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Speaker 1: Rip Current is a production of iHeart Podcasts. The views

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Speaker 1: and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect thirds of the host, producers,

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Speaker 1: or parent company listener discretion.

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Speaker 2: Is it fines.

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Speaker 3: This is a rip Current bonus episode. You don't have

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Speaker 3: to listen to follow the rip Current storyline, but it

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Speaker 3: provides more information, context, and analysis to enhance the main podcast.

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Speaker 4: Enjoy Sometimes when you're making a podcast or writing a book,

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Speaker 4: you end up leaving out some really interesting stuff in

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Speaker 4: the cause of keeping the narrative flowing. Making Rip Current

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Speaker 4: season two, I had originally intended to spend some time

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Speaker 4: looking at redwood trees themselves. They are fascinating above and

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Speaker 4: beyond just their sheer size, but I made the decision

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Speaker 4: to not get into that in the main podcast. I had, however,

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Speaker 4: already interviewed Lucy Carhulis, who is an assistant professor of

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Speaker 4: forestry at California Polytechnic Humboldt. I think her perspective helped

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Speaker 4: me understand the reverence in which so many people hold

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Speaker 4: the redwoods. We talked about many things, including redwoods as

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Speaker 4: a species, their unique properties, and the possible new threats

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Speaker 4: brought by climate change.

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Speaker 1: Here's that interview.

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Speaker 2: My name is Lucy Carhulis, and I'm an associate professor

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Speaker 2: in forestry at cal Poly Humboldt.

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Speaker 1: What kind of got you into the redwood forest area.

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Speaker 2: I grew up in Santa Refel, California, which is just

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Speaker 2: a little bit north of San Francisco, in the suburbs,

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Speaker 2: and I came up to Humble in two thousand and

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Speaker 2: three to go to school. So I went here and

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Speaker 2: was a botany major, and on the north coast of California,

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Speaker 2: you can't help but become kind of enamored with the

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Speaker 2: coast redwoods. So I ended up staying here and doing

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Speaker 2: my master's degree here. And my master's degree was focused

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Speaker 2: on redwood physiology.

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Speaker 1: Just a start of the very very basic level. What's

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Speaker 1: sort of the evolutionary function for redwoods being so much

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Speaker 1: bigger than what we have out in New Hampshire.

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Speaker 5: That's a good question.

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Speaker 2: I'm not totally sure why they grow so tall. I

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Speaker 2: mean it's a race for light, you know, you got

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Speaker 2: to in that forest type kind of outcompete your neighbors

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Speaker 2: grow a little bit taller.

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Speaker 5: There.

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Speaker 2: Wood is so structurally sound with.

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Speaker 5: All of the heartwood that they produce.

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Speaker 2: That's very resistant to rot and decay that they can

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Speaker 2: kind of afford to live so long and not succumb

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Speaker 2: to rot and kind of structural failure for.

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Speaker 5: Thousands of years.

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Speaker 2: So why they grow so tall, Like I think, it's

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Speaker 2: just kind of been a long arms race of one

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Speaker 2: upping your neighbor in a race for the light in

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Speaker 2: the north coast to where redwoods and their ancestors used

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Speaker 2: to be a lot more widespread, you know, millions of

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Speaker 2: years ago, back in the Conifer heyday, if you will,

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Speaker 2: before the rise of the angiosperms and the hardwoods, they

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Speaker 2: were way more widespread. And now you know, continents have

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Speaker 2: moved around, mountain ranges have uplifted. Now they've been able

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Speaker 2: to kind of eke out this stronghold on this narrow

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Speaker 2: strip of the coast of the North American continent, and

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Speaker 2: that's just kind of where we find them now. And

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Speaker 2: the climate here and the conditions kind of are reminiscent

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Speaker 2: of back in the Conifer heyday when the conifers kind

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Speaker 2: of reigned supreme, and so they've been able to sort

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Speaker 2: of persist here in this kind of refugium of conditions

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Speaker 2: that are similar to back when they had a much

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Speaker 2: larger range.

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Speaker 1: When you say they're more structurally sound, what does that

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Speaker 1: mean exactly?

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Speaker 2: Like other species, say, some of the true furs, like

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Speaker 2: in a genus Abes, they don't really invest in their

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Speaker 2: wood the same way that redwood does, and a lot

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Speaker 2: of the kuper Sacee the Cyprus family that redwood is

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Speaker 2: in a lot of those trees, they don't make resin

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Speaker 2: ducts like you see in the pines in their wood

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Speaker 2: like anatomically, but their approach to having strong rot resistant

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Speaker 2: wood is to invest in really bomber heartwood, so putting

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Speaker 2: in tannins and a bunch of kind of chemicals and

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Speaker 2: secondary compounds, secondary metabolic compounds like waste products into their

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Speaker 2: wood that make the wood extremely anti fungal and really

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Speaker 2: rot resistant. And so other species, like I was mentioning

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Speaker 2: the true furs, for example, they don't really make that

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Speaker 2: type of heartwood, and they also don't have resin ducts.

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Speaker 2: And so a lot of the species of true furs

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Speaker 2: like red fur, white fur, grand fur, or a lot

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Speaker 2: of those have structurally not a sound of wood like

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Speaker 2: it succumbs to rot and stem failure really often. So

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Speaker 2: if you're walking through a mature forest, you might see

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Speaker 2: a lot of standing snags of say like grand fur

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Speaker 2: here on the coast, just they've sort of, you know,

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Speaker 2: in a storm came by and it just sort of

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Speaker 2: snapped the stem of the tree because it wasn't it

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Speaker 2: had rot in it and stuff like that. Whereas redwood

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Speaker 2: is pretty bomber a lot of times. Though instead of

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Speaker 2: the stem actually breaking it's so strong. A lot of times,

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Speaker 2: what will kill a redwood is that it gets wind thrown.

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Speaker 2: They have really shallow root systems, and so rather than

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Speaker 2: the weak point being the stem of the tree breaking,

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Speaker 2: it will often just be that the tree like they've

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Speaker 2: been there for two thousand years and literally the soil

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Speaker 2: kind of like erodes around their roots, and some really

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Speaker 2: big windstorm maybe happens in the winter when the soils

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Speaker 2: are really wet from all of the rain that we

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Speaker 2: get here in the temperate rainforest, that the tree will

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Speaker 2: just kind of keel over and be wind thrown, where

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Speaker 2: you'll see the roots kind of sticking up in the air.

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Speaker 1: What would you know, absent man, what would cause like

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Speaker 1: a redwood to die?

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Speaker 2: It's another really good question. Yeah, fire could come through

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Speaker 2: and kill a redwood. Although even that we saw in

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Speaker 2: the Santa Cruz fires recently in twenty twenty where Big

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Speaker 2: Basin State Park burned to a crisp basically and Douglas

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Speaker 2: fir and old growth for US, Douglas Fir had I

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Speaker 2: think essentially one hundred percent mortality, and redwood looked burned

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Speaker 2: to a crisp too, just these black standing chunks, zero

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Speaker 2: green for miles to see. But then like you know,

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Speaker 2: the next spring lo and behold all of the redwoods

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Speaker 2: leafed out like little chia pets with this green fuzz

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Speaker 2: and they just produced a new leaf set. And so

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Speaker 2: even high severity fire, they seem pretty resilient to that. Interestingly,

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Speaker 2: I think this species was incredibly well named Sequoia semper virons.

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Speaker 2: Semper virons. The specific epithet is always lives, lives forever,

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Speaker 2: and so it really is kind of magical in that sense.

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Speaker 2: I mean, I don't really know what kills a redwood for,

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Speaker 2: like you know, the ultimate coup of gras, because they

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Speaker 2: even sprout. It's kind of like psych Yeah.

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Speaker 5: Right here I come again.

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Speaker 2: So a lot of times like a tree will fall over,

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Speaker 2: Say you have a fifteen hundred year old stem, it

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Speaker 2: gets blown over or knocked over by a neighbor, and

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Speaker 2: then the root system will just send up a bunch

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Speaker 2: of new sprouts, and then they'll kind of duke it

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Speaker 2: out for a couple hundred years, and then they'll maybe

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Speaker 2: be you know, four or five winners, and they'll grow

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Speaker 2: up to be kind of a fairy ring of redwoods

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Speaker 2: that are all the same. But how many times has

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Speaker 2: that genetic individual gone through that process of kind of

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Speaker 2: keeling over and then re sprouting, sort of rising from

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Speaker 2: the ashes.

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Speaker 1: It's hard to say that's cool? Yeah, So how I

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Speaker 1: mean they're huge. I think it's hard for people if

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Speaker 1: you haven't been. I was talking to a friend. It's like,

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Speaker 1: I think you see these pictures of redwoods and you

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Speaker 1: sort of have in your mind like how big a

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Speaker 1: tree is. So you see the redwoods and you sort

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Speaker 1: of tag on the fact that it's a tall tree.

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Speaker 1: But it's more like seeing a picture of like a

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Speaker 1: person in a field, and then when you actually meet them,

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Speaker 1: they turn out like they're eighteen feet tall. It's just

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Speaker 1: like the scale is so like not what you're expecting

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Speaker 1: when you're actually there. That being a long way of saying,

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Speaker 1: how with like sort of a smaller roots system, how

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Speaker 1: does that keep them upright over two thousand years.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, it's like this huge saale, you know,

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Speaker 2: this three hundred foot plus sail up in the wind,

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Speaker 2: that standing upright against gravity, and then this kind of

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Speaker 2: pinner root system that's maybe ten feet deep or so.

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Speaker 2: So it's kind of disproportional, but the root system is

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Speaker 2: extremely vast, like horizontally, So I think that's the saving grace.

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Speaker 2: It's kind of a beautiful thing just thinking about like

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Speaker 2: the wood wide web, you know that it's like all connected.

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Speaker 2: So the root systems of these neighboring trees are very innerwoven,

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Speaker 2: and they even can graft to one another below ground,

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Speaker 2: and so it creates this like mesh that I think

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Speaker 2: has a lot of stability, and so looking at the

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Speaker 2: forest as a whole rather than these individual trees, and so, yeah,

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Speaker 2: the root system isn't very deep. It's not like it

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Speaker 2: has some huge tap root that's really anchoring the tree

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Speaker 2: to the earth, but it's extensive laterally and also interwoven

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Speaker 2: with other trees throughout the forest, and so together they're

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Speaker 2: pretty strong against the wind and able to stay upright.

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Speaker 1: So what's the state right now of redwood forest? I know,

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Speaker 1: just from doing reading that we're like five or ten

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Speaker 1: percent of what it was when you know, in seventeen

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Speaker 1: fifty or whenever it was that people first started coming

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Speaker 1: and checking it out. So how does that work ecologically?

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Speaker 1: I guess it's the size of the redwood force. Now.

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Speaker 1: Is that adequate to continue vitally or are we at

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Speaker 1: a tipping point where it's going to become too small

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Speaker 1: and collapse? Where are we right now?

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Speaker 5: Yeah, that's a good question.

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Speaker 2: You know, back in the Conifer heyday, redwood and its

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Speaker 2: relatives are much more widespread. You know, major shifts happened.

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Speaker 2: It's now in this kind of relictual distribution that's extremely narrow.

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Speaker 2: You can plant redwood anywhere in the world, and if

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Speaker 2: you can nurse it along during its kind of establishment phase,

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Speaker 2: it can grow anywhere. The Central Valley of California, you know,

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Speaker 2: it's planted along the highway, but in its natural distribution,

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Speaker 2: like where it will naturally regenerate and perpetuate. It's an

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Speaker 2: extremely narrow range. And so of that now extremely narrow range,

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Speaker 2: ninety five plus percent of it was clear cut logged

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Speaker 2: back in the day, and so the amount of old

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Speaker 2: growth that remains today is really precious, and it's you know,

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Speaker 2: less than five percent of the species range. That means

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Speaker 2: that ninety five ish percent of the redwood's natural range

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Speaker 2: is kind of like not great forest. It's second growth forest,

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Speaker 2: it's working timber lands. It's third growth forest, fourth growth forests.

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Speaker 2: These lands that have been cut and recut kind of

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Speaker 2: like a lawn of timber growing at like a crop.

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Speaker 5: And it's a great wood product. Like I'm all for.

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Speaker 2: Wood products, like we all want a wooden table, you know,

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Speaker 2: or a wood house. It's a great renewable resource. It

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Speaker 2: stores carbon, and especially redwood that stores really amazing carbon,

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Speaker 2: like because it's so route resistant and long lived.

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Speaker 5: It's wood products.

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Speaker 2: You know, live forever too, and so it's a really

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Speaker 2: it's a great renewable resource. But a lot of the

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Speaker 2: lands are these kind of cutover lands across much of

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Speaker 2: the species range, and there's pretty widespread efforts to restore

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Speaker 2: those and try to accelerate them into more mature forests

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Speaker 2: through like Save the Redwoods League and Redwood National and

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Speaker 2: State Parks. Up north in California and dal nort and

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Speaker 2: Humboldt Counties, there's this program called Redwood's Rising that is

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Speaker 2: trying to restoratively thin about seventy thousand acres of redwood

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Speaker 2: forest over the next thirty years. It's a pretty cool program.

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Speaker 2: I think in the United States, or maybe it's even

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Speaker 2: North America, the three largest restoration projects are the Everglades

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Speaker 2: and then the Klimate dam removal, which is happening here

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Speaker 2: in the Humboldt region, and then redwood's rising. So it's

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Speaker 2: a really large scale restoration project that's happening. And the

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Speaker 2: idea is that because redwood is so shade tolerant, and

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Speaker 2: because these dog hair thickets of second growth, plus redwood

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Speaker 2: forests are sort of a human product from clear cut

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Speaker 2: logging and then often aerially seeding, like flying over with

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Speaker 2: airplanes and dropping seeds, these forests are really naturally dense.

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Speaker 2: And then couple that with like fire suppression for one

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Speaker 2: hundred years, it's led to like a turf just this,

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Speaker 2: you know, lawn of really suppressed, unhealthy forests. There's not

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Speaker 2: much wildlife diversity, there's not much understory. The trees are

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Speaker 2: not rocking out like they're pretty suppressed and not sequestering

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Speaker 2: as much carbon as they could be if they were

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Speaker 2: released from that competition. And so these restoration efforts are

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Speaker 2: underway to try to go in and thin those forests

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Speaker 2: because redwood is so shade tolerant it could take centuries

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Speaker 2: to self thin in the phase of forest stand dynamics

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Speaker 2: called stem exclusion, where there's kind of winters and losers

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Speaker 2: and trees do get out in a race for light.

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Speaker 2: And so there's these efforts underway to go in and

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Speaker 2: kind of accelerate that process by removing say like forty

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Speaker 2: percent of the trees in a stand. They're kind of

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Speaker 2: like little toothpicks. They're these really small, small diameter, are

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Speaker 2: very tall stems with a tiny tuft of foliage at

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Speaker 2: the top because there's like no growing space to develop

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Speaker 2: more structurally complex crowns.

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Speaker 1: So is this effort on private land? So is it

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Speaker 1: on timberland or is it public land that was previously caught?

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Speaker 5: These are public lands.

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Speaker 2: The Redwood's Rising work is happening on in Redwood National

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Speaker 2: Park and then also in California State parks.

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Speaker 1: Can you kind of explain the difference between old growth

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Speaker 1: and new growth forests, Like why is that such a

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Speaker 1: big deal?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, the old growth forests are kind of like the

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Speaker 2: primary forests. They were the forests that we haven't messed with,

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Speaker 2: you know, they're untouched. So they are these primary forests.

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Speaker 2: They're kind of primeval, if you will, Like we walk

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Speaker 2: through them and you feel like you're going back in

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Speaker 2: time to a time before humans started kind of messing

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Speaker 2: with the land. So they're kind of like our historical

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Speaker 2: reference point, if you will, for what the red w

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Speaker 2: forest would be like, kind of in its fully mature state.

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Speaker 2: Non old growth forests are forests that have been logged

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Speaker 2: and then various levels of management have been sued. So

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Speaker 2: sometimes they were just clear cut, logged and allowed to

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Speaker 2: come back, and then sometimes we've done other things like

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Speaker 2: planting other species there or coming in and planting specific

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Speaker 2: clones that are wanted. There's all sorts of different things

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Speaker 2: that can happen after the slate has been cleared via

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Speaker 2: clearcut like what will.

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Speaker 5: Come after that.

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Speaker 2: But because redwood is so valuable as far as the

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Speaker 2: timber species, a lot of times once the old growth

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Speaker 2: forest was logged, the forest was sort of treated as

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Speaker 2: a crop, you know, to make money and create a

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Speaker 2: really great timber product. So old growth forests typically have

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Speaker 2: a lot more wildlife habitat and larger, much larger carbon

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Speaker 2: storrege as far as kind of climate change mitigation and

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Speaker 2: taking CO two out of the atmosphere and locking it

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Speaker 2: up so carbon storage ecosystem function, and then habitat for

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Speaker 2: wildlife that has really limited habitat. A lot of species

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Speaker 2: in the Pacific Northwest are dependent on mature forest structures

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Speaker 2: like large branches, nesting cavities, those types of things for

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Speaker 2: their habitat, and so we're seeing a lot of things

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Speaker 2: like marble Nearlet's, northern spotted owls, fisher Martin, these types

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Speaker 2: of things that can be really habitat limited, and so

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Speaker 2: the old growth forests serve as sort of this reservoir

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Speaker 2: where those species can persist.

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Speaker 1: One of the things I kind of ran across when

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Speaker 1: I was doing research is that people and I think

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Speaker 1: those are more sort of corporate timber people kept referring

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Speaker 1: to old growth redwoods as being decadent. Is that something

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Speaker 1: you're familiar with. I'm trying to wrap my head around

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Speaker 1: that because it's like, it's such a loaded term to

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Speaker 1: use on a plant, you know.

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Speaker 2: It's yeah, I know, it is a really weird term

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Speaker 2: to use. There's sort of this old school, you know,

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Speaker 2: and I don't studying carbon storage is not like my.

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Speaker 5: Area of expertise. I'm a little out of my wheelhouse

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Speaker 5: with this.

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Speaker 2: But there is sort of this old school concept in

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Speaker 2: forestry that the older, larger trees have kind of stopped

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Speaker 2: doing their thing and they should be cut in more

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Speaker 2: vigorous young trees should be put in that are growing faster.

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Speaker 2: And yeah, you can look at this through a lot

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Speaker 2: of different sides, but it depends sort of what lens

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Speaker 2: you're using to define growth. So if you're just looking

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Speaker 2: at radial growth, like the size of the rings of

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Speaker 2: growth that the tree is putting on each year in

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Speaker 2: terms of like millimeters per centimeters, how much is it

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Speaker 2: growing via diameter per year? The alme tree of it

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Speaker 2: is is if you have a really small tree and

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Speaker 2: it puts on a donut of growth of wood each year,

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Speaker 2: that donut can be pretty fat, and it's a small tree.

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Speaker 2: The circumference of the tree is small. But if you

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Speaker 2: actually took that donut of growth and kind of like

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Speaker 2: swished it into a little square, you know, like how

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Speaker 2: much wood would that actually be versus you have some

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Speaker 2: huge giant tree it puts on a donut of growth.

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Speaker 2: It's like microscopically thin right the tree ring itself. But

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Speaker 2: if you take that whole donut around the whole circumference

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Speaker 2: of the tree and swished it into a square, it

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Speaker 2: actually would be probably more wood production than the smaller tree.

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Speaker 2: And then more recent research has shown if you scale

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Speaker 2: it to the entire tree, so you can look at

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Speaker 2: growth radially, let's say centimeters per year of diameter increase,

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Speaker 2: or you can look at growth on an area basis

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Speaker 2: like centimeters squared of growth per year, or you can

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Speaker 2: scale it up even further and look at volumetric So

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Speaker 2: if you look at the whole cone of wood, not

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Speaker 2: just the doughnut in a two dimensional fashion, but the

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Speaker 2: whole cone of wood that was produced across the entire

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Speaker 2: trunk of the tree, and smashed that into a cube,

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Speaker 2: and you looked at say meters cubed of growth that

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Speaker 2: was produced that year on an old growth, huge tree,

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Speaker 2: it's way more than some tiny tree that's producing wood.

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Speaker 2: So it's been shown both in the redwood in the

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Speaker 2: redwoods like Coast redwood and giant Sequoia by Steve Sillett

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Speaker 2: and his team, and then Nate Stevenson, another great forest researcher,

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Speaker 2: kind of scaled it up and looked globally at these

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Speaker 2: growth patterns, and it holds, like what sille it found

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Speaker 2: in the redwoods that the larger trees are actually having

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Speaker 2: greater volumetric growth than the smaller trees. It holds true

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Speaker 2: across all the continents and like one hundred plus species.

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Speaker 2: It was a nature of paper that Nate Stevenson published.

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Speaker 2: So this old school thinking in forestry that the large

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Speaker 2: trees are decadent and are kind of sinessing, and they

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Speaker 2: should you're removed in the landscape to make room for younger,

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Speaker 2: more vigorous trees. It sort of depends what lens you're

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Speaker 2: looking at and what your objectives are. If you're looking

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Speaker 2: at carbon storage, actually it makes more sense to have

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Speaker 2: these giants on the landscape because they're sequestering a lot

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Speaker 2: more carbon and storing it away, especially in redwood's with

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Speaker 2: like bomb or heartwood that's going to be persistent for

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Speaker 2: thousands of years, even rotting on the forest floor if

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Speaker 2: it fell over. Hopefully that answers your question.

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Speaker 1: No, No, it's I you know, it's just one of

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Speaker 1: those things where I was reading I was like, did

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Speaker 1: I read that right? They just say decadent trees, and

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Speaker 1: it's what would be lost if there weren't, Like what

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Speaker 1: if redwood just got clear cut completely? What gets lost there?

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Speaker 1: I'm sort of interested in what the assuming that there

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Speaker 1: would be quite a bit of a loss, I'm just

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Speaker 1: not sure what that would be.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it would almost be like an extinction. I mean, yeah,

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Speaker 2: redwood wouldn't be extinct. Like we're actually cutting redwood, right,

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Speaker 2: we're doing these restoration treatments because there's too many redwood

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Speaker 2: trees like on the landscape. But to all redwood in

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Speaker 2: that precious five percent that's still like in primary forest

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Speaker 2: old growth condition. If that were just clear cut and

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Speaker 2: gone from our planet, I mean, there's no getting it back.

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Speaker 2: There's no replacing old growth redwood forests in our human

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Speaker 2: understanding of life, in our in our timelines, you know.

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Speaker 2: I mean it would eventually, hopefully self you know, come back,

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Speaker 2: but it'd be a really long time, like many generations,

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Speaker 2: and so multiple generations of humans would be deprived of

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Speaker 2: ever being able to experience that place on our planet.

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Speaker 2: Red old growth redwood forests are really special. It's hard

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Speaker 2: to describe verbally if you've never been in them, but

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Speaker 2: they're palpably ancient and I feel like they really are

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Speaker 2: helpful for understanding like our presence on the planet and

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Speaker 2: really humbling and kind of give life a lot of perspective.

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Speaker 2: Like I read a book one time by EO. Wilson,

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Speaker 2: like on the Meaning of Life or something like that,

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Speaker 2: and he had this cool analogy in it where he

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Speaker 2: described like our human lives as something I'm just going

385
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Speaker 2: to paraphrase, but it was something like, you know, my

386
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Speaker 2: life is the equivalent of like the twelfth and Tennis

387
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Speaker 2: segment on an aphed on a leaf in Central Park

388
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Speaker 2: in New York on this one afternoon at three pm,

389
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Speaker 2: you know, like just putting it into context, like.

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Speaker 5: What our lives are.

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Speaker 2: And so I feel like being in a redwood forest

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Speaker 2: is something where you can like directly experience that feeling

393
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Speaker 2: of like we are, you know, dust mites in the

394
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Speaker 2: grand scheme of things. And so I think that for humans,

395
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Speaker 2: for you know, depending on who you are, sometimes that

396
00:22:58,720 --> 00:23:01,560
Speaker 2: can be helpful to just know, put life in context

397
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Speaker 2: and the greater picture outside of your little microcosm that

398
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Speaker 2: you've created for yourself and your own life. So I

399
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Speaker 2: think it's really rare to be around things like that,

400
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Speaker 2: Like you can find spaces like that in the mountains,

401
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Speaker 2: and the redwood forest offers one such kind of refuge

402
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Speaker 2: where I think you can connect with the larger meaning

403
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Speaker 2: of life being in that in that place.

404
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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it is, It's unique, at least in

405
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Speaker 1: my experience. So let's see, do the old growth redwoods?

406
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Speaker 1: Is there really a threat to them?

407
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Speaker 5: Now?

408
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Speaker 1: Are they pretty pretty well, you know, tied up in

409
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Speaker 1: public lands that aren't going to be aren't going to

410
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Speaker 1: be sought up at least in the near future.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, like most old growth redwoods at this point are protected. Okay, yeah,

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Speaker 2: say the Red Words League is done. I think an

413
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Speaker 2: amazing job at doing that. Like there as an organization,

414
00:24:05,000 --> 00:24:07,280
Speaker 2: I know, you know, they're not perfect at all, but

415
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Speaker 2: they spent the first century sort of buying up old

416
00:24:12,480 --> 00:24:16,600
Speaker 2: growth redwood forests. They've been around. In twenty eighteen they

417
00:24:16,640 --> 00:24:21,879
Speaker 2: celebrated their centennial anniversary. So from nineteen eighteen to twenty eighteen,

418
00:24:21,920 --> 00:24:25,680
Speaker 2: their focus was really purchasing and then donating to the state.

419
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Speaker 2: So most of our redwood state parks were from Save

420
00:24:29,359 --> 00:24:32,600
Speaker 2: the Redwoods League, Like the red old growth redwoods that

421
00:24:32,600 --> 00:24:35,480
Speaker 2: we have today were largely because of Save the Redwood League.

422
00:24:35,480 --> 00:24:37,760
Speaker 2: And again they have a sorted past, and there's different

423
00:24:37,800 --> 00:24:39,919
Speaker 2: ways that you can look at their history. But I

424
00:24:39,960 --> 00:24:43,639
Speaker 2: mean net net, like, you know, they did conserve a

425
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Speaker 2: lot of the old growth for us, and those are

426
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Speaker 2: the parks that we have today. And so I think

427
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Speaker 2: like because of that, yeah, most of the old growth

428
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Speaker 2: redwood that is persistent on a landscape that wasn't logged

429
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Speaker 2: back in the day is protected. And that's why in

430
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Speaker 2: the second century of Save the Redwood League, with their

431
00:25:01,520 --> 00:25:06,000
Speaker 2: centennial vision, they kind of decided to shift their focus

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00:25:06,080 --> 00:25:11,000
Speaker 2: to have into like restoring the young redwood forests, which

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Speaker 2: make up ninety five percent of the species range, just

434
00:25:14,200 --> 00:25:17,280
Speaker 2: because it's like, well, we've pretty much like conserved most

435
00:25:17,320 --> 00:25:19,680
Speaker 2: of the old growth redwood, So let's shift focus a

436
00:25:19,720 --> 00:25:22,720
Speaker 2: little bit and work on trying to fast track some

437
00:25:22,880 --> 00:25:25,360
Speaker 2: of the rest of the species range towards those more

438
00:25:25,520 --> 00:25:28,800
Speaker 2: mature conditions. I mean, I think there are threats to

439
00:25:28,840 --> 00:25:33,160
Speaker 2: it still, you know, just with climate change and fire suppression.

440
00:25:33,280 --> 00:25:35,920
Speaker 2: So we saw with Santa Cruz because you think, oh,

441
00:25:36,000 --> 00:25:38,480
Speaker 2: the redwood forest, it's a temperate rainforest. It's very wet

442
00:25:38,520 --> 00:25:40,600
Speaker 2: and moist and foggy, and they get tens of rain

443
00:25:40,720 --> 00:25:44,359
Speaker 2: and it really wouldn't burn that hot probably, but we

444
00:25:44,400 --> 00:25:46,840
Speaker 2: saw with those Santa Cruz fires. I think it was

445
00:25:46,880 --> 00:25:50,040
Speaker 2: the Czu fires that actually know, like old growth readwood

446
00:25:50,040 --> 00:25:51,960
Speaker 2: forests can burn it high severity and it can be

447
00:25:52,000 --> 00:25:55,879
Speaker 2: really catastrophic the aftermath of that. So I think things

448
00:25:55,920 --> 00:25:59,520
Speaker 2: like that, the fire situation with there being a lot

449
00:25:59,520 --> 00:26:02,679
Speaker 2: of fuel on the landscape and then things being hotter

450
00:26:02,720 --> 00:26:05,400
Speaker 2: and drier and crispier, you know, is.

451
00:26:05,359 --> 00:26:06,560
Speaker 5: A threat for redwood.

452
00:26:06,600 --> 00:26:08,919
Speaker 2: And then also they're finding like you kind of like

453
00:26:09,320 --> 00:26:12,160
Speaker 2: take it for granted that oh, redwood is super resistant.

454
00:26:12,200 --> 00:26:15,439
Speaker 2: It's really anti fungal. Redwood is you know, the bomb like,

455
00:26:15,480 --> 00:26:18,560
Speaker 2: it's got no natural enemies. There's no pester pathogens that

456
00:26:18,640 --> 00:26:21,600
Speaker 2: really mess with it because it's so you know, it

457
00:26:21,600 --> 00:26:25,520
Speaker 2: has all these secondary compounds and tannins and chemicals in

458
00:26:25,560 --> 00:26:28,159
Speaker 2: it that make it very anti fungal and resistant. But

459
00:26:28,720 --> 00:26:31,240
Speaker 2: even that, we're starting to see if you study kind

460
00:26:31,240 --> 00:26:34,040
Speaker 2: of forest health, there's more pathogens that folks are noticing

461
00:26:34,080 --> 00:26:34,840
Speaker 2: on the redwoods.

462
00:26:35,160 --> 00:26:36,200
Speaker 5: And again that's getting out.

463
00:26:36,080 --> 00:26:37,760
Speaker 2: Of my wheelhouse, like I'm not I'm not a forest

464
00:26:37,800 --> 00:26:41,040
Speaker 2: health expert, but talking with people who are, they're like, no,

465
00:26:41,080 --> 00:26:43,200
Speaker 2: there's like these weird things now we're starting to see

466
00:26:43,240 --> 00:26:45,720
Speaker 2: in the coast redwood and then also the giant Sequoia,

467
00:26:45,760 --> 00:26:49,520
Speaker 2: which we thought was totally resistant to bark beetles. They've

468
00:26:49,520 --> 00:26:52,520
Speaker 2: been finding that in this climate change, when it's persistently

469
00:26:52,600 --> 00:26:55,640
Speaker 2: kind of chronically water stressed and you're getting lower snowpack

470
00:26:55,680 --> 00:26:59,720
Speaker 2: in the sierras, that there's more beetles attacking the giant sequias,

471
00:26:59,720 --> 00:27:02,680
Speaker 2: which we thought couldn't really happen. So I think there

472
00:27:02,720 --> 00:27:05,919
Speaker 2: are definitely still threats, even if it's not clear cut logging.

473
00:27:06,000 --> 00:27:09,360
Speaker 2: There's still threats to these species, and given how limited

474
00:27:09,400 --> 00:27:12,760
Speaker 2: their ranges are, it makes it of like paramount importance

475
00:27:12,880 --> 00:27:15,680
Speaker 2: to try to do everything we can to protect them

476
00:27:15,720 --> 00:27:17,040
Speaker 2: from these threats.

477
00:27:17,560 --> 00:27:20,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, what haven't I asked you that you think is

478
00:27:20,560 --> 00:27:23,480
Speaker 1: important for people to know about redwoods?

479
00:27:24,320 --> 00:27:27,960
Speaker 2: I think I study tree physiology, so I think redwoods

480
00:27:27,960 --> 00:27:30,399
Speaker 2: are super cool, Like they're just kind of a wow

481
00:27:30,480 --> 00:27:34,280
Speaker 2: factor of a species, just something to be like, you know,

482
00:27:34,359 --> 00:27:36,600
Speaker 2: knock your socks off kind of thing, like as far

483
00:27:36,640 --> 00:27:40,879
Speaker 2: as plants on our planet and kind of plant intelligence and.

484
00:27:40,960 --> 00:27:41,920
Speaker 5: How neat they are.

485
00:27:43,000 --> 00:27:46,240
Speaker 2: So there's just some kind of cool stuff about redwoods

486
00:27:47,280 --> 00:27:49,440
Speaker 2: that maybe we haven't talked about But I'm not sure

487
00:27:49,440 --> 00:27:51,840
Speaker 2: if that's like really the direction of the podcast.

488
00:27:52,400 --> 00:27:55,040
Speaker 1: Maybe you could just like when you say plan intelligence,

489
00:27:55,119 --> 00:27:58,040
Speaker 1: like what does that? What does that mean? And how

490
00:27:58,040 --> 00:27:59,720
Speaker 1: does that sort of manifest itself.

491
00:27:59,800 --> 00:28:02,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I'm not like touchy feely, like I'm not like,

492
00:28:02,840 --> 00:28:05,639
Speaker 2: you know, thinking that like the Redwood is a person

493
00:28:05,760 --> 00:28:09,280
Speaker 2: or something like that, But just they seem to live

494
00:28:09,359 --> 00:28:12,160
Speaker 2: that long and be that stoic and be in one

495
00:28:12,200 --> 00:28:15,000
Speaker 2: place where you can't like it's hot, it's dry, like

496
00:28:15,160 --> 00:28:17,359
Speaker 2: I can't get up and move, I'm anchored.

497
00:28:17,000 --> 00:28:18,480
Speaker 5: Here, you know kind of thing.

498
00:28:19,000 --> 00:28:23,520
Speaker 2: There's just a lot that Redwood seem to have kind

499
00:28:23,560 --> 00:28:27,520
Speaker 2: of cleverly adapted to to be able to be a

500
00:28:27,640 --> 00:28:32,600
Speaker 2: champ for this long, so they can absorb fog water.

501
00:28:32,440 --> 00:28:33,280
Speaker 5: Through their leaves.

502
00:28:33,520 --> 00:28:37,159
Speaker 2: It's physiologically really complicated to be that tall. Just like

503
00:28:37,760 --> 00:28:40,520
Speaker 2: I'll spay all the details, but it's complicated, and so

504
00:28:41,360 --> 00:28:43,720
Speaker 2: a lot of the tall conifers like Redwood have kind

505
00:28:43,720 --> 00:28:47,320
Speaker 2: of developed these crafty ways of you know, taking water

506
00:28:47,400 --> 00:28:50,080
Speaker 2: from the clouds that are enveloping all the leaves and

507
00:28:50,560 --> 00:28:53,880
Speaker 2: kind of using the water more locally up there. They've

508
00:28:53,920 --> 00:28:57,600
Speaker 2: also like in Redwood, one of my colleagues. Alana Chin

509
00:28:57,880 --> 00:29:00,480
Speaker 2: kind of did this cool study that was a part

510
00:29:00,520 --> 00:29:03,240
Speaker 2: of two. But they have this sort of division of

511
00:29:03,360 --> 00:29:06,560
Speaker 2: labor with their leaf types in redwood, and they can

512
00:29:06,600 --> 00:29:09,440
Speaker 2: shift kind of where these different leaf types are within

513
00:29:09,520 --> 00:29:14,200
Speaker 2: the crown and even latitudinally, say from like Oregon to

514
00:29:14,360 --> 00:29:17,080
Speaker 2: Big sur like from the north to the south portion

515
00:29:17,120 --> 00:29:19,840
Speaker 2: of the range, the ratios of these different leaf types

516
00:29:19,840 --> 00:29:23,320
Speaker 2: can change. So there's leaves that are really good at

517
00:29:23,520 --> 00:29:27,200
Speaker 2: uptaking fog water but not that great at doing photosynthesis,

518
00:29:27,360 --> 00:29:29,680
Speaker 2: and then there's leaves that are really good at photosynthesis

519
00:29:29,720 --> 00:29:32,280
Speaker 2: but not that great at uptaking water. And so this

520
00:29:32,400 --> 00:29:36,440
Speaker 2: kind of like specialization or division of labor among their

521
00:29:36,520 --> 00:29:40,160
Speaker 2: leaves kind of speaks to a long evolutionary history for

522
00:29:40,240 --> 00:29:43,600
Speaker 2: this species of living in a foggy climate where it

523
00:29:43,640 --> 00:29:47,440
Speaker 2: can kind of tap into those types of resources. So

524
00:29:47,520 --> 00:29:50,040
Speaker 2: I think that's something that's unique about redwood and pretty cool.

525
00:29:51,200 --> 00:29:54,040
Speaker 2: Another kind of cool wow factor that I thought was

526
00:29:54,400 --> 00:29:58,320
Speaker 2: just really neat was in that Santa Cruz fire when

527
00:29:58,400 --> 00:30:01,640
Speaker 2: all of the redwoods burned to it crisp, and then

528
00:30:01,880 --> 00:30:04,959
Speaker 2: you know, next spring they all leafed out and they

529
00:30:05,000 --> 00:30:07,760
Speaker 2: looked like these little chia pets, like all covered in

530
00:30:07,800 --> 00:30:11,560
Speaker 2: green fuzz. Some folks did a neat study where they

531
00:30:11,760 --> 00:30:14,160
Speaker 2: because it kind of begs the question, well where did

532
00:30:14,200 --> 00:30:16,640
Speaker 2: that carbon come from? Like how did they leaf out?

533
00:30:16,680 --> 00:30:18,360
Speaker 2: How did they afford that? Like how did they have

534
00:30:18,440 --> 00:30:21,920
Speaker 2: sugars around and stuff to make that happen? Because they

535
00:30:21,960 --> 00:30:26,760
Speaker 2: looked like, for all intents and purposes, just these charred stems.

536
00:30:26,800 --> 00:30:31,160
Speaker 2: And some folks led by Drew Peltier and some folks

537
00:30:31,200 --> 00:30:34,040
Speaker 2: at Northern Arizona University, they did this cool study where

538
00:30:34,040 --> 00:30:37,640
Speaker 2: they looked at the C fourteen, the radioactive carbon in

539
00:30:37,760 --> 00:30:40,040
Speaker 2: the tissues that were produced, and they found that the

540
00:30:40,080 --> 00:30:43,600
Speaker 2: carbon that the redwoods used to produce that new flesh

541
00:30:43,640 --> 00:30:45,960
Speaker 2: of leaves, a lot of it had been captured via

542
00:30:46,000 --> 00:30:49,160
Speaker 2: photosynthesis like fifty plus years ago. So just kind of

543
00:30:49,320 --> 00:30:54,240
Speaker 2: showing how the redwoods can store carbon for a really

544
00:30:54,240 --> 00:30:57,160
Speaker 2: long time and still have it be mobile and usable

545
00:30:57,400 --> 00:31:01,080
Speaker 2: and can be used to so, you know, from the

546
00:31:01,160 --> 00:31:03,800
Speaker 2: ashes kind of rise again. So again kind of circling

547
00:31:03,840 --> 00:31:06,920
Speaker 2: back to the species name, so Quia sempervirons lives forever,

548
00:31:07,600 --> 00:31:09,960
Speaker 2: that it's this really resilient species. And I think in

549
00:31:10,000 --> 00:31:13,040
Speaker 2: this era where people maybe are feeling kind of bummed

550
00:31:13,080 --> 00:31:16,000
Speaker 2: out about you know, the political state of things or whatever,

551
00:31:16,640 --> 00:31:18,680
Speaker 2: climate change, all that kind of stuff. It's sort of

552
00:31:18,720 --> 00:31:21,880
Speaker 2: neat to see this tree species that is kind of

553
00:31:21,920 --> 00:31:23,960
Speaker 2: like the honey badger, Like it just kind of rocks

554
00:31:24,000 --> 00:31:28,320
Speaker 2: on and keeps coming even though, if you know, despite

555
00:31:28,360 --> 00:31:29,640
Speaker 2: what punches might be thrown its way.

556
00:31:30,560 --> 00:31:34,240
Speaker 1: Oh, that's a great place to end. Thank you to

557
00:31:34,320 --> 00:31:36,000
Speaker 1: Lucy Carhulas for talking with me.

558
00:31:36,920 --> 00:31:39,760
Speaker 4: I'm to we ball. This has been a bonus episode

559
00:31:39,840 --> 00:31:41,840
Speaker 4: for the second season of Rip Current