This is a photo I took overlooking Cochabamba while hiking a couple of weeks ago. Some of the hills surrounding Cochabamba are part of a national park...not exactly what you would call an ecological preserve, but at least there are some efforts being made to conserve the area. It made for a little peace and quiet at least...especially when I lost the trail and was able to do some cross country hiking. It would be pretty hard to get lost though...just head down hill till you hit the city.
This is a question for any FS or biology people out there (Art, Becca, Scott, ??). A poor photo, but I wanted to show the growth rings on this pine tree. Some of them are over 7 feet. This is a fairly dry area (no rains from April till November) and most of the vegetation consists of shorter trees and bushes (see first photos). The day time temps here stay pretty much the same year around - between 60 and 90 degrees. Thus my question is do growth rings really reflect a years growth in this type of climate...and this close to the equator?
2 comments:
Hi Andrew; Don't know what species of pine you have there. A fellow forestery student (62) had spent some time in SA (Columbia maybe??). The foresters there were trying to figure out how to utilize the forests there. Some areas had over a 100 species/acre - most were unknow for utilization. So they were planting know value species from around the world to see how they grew there. One southern US pine grew 25" in 2 yrs then fell over!!
Some OR pine mills are using imported Radia (sp??) Pine, an Austrialian specie, grown in Peru.
That's amazing that the temp. is so even at your elevation. That would certaintly make good growing for some species.
Thanks for the pics & comments. Cheers!! ART
Scott says "yes, the growth is determined by nutrition (water) so there is still a growing season that would be reflected by the growth rings, that's just my two cents worth!"
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