THE HAGUE, May 24 (Xinhua) -- A 30-year-old poplar on the campus of Wageningen University and Research will tweet about his growth in relation to changes in soil-water conditions, temperature and air humidity.
The data will help researchers better chart the relation between tree growth and extreme weather conditions.
"Hi. Here I am! The first Dutch tweeting tree @WUR. I will start tweeting this Friday about my growth and sapflow!" the tree on its twitter account, which attracted over 1,000 followers in hours.
On its 95.8-cm-diameter trunk, the tree is connected to equipment which allows researchers to collect data on its sapflow and the variation in stem diameter. In addition, environmental variables such as available water in the soil, temperature and air humidity around the tree are recorded.
"Tweeting is a gadget to raise public awareness of the interaction between trees and their environment. But the data we are collecting are extremely useful to develop a model that is essential to understand/encode the information stored in tree-ring structure," Dr. Ute Sass-Klaassen who is in charge of the project told Xinhua.
"Once we understand the effect of successive extreme events on tree vitality, we can advise foresters which tree species will perform best under different soil and (estimated future) climate conditions," she added.
The research team is now measuring the dynamics of the formation of the tree ring 2017. They believe that just by recording measurements in a couple of years, they will be able to link intra-annual growth dynamics to changing climate conditions.
In addition to this Dutch poplar, an oak, a maple and a beech in Belgium as well as a Scots pine in Germany have already been tweeting about their growth and environment. A larch in Switzerland and a pine in Spain will also join this European cooperation project.
