That’s more CO₂ studied than oak and ponderosa pines. But thinning wool can turn hemlocks from carbon sinks into carbon sources. That already happened in 2014 in the Harvard forest. The researchers documented the hemlock position that began to produce carbon instead of carbon sequestration. “The forest can act as a carbon source when it loses its hemlock,” Orwig helped document that the sink changed from one source to another. 2020 study, he said.

Harvard in advance examination has shown that thinning wool can take an 8 percent bite from carbon sequestration capabilities in Northeastern forests between 2000 and 2040. But this research and others predict that opportunistic tree species, especially black birch trees, will eventually replace the dead. and dying hemlock – a trend researchers have already noticed in the northeastern forests. By 2040, Harvard research predicts that these black birches will catch 12 percent more they replaced carbon rather than heme. But in the short term, reducing carbon sequestration by 8 percent is a big deal, says Audrey Barker Plotkin, Harvard’s leading forest scientist, who has spent years studying the impact of invaders on hemorrhoids.