Mohammad ALHADDAD
Along the Black River in North Carolina in the United States, bald cypress trees have been growing for thousands of years. More recently, scientists have found more than two thousand years of cypress trees, including a tree estimated by scientists at least two thousand and 624 years old, making it the fifth oldest known tree in the world resulting from sexual reproduction.
In 2017 a group of geologists discovered bald cypress trees in a wetland reserve along the Black River. This old forest gives us an idea of what a large strip of coastal plain in North Carolina has looked like for thousands of years.
Tree rings
The researchers documented the age of trees using tree age determination techniques through tree rings made by annual growth strata and the history of radio carbon, according to the study, published recently in the journal Environmental Research Communications.
Old trees are part of a protected ecosystem extending 65 miles from the Black River. In addition to its age, trees are a scientifically valuable tool to reconstruct our information about ancient climatic conditions. The oldest trees in the reserve extend the record of the old climate in the southeastern United States by about 90 years. Evidence of drought and flooding is evident in human settlement times and beyond, No measure in modern times.
"It is unusual to see an old tree-growing center along a river like this," says the master of geology and lead researcher David Stahl. "Bald cypress is one of the most valuable trees in wood production." Stahl explains that less than 1 percent of the native cypress forest has survived to the present.
Stahl has been working in the region since 1985 and classified the 1,700-year-old baldwood trees in a study published in Science in 1988. His work helped preserve the area where 16,000 acres have been sold since then to the Nature Conservation Agency , A private land-keeping group that keeps most of its property open to the public.
The researchers used basic non-destructive samples from 110 trees found in a section of the wetland forest that they had never visited before. According to the study, the growth area of bald cypress was ten times larger than it is now.
Eye on the past
Trees of the Black River have inspired environmentalists to start conserving the river for more than two decades. Tree rings contain valuable information on the state of the climate for a period of more than two thousand and five hundred years, such as the drought and floods of the New Babylonian Empire. These trees enjoy the strongest climatic signal ever discovered anywhere on Earth.
The severe drought that began in 1587 and lasted for two years, coinciding with the first attempts to settle in North Carolina, was one of the valuable information uncovered by the rings of bald cypress trees, which shed some light on the disappearance of the colony of Roanoke Colony between 1587 And 1590.
It was very interesting for researchers to determine the date of planting one of these trees, which was found in at least two thousand and 624 years, indicating that it was a plantation in 605 BC, a time frame that preceded the Roman Empire by centuries. The rise of Nebuchadnezzar II Bakhtnasser) to the throne of Babylon.
Another tree is two thousand and eighty years old and dates back to the year 70 BC, while the birth of Queen Cleopatra, ruler of Egypt.