Remote mountains in Papua New Guinea (PNG) could be home to some of the world’s tallest trees at extreme altitudes, scientists said yesterday, with a new study questioning assumptions about forests at such heights.
Trees located far above sea level do not usually grow to more than 15m, but scientists from Australia and Canada found those in the Pacific Ocean nation’s pristine highlands were up to 40m tall.
“Unexpectedly, forest biomass had a major peak at altitudes of 2,400m to 3,100m, an altitude where forests fail to grow more than 15m tall in other parts of the world,” Michael Bird of James Cook University said.
The discovery questioned the belief that “mountains make small trees” with forests at such altitudes often “squat and gnarly,” lead author, Michelle Venter of Canada’s University of Northern British Columbia, said.
“However, we recorded more than 15 tree families with individuals growing 30m to 40m tall at extreme altitudes, which brings this assumption into question,” she said.
The scientists studied 195 forest plots in largely unresearched Morobe Province — from coastal lowlands at 50m above sea level to tropical forests at 3,100m — with their findings published in the Global Change Biology journal.
The University of Queensland’s John Dwyer said the study could push researchers to re-evaluate the ideal environments for growing very large trees.
“We got excited when we realized that the unique climate conditions found on the mountain tops of PNG were remarkably similar to those of temperate coastal areas known to grow the largest trees in the world,” he said.
Such climates were not unlike those in the midwest coast of the US, home to large coastal redwoods, Dwyer added.
Giant sequoias, which are closely related to the redwoods found in California, are the world’s largest trees and on average grow to more 76.2m, the US National Park Service said.
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