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Urban trees 'live fast, die young' compared to those in rural forests

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Re: Urban trees 'live fast, die young' compared to those in rural forests

#101

Post by zizee »

LinuxBender wrote: post #84
sandworm101 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are also some advantages. Urban trees, being more spread out, sometimes have greater sunlight and therefore grow faster. For some trees age isn't the limiting factor but height. They grow until they risk toppling over. So the urban tree does die "young", but is the goal to keep trees alive as long as possible? If it is, then there are lots of things that can be done to slow their growth and prolong their lives.…

10k above sea level would also put the tree well above major jet streams that carry pollution. A similar pattern occurred with a group in (I think) Norway, that were said to have the "fountain of youth", but it just simply turned out they were out of the way of pollution.

Sorry to nitpick, but I think you might have confused 10k feet vs 10k meters (10kms). The grandparent was using feet. 10k feet is about 3kms, the height of a medium sized mountain. 10kms is about the height of Everest, whose peak does not have trees at all. I don't know at what elevation trees stop appearing, but it would be well under 10kms.

Re: Urban trees 'live fast, die young' compared to those in rural forests

#102

Post by barry-cotter »

piker wrote: post #20
cicero wrote: post #14

That's the urban lifestyle in general, isn't it?

Nope. > Life expectancy was inversely related to levels of rurality. In 2005-2009, those in large metropolitan areas had a life expectancy of 79.1 years, compared with 76.9 years in small urban towns and 76.7 years in rural areas. When stratified by gender, race, and income, life expectancy ranged from 67.7 years among poor black men in nonmetropolitan areas to 89.6 among poor Asian/Pacific Islander women in metropol…

Very, very confounded correlations study. Given the greater prevalence of schizophrenia in urban dwellers and the negative effects of air pollution we have pretty strong reasons to suspect urban living is less healthy than rural living. But in a modern economy the highly educated and high socioeconomic status people who are disproportionately healthy will almost all live in urban areas.

Correlational studies are only ever suggestive.

All of these are due to behaviour, not environment.

> Causes of death contributing most to the increasing rural-urban disparity and lower life expectancy in rural areas include heart disease

Diet

> unintentional injuries

Working on a farm is ludicrously dangerous

> COPD, lung cancer

Rural people are poorer and poorer people smoke nope

> stroke

Diet

> suicide

Comparatively easy access to guns and poisons

> and diabetes

Diet

Re: Urban trees 'live fast, die young' compared to those in rural forests

#103

Post by lostmsu »

IvyMike wrote: post #50
lostmsu wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is also a very old one.

Did you read 'copse' as 'corpse', or is this really a common joke?

I did. I am not a native language speaker, so I did not notice the difference.

Re: Urban trees 'live fast, die young' compared to those in rural forests

#104

Post by freehunter »

buckthundaz wrote: post #28

Civilization is an affront to nature -- it's amazing how few of us understand this.

And yet here you are, sitting in a building supplied by endless electricity, on an electronic device that takes an absolutely insane supply chain to produce, connected to mankind's greatest invention (the Internet), posting on a website that celebrates the most high-tech and capitalist goals imaginable.

All while railing against a civilization that is completely possible to exclude yourself from. Being here, making this comment, explicitly puts you, by choice, into "civilization".

Re: Urban trees 'live fast, die young' compared to those in rural forests

#105

Post by banana_smoothie »

zizee wrote: post #101
LinuxBender wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10k above sea level would also put the tree well above major jet streams that carry pollution. A similar pattern occurred with a group in (I think) Norway, that were said to have the "fountain of youth", but it just simply turned out they were out of the way of pollution.

Sorry to nitpick, but I think you might have confused 10k feet vs 10k meters (10kms). The grandparent was using feet. 10k feet is about 3kms, the height of a medium sized mountain. 10kms is about the height of Everest, whose peak does not have trees at all. I don't know at what elevation trees stop appearing, but it would be well under 10kms.

> I don't know at what elevation trees stop appearing

This is known as the "tree line", and varies a lot based on particular location (due to sun exposure, climate, and plant species). Here's a wikipedia article which outlines where the tree line: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_line . Summary is that the treeline is rarely above 12k feet (3500m), though in Bolivia it gets all the way up to 17k feet (5200m)!!

You are probably correct w.r.t. the main flow of the jet stream being far in excess of the highest tree lines in the world. The jet stream's main flow is usually 30k feet (10k meters) or higher.

Re: Urban trees 'live fast, die young' compared to those in rural forests

#106

Post by wavefunction »

beat wrote: post #86
atulatul wrote: post #32

I highly recommend reading the book "The Hidden Life Of Trees" by Peter Wohlleben There is an informative chapter/section called Street Kids about trees planted along the streets primarily in urban areas. How their health is impacted by having no network of close cousins nearby to communicate/ suppy nutrients via root/fungi, etc. https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Life-Trees-Illustrated/dp/1771...

The "close cousins" thing is interesting for me. I live in a tree-lined streets neighborhood. Historically, they chose species on a street-by-street basis. My street was all linden trees for the curb trees (except for a last remaining elm, we've lost most of them to Dutch Elm disease). A few years back, a severe wind storm took out seven of the curb trees on my block, in a cluster (and smashed a few cars in the proce…

Hackberrys grow very quickly, you can water them and watch it grow like a weed. They also fall down in storms. I removed one from my yard and will be planting an Eastern Persimmon instead.

Re: Urban trees 'live fast, die young' compared to those in rural forests

#107

Post by yellowapple »

sandworm101 wrote: post #58
atulatul wrote: post #32

I highly recommend reading the book "The Hidden Life Of Trees" by Peter Wohlleben There is an informative chapter/section called Street Kids about trees planted along the streets primarily in urban areas. How their health is impacted by having no network of close cousins nearby to communicate/ suppy nutrients via root/fungi, etc. https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Life-Trees-Illustrated/dp/1771...

There are also some advantages. Urban trees, being more spread out, sometimes have greater sunlight and therefore grow faster. For some trees age isn't the limiting factor but height. They grow until they risk toppling over. So the urban tree does die "young", but is the goal to keep trees alive as long as possible? If it is, then there are lots of things that can be done to slow their growth and prolong their lives.…

> So the urban tree does die "young", but is the goal to keep trees alive as long as possible?

In an urban area, it should be. Not only does it cost money to have to replace a dead tree, but a dead (or even not-quite-yet-dead) tree runs the risk of falling over, which means damaging property, blocking streets/sidewalks, or even injuring/killing animals (including humans).

Re: Urban trees 'live fast, die young' compared to those in rural forests

#108

Post by dkoubsky »

neuronic wrote: post #4

I wonder if urban trees will adapt to city life - but I guess it depends on where the cities get their new trees. If it's not from the city's tree gene pool we will put forest trees into cities and they won't far any better 200 years from now.

The London plane tree, a hybrid between the eastern sycamore and the american sycamore, could be an example of this. They were some of the only trees that could cope with the heavy pollution in London during the industrial revolution. Here's more information if anyone's interested: https://londonist.com/2015/03/the-secret-history-of-the-lond...

EDIT: Looks like someone also mentioned the london plane before me

Re: Urban trees 'live fast, die young' compared to those in rural forests

#109

Post by yellowapple »

RobotCaleb wrote: post #78
sevensor wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention people constantly ramming vehicles into them. There's not a tree in my town that doesn't have a big scar on the trunk at bumper level.

Not a single one?

It's a town tradition to inaugurate a tree's planting by ramming it with a car.

Re: Urban trees 'live fast, die young' compared to those in rural forests

#110

Post by ekianjo »

ambicapter wrote: post #46
ekianjo wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Happening in Paris as well: the city keeps cutting trees that are more than 100 years old just because they can: http://www.leparisien.fr/paris-75/paris-la-place-de-la-natio...

Article says that they took down the trees in order to undertake a study on how leak-proof the subway lines beneath the trees were? There's got to be a better way.

That's just the excuse they needed.
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