In August 2020, the CZU Lightning Complex fire burned through Big Basin Redwoods State Park near Santa Cruz, California, consuming all of the foliage on some of the oldest redwoods. “It was shocking…. It really seemed like most of the trees were going to die,” Drew Peltier told Science magazine’s Erik Stokstad.
Peltier, a tree ecophysiologist at Northern Arizona University, and his colleagues recently published a research article in Nature Plants. The researchers have documented the incredible recovery of burned redwoods, which have resprouted from roots, trunks and branches by drawing energy from decades-old carbon reserves.
Some of the sprouts contain “the oldest carbon ever observed to be remobilized for growth,” the article reports. For some trees, half of the carbon fueling the sprouts was stored almost 60 years ago, and buds for some of the sprouts had lain dormant under bark for centuries.
Featured Photo: Photos from Northern Arizona University’s Phenocam network document California redwoods’ post-fire recovery from May 2, 2021, to March 21, 2024.
