In well-preserved Tertiary fossil Metasequoia forests of Canada's Arctic, in situ stumps and fragments of stems, tree-tops, and branches contain substantial information about tree dimensions that can be used to de-termine tree height, stand biomass, and other characteristics such as canopy depth and structure, and the history of stand development. To validate a method for reconstructing the biomass of the Eocene floodplain Metasequoia forests of Axel Heiberg Island, we measured stump diameters and spacing, and stem, branch, and treetop characteristics in living Metasequoia glyptostroboides and Cha-maecyparis thyoides stands in ways that simulate the limited measurements that can be made in well-preserved fossil forests in Canada and probably elsewhere. We used those limited measurements to estimate tree height and volume, branch and foliar dry weights, and tree biomass. The estimates derived from the limited data set are usually within 15% of the estimates derived from the methods currently used in forest ecology for determining those metrics in modern forests. Under appro-priate conditions, the biomass of ancient forests can be estimated with reasonable confidence.Ĭlimate change could have profound impacts on world wetland environments, which can be better understood through the examination of ancient wetlands when the world was warmer. Fossil records reveal that an extensive forest flourished throughout. Around forty-five million years ago, the Arctic was ice free, scarcely the expanse of lichen-encrusted rock and glaciers that we see there today. These impacts may directly alter the critical role of wetlands in ecosystem function and human services. Old Molecules, New Climate: Metasequoia’s. Here we present a framework for the study of wetland fossils and deposits to understand the potential effects of future climate change on wetlands. We review the methods and assumptions associated with the use of plant macro- and microfossils to reconstruct ancient wetland ecosystems and their associated paleoenvironments. We then present case studies of paleo-wetland ecosystems under global climate conditions that were very different from the present time. Our case study of extinct Arctic forested-wetlands reveals insights about high-productivity wetlands that flourished in the highest latitudes during the ice-free global warmth of the Paleogene (ca. 45 million years ago) and how these wetlands might have been instrumental in keeping the polar regions warm. China will soon account for less than half of the US’s low-cost imports from Asia for the first time in more than a decade, new data has shown, as western companies shift operations out of the. We then evaluate climate-induced changes in tropical wetlands by focusing on the Pleistocene and Holocene (2.588 Myr ago to the present) of Africa.

Metasequoia half import