It's Friday: Here's Your Week in Trees

January 27, 2012 at 11:00 am by Amanda Cooke

Here's your tree news from around the world this week:

This modified record player reads tree rings as if they were musical notes. Whoa. (io9)
Fruit-eating animals play an important role in the lifecycle of tropical forests; the seeds of 75 to 95 percent of tropical tree species are dispersed by such animals (Jakarta Globe)
Laurel wilt is a disease caused by the female ambrosia beetle which is boring through the bark of South Carolina's redbay trees with a fungus on its mouthparts. Shudder. (The Times and Democrat)
Michael Fay's 15-month survey of Africa's dense tropical forests helped spur the creation of 13 new national parks in Gabon, placing four million hectares into protected status (Voice of America)
The world's ecological 'kings of the jungle'--i.e. giant trees--are being toppled by forest fragmentation, severe drought, and new pests and diseases (The Guardian)
Oregon's landowners have been enlisted to help identify hazards left in the wake of this month's series of storms (Salem-News.com)
To all you caterpillars out there: It's better to feed on a poor-quality tree species and have fewer caterpillars around you than to be on a nutritious plant with many others (Science Daily)
Scientists have recorded the Amazon rainforest's structure and biodiversity in incredible depth by bouncing laser beams off the canopy 400,000 times per second (The Guardian)