Huge patches of forest in Tasmania have rapidly turned brown over recent months, with many trees dying after a dry summer.
Dieback can make forests vulnerable to bushfire — before the Black Summer bushfires of 2019-20, huge areas of forest in the east of mainland Australia experienced dieback.The quest to quantify how climate-induced dieback might threaten forests in the future puts University of Tasmania plant physiologist Tim Brodribb in a precarious situation – dangling from a rope 70 metres above the forest floor, attaching scientific instruments to a Eucalyptus regnans.
A tree's pulse is created by the predictable rhythm of increasing and decreasing tension throughout the day. They use this information to decide whether to close their pores to prevent water from escaping or to open them to allow photosynthesis. "When you think about the weight of a column of 100 metres of water … that's a major feat," Professor Brodribb said."All these giants are emerging all around you, and you notice that all the tops of them are dead," he said.