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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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There are nearly 10 million trees on the island of Taiwan. Its steep mountain ranges are covered in forests, and in some areas, the trees grow as tall as a 20-storey building. Tucked into a valley in the north, one fir tree in particular is the tallest of them all. In fact, it's the tallest tree that we know of in East Asia. How do we know this? And why should we care?
Today, I'm talking to a scientist who can answer these questions because she did the maths. This is Lab Notes from ABC Radio National. I'm Jonathan Webb, and I'm joined by Rebecca Xu from the Forestry Research Institute of Taiwan. Hello, Rebecca.
Hello, Jonathan.
Now, when we climb trees as children, lots of us treasure those memories, and in particular this sense you get of suddenly seeing the world differently. It looks a bit different when you're at the top of a tree. What's it like when you're at the top of one of these giant trees?
It's a very peaceful environment when you hang out there. I feel very grateful that this grateful tree led me to climb it.
I can imagine that sense of gratitude because they're such huge organisms, these trees. Where did this idea come from? What made you interested in finding the largest tree in Taiwan?
It began about 12 years ago. I began to climb big trees together with my friend, hike to that tree. And when we reached the canopy, he wanted to climb the tallest tree in Taiwan. And for me, a scientist, I begin to think about how can we do this? And at that time, I don't know it will last more than 10 years.
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Chapter 2: How many trees are there in Taiwan and what is special about them?
So the trunk just goes straight up for the first 50 meters. And what does it look like from that point? How does it appear?
Trees reach this size that never have a lot of branches. But all of the branches is like a small tree. So it's very sick. This tree doesn't look very old. It's very healthy. When we visited in last March, this tree turned orange because female flowers are orange. It's very colorful. It's an amazing tree. And I can see many orchids. How amazing.
And if it's 84.1 metres tall, do we know how long it's been there?
At least 1,000 years old.
Wow. Now, you've been working on this for more than 10 years. How did you start looking for this tallest tree?
So we just interviewed some elder foresters to ask where they saw big trees. And we had clear to measure them. But I found it's not efficient enough because there were so many trees.
You decided to use LiDAR to try and get a sort of 3D scan of where all the tall trees were and how tall they were.
It actually takes six years to survey whole islands.
Wow.
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Chapter 3: What is the significance of the tallest tree found in East Asia?
In the middle of our project, we have some LiDAR experts join and they produce this 3D tree shape. I remember it's over 50,000 images. And after around five years, we figured out that the measurement of tree height is over 90%.
Right, so when you actually go into the forest, you go up to this tree that's been measured by the LiDAR system.
You find out... It's a cliff.
It's a cliff. Oh, it's a short tree on a cliff instead of a really tall tree.
Yeah, yeah. We cannot examine them by ourselves because researchers are few. So we put them on a web and teach volunteers how to identify their height.
So you had volunteers, citizen scientists coming on and analysing these thousands of 3D tree images. How many volunteers did you have and how long did it take for them to get through all the data?
It's around 400 volunteers, and we plan to finish this project within a year, but surprisingly it's finished within one month. Wow. I think it's at least five years' work, yeah.
What a valuable month's work from your volunteers.
Yeah, yeah.
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Chapter 4: What inspired the search for the tallest tree in Taiwan?
They are just significant.
Significant is the word. It's taken them a thousand years to get to that size. And being so big, I'm guessing these trees are probably more vulnerable to climate change than the much more common smaller ones.
Yeah, we also have reduced cloud because global warming. I also find some mountain cloud species, they reduce the population because of reduced clouds. Before, I think it should be slower, but now I find it's, yeah, the speed is beyond my imagination.
And tell me about the name. The Heaven Sword is what you and the team decided to call this record-breaking tree. Where did that idea come from?
What is Taiwanese joke? Because that tree is located near two peaks. These two peaks, they gave a name from a Hong Kong master of Kung Fu novel. And Heaven Sold is also the name from that Kung Fu novel. During the whole hiking period, we were discussing the novel stories and we talked all the time. So when we saw the tree, one of our net members, he said, oh, it could be Heaven Sold.
Reference to a Kung Fu novel. I didn't pick that. It's an excellent name for a very tall tree.
Thank you.
Rebecca, thank you so much for sharing your lab notes with me.
Thank you, Jonathan. I'm very excited to share with you.
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