Pulse

• My team’s new study
  is the first to look at the growth of giant sequoias in the UK – and they seem to be doing remarkably well.
• However, the changing climate means Californian giant sequoias are under threat from more frequent and extreme droughts and fires.
• More than 10% of the remaining population of around 80,000 wild trees were killed in a single fire in 2020 alone.

Tree giants from the US

What is much less well-known is that there are an estimated half a million sequoias (wild and planted) in England, dotted across the landscape. So how well are the UK giant sequoias doing? To try and answer this, my team used a technique called terrestrial laser scanning to measure the size and volume of giant sequoias.

• This gives us a map of tree structure in unprecedented detail, which we can use to estimate volume and mass, effectively allowing us to estimate the tree’s weight.
• If we know how old the trees are, we can estimate how fast they are growing and accumulating carbon.
• No native tree in the UK is taller than about 47 metres.
• Normally, you need to take samples from a tree’s core to get an accurate age estimate but that can damage the tree.

Imagine their potential

• More recently, there has been a resurgence in planting giant sequoias in the UK, particularly in urban settings.
• This is because of their carbon storage potential and perhaps because people seem to really like them.
• But these giant sequoias are here to stay and are becoming a beautiful and resilient part of our landscape.

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Mathias Disney receives funding from UKRI via NERC, the National Centre for Earth Observation (NCEO), European Space Agency, NASA and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.