In 2023, this persistence paid off: the team located the reigning champion of the island’s forests: an 84.1-meter-tall (275.9 foot) Taiwania fir (Taiwania cryptomerioides). This massive tree currently holds the title of the tallest tree in all of East Asia. To the Indigenous Rukai people, these gargantuan firs are known by a much more poetic name, “The tree that hits the moon.”
Impressive even by west coast standards.
By having hundreds of Taiwanese citizens examine the LiDAR profile images, the team could filter out tens of thousands of false leads. As it turned out, 93% of trees had been mismeasured by the automatic algorithm.
Without the help of citizen scientists to sort through the mountain of data and identify the most likely candidates, the researchers could have wasted years hiking to trees that were far shorter than they appeared on the map. By the end of 2022, this collaborative effort led to the publication of the “Taiwan Giant Tree Map,” which officially identified 941 individual trees that exceeded 65 meters in height.
Interesting that the lidar was limited like this. There is some neat tech in the article.
The results were staggering: the total carbon density of the forest (even without counting the massive root systems) was 1,384.5 Mg/ha. This makes Taiwan’s giant forests some of the most carbon-dense environments in the entire world, comparable to the most famous old-growth forests on Earth. These “trees that hit the moon” are not just natural wonders; they are essential guardians of the environment.
Carbon heavy.
Another post in my tall tree series.