Video by Mongabay
As tropical forests worldwide degrade and decline at increasing rates, the fate of their largest trees remains unknown. Big trees store a huge amount of carbon, so assessing their current mortality rates and causes of death (especially due to escalating climate change) is vital to calculating how much tropical forest carbon sinks could decline in the future.
The Gigante project, led by Cary's Evan Gora, is initiating an innovative new protocol utilizing detailed drone surveys combined with ground truthing to evaluate tropical big tree mortality. The project has begun an identical survey in Panama and will conduct others in Malaysia, Cameroon, and another Amazon location. Knowledge of how tropical big trees are faring could help improve climate model accuracy.
