Giant African Baobab Trees Die Suddenly After Thousands of Years (theguardian.com)

Some of Africa's oldest and biggest baobab trees have abruptly died, wholly or in part, in the past decade, according to researchers. From a report: The trees, aged between 1,100 and 2,500 years and in some cases as wide as a bus is long, may have fallen victim to climate change, the team speculated. "We report that nine of the 13 oldest ... individuals have died, or at least their oldest parts/stems have collapsed and died, over the past 12 years," they wrote in the scientific journal Nature Plants, describing "an event of an unprecedented magnitude." "It is definitely shocking and dramatic to experience during our lifetime the demise of so many trees with millennial ages," said the study's co-author Adrian Patrut of the Babes-Bolyai University in Romania. Among the nine were four of the largest African baobabs. While the cause of the die-off remains unclear, the researchers "suspect that the demise of monumental baobabs may be associated at least in part with significant modifications of climate conditions that affect southern Africa in particular." Further research is needed, said the team from Romania, South Africa and the United States, "to support or refute this supposition."

Comments

Well now we know how the cat is doing

[SuperKendall]

Baobob trees were fine for thousands of years... ...until 2005 when researches started examining them, then nearly 70% of the oldest ones die.

HMM.

Re:Well now we know how the cat is doing

[thomst]

SuperKendall mused:

Baobob trees were fine for thousands of years... ...until 2005 when researches started examining them, then nearly 70% of the oldest ones die.

HMM.

I highly doubt climate change did them in. It just doesn't work that way.

I suspect a newly-introduced pathogen is responsible, as turned out to be the case with sudden oak death syndrome a few years ago.

Don't get me wrong. I do, indeed, expect climate change to negatively impact baobob trees, and many, many other species (coastal and montane redwoods, anyone?) - eventually. Just not yet, and not this suddenly ...

Re:Well now we know how the cat is doing

[DarkOx]

Makes you wonder. I have a oak that is about a century old on my property. The damn carpenter ants are attacking it. The arborist checked it out recently (I love this giant old tree). He said there is not much you can do. Bugs get oaks eventually its what ultimately kills them all. You take it down or you can just wait and let it fall down when its time comes (it won't hit anything but other trees) is what I was advised.

He also told me trees that age don't recover from shocks as easily as younger trees. Don't limb it anymore, if you want to let it go and see how long she lasts. Only cut obviously dead limbs out. Otherwise leave it alone, look enjoy don't touch. Was the rest of his advice.

A few points
1) Trees like all organisms have a finite life span (maybe these baobab trees are just getting to that age)
2) Trees like all things can only take so much abuse maybe being studied is in someway harmful to them.

Re:Well now we know how the cat is doing

[Luckyo]

Far more common case is that people who study trees carry pathogens that jump cross tree species. Another point is that studying trees involves invasive procedures like drilling holes in them to make assessments of age, and as any arborist worth his salt will tell you, older trees are very bad at recovering from such shocks than young trees.

Re:Well now we know how the cat is doing

[plover]

This has long been a concern of mine. Our area used to be in agricultural "Zone 2", meaning we'd usually experience a few day snap of -22F winter weather. This killed off a wide variety of non-native pests, such as those that arrived here on trucks and railcars from warmer clones during the summers. After a decade of record warm winters, we've been re-classified as Zone 4 and the transient beasts never die off now. So we've now got emerald ash borers; gypsy moths; new wasps, bees, and ants; and various roaches and snakes we've never had to deal with before, They're killing vast numbers of native trees and plants.

Re:Well now we know how the cat is doing

[thomst]

An Anonymous Coward opined:

Pathogens are finding new territories worldwide as the climate change makes that possible, in fact. Sudden Oak Death is a perfect example.

Yes, pathogens are spreading globally. Whether that's related to climate change depends on the particular pathogen and the circumstances of its appearance in new locations.

I doubt SOD is an example of climate change-mediated pathogen migration. I think it's far more likely that it was imported on the shoes of hikers who had previously visited South Asia. There are lots of Northern Californians who have traveled to Nepal, for instance, or to popular locations in the Himalayan foothills in India, such as Jammu and Kashmir, where SOD is suspected to have originated, who also enjoy hiking in California state and national parks.

It's a fact that researchers themselves were important vectors for SOD in California. (It was, as you might expect, kind of a big deal there - and those researchers were very publicly apologetic once they realized what they'd accidentally done.)

I'm just glad the oaks on our property weren't infected ...

Re:Well now we know how the cat is doing

[thomst]

blindseer commented:

Using "suddenly" and "over 12 years" together does not compute.

I beg to disagree.

When several 1500-2000 year old trees die in the same area over a period of 12 years, for no apparent reason, I'd call that "sudden."

In fact, that's exactly what I did call it. In terms of your analogy, if a half-dozen 150-year-olds die in the same area over a period of 12 months, for no apparent reason, I'd also call that "sudden," because it's the cluster of deaths that would make them stand out. One 150-year-old dying for no apparent reason is just a datum. 3 or more dying in the same area over a short time (relative to the length of their lives) is unusual enough to warrant a search for a common cause, rather than simply saying, "Oh, well. They were old. What can you do?"

Were I living in that area, and approaching my 150th birthday, I'd certainly want answers - and a ticket to somewhere else ... !

Re:Well now we know how the cat is doing

[fatwilbur]

I call BS on this anecdote after reading into it.. most agricultural zone systems have levels separated by multiple degrees (F), and there's no place on earth that's experienced that level of warming over a single decade. The periods like that which I can find (they do exist) were typically in the past and part of random noise in the data; eg. there were always periods of very cold winters to follow. No different from flipping heads 10 times in a row - it does occur in large variable data sets but not common. Even the reference documentation I can find (all climate change advocate sites) note changes to ag zones typically occur over 30 year periods or more.

While local fauna may no doubt have to adapt to new threats in the future, the much, much larger and quicker threat is invasive species introduction by human means.

Oh and know what else that ag zone shift means? The area can support growing much more food, and much more valuable food.

Well, what did they think would happen?

[ScentCone]

You stop using ground-up rhinoceros horn fertilizer on the trees, and look what happens.

Re:Segregation is the answer

[vux984]

"Remove all minorities back to their origin"

Quick Mexico! Flood the borders. If you can tilt the scales so that you have the majority, this asshat has just agreed to deport himself and his kind and confine himself to Britain or Holland or whatever.

I mean, that's assuming he's american, and white, and a he... but who is going to be against that here?

Re:I hope most of humanity is next

[jwhyche]

No we are not, but you are a idiot. I've tried to take the high road lately but this kind of talk is just imbecile.

Re:Life does not thrive

[rahvin112]

You aren't any kind of biological expert of any kind. This has nothing to do with CO2 affecting the tree, it's about the change in the climate, in particular in this case changing rainfall patterns in the area of the world where these trees grow.

They are blaming climate change because the trees exist in a part of the world that has seen one of the biggest changes in rainfall in the world over the last 20 years with around a 40% reduction in annual rainfall for over two decades. That change in rainfall amount has a drastic effect on the oldest trees because they are less able to handle changes and need significant amounts of water due to their size.