For years, one idea has quietly shaped the way climate scientists in the US and elsewhere think about forests and drought. The theory is that the taller a tree grows, the harder it has to work to pull water from its roots all the way up to its topmost leaves, leaving giant trees more vulnerable when the rains stop. But a new study turns that assumption on its head.
In the study, ‘Height does not impair the hydraulic system of the tallest tropical Dipterocarp trees,’ published in Science, researchers from Cardiff University and the University of Exeter examined five species of dipterocarps, a family of rainforest giants that dominate the rainforests of Malaysian Borneo. They found that the tallest of these trees is not more vulnerable to drought than its shorter neighbors. The same study reports that the trees have silently built their own internal workaround for the physical challenge of moving water to such extreme heights.
