The giant tree valley of Mount Tao (桃山) has the highest density of carbon in the world, the research team Taiwan Champion Trees said on Friday.
The team’s research showed that Taiwan’s giant trees store an estimated 2,220 tonnes per hectare, said Taiwan Forestry Research Institute assistant researcher Rebecca Hsu (徐嘉君), who founded the group with National Cheng Kung University to search for trees taller than 65m using light detection and ranging (LiDAR) imaging.
In 2020, the team found a 79.1m tall Taiwania cryptomerioides on Mount Tao, a mountain of the Syueshan Range (雪山山脈) spanning across Taichung and Hsinchu County.
Photo courtesy of Taiwan Champion Trees
Dubbed “Taoshan sacred tree,” it was thought to be Taiwan’s tallest tree until the team found an 82m tall T cryptomerioides in 2022, before discovering an 84.1m tree of the same species last year.
In August, Hsu led a team of 36 people, in collaboration with the Trust in Nature Foundation, to investigate the amount of carbon stored in 133 giant trees that had previously been located using LiDAR.
In the course of their research, they found that 196 trees in the area had grown in diameter, most of which were Chamaecyparis formosensis, Chamaecyparis taiwanensis, T cryptomerioides, Tsuga chinensis var formosana, Cunninghamia konishii and Pinus armandii, Hsu said.
Photo courtesy of Taiwan Champion Trees
The total carbon storage of the giant tree valley was calculated using the sample area of about 1.17 hectares, the spreading coefficients announced by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the carbon conversion factors for tree species, with tree strata, deadwood and six soil sampling points taken into account, she said.
The results showed the carbon storage of Mount Tao’s giant trees was up to 2,220 tonnes per hectare, surpassing the 1,867 tonnes per hectare of the mountain ash forests of the Central Highlands of Australia’s Victoria state, she said.
Citing research published in the scientific journal Nature, Hsu said that a tree’s carbon sequestration rate increases with its age, countering the myth that old trees could not efficiently store carbon.
Other research showed that about 70 percent of a forest’s carbon is stored in trees of at least 70cm in diameter at breast height (DBH), she added.
The total carbon storage of Mount Tao’s giant tree valley is the most in the world, as most of its trees have a DBH of more than 60cm, the collective carbon storage of which account for about 80 percent of the entire woods, she said.
That attests to the significance of conserving giant trees, she said.
Only carbon sinks of afforested land can be converted into carbon credits and traded on emissions markets, as required by regulations in Taiwan and abroad, Hsu said.
However, the team’s research demonstrated that primary forests can substantially boost carbon sinks with good carbon fixation rates, she said, adding that carbon sinks of primary forests should also be included in credit calculations to encourage the conservation of giant trees.
Director Arthur Mai (麥覺明) filmed Hsu and her team’s investigation for a short documentary, which is to be released on YouTube and the foundation’s Facebook page at 8:30pm on Nov. 11.
The documentary would prove that Taiwan has one of the most valuable millennium forests in the world, the foundation said.
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