Re:Launch HN: Living Carbon (YC W20) – Trees that capture an...
by webmaven on Wednesday March 16, 2022 @12:51AM
(#30695452)
> How will the intended rot resistance effect fungal biodiversity in forests where these trees grow? Does it last 1 year, 10 years, or 100? How long will a forest of dry twigs be able to avoid a fire (and release all of its carbon regardless)?
Given the parallel efforts being made for bioengineered mycoremediation (which is far more likely to "escape"), I suspect that the rot-resistance effect will be fairly temporary, and the long term net effect will just be enhanced long-term biosequestration of metals in the soil that will benefit the ecosystem.
It would be pretty important not to engineer trees that are significant food sources for anything too high up the food chain, or at least somehow ensure that the metal accumulation only happens in the relatively inedible parts (like wood), but otherwise at first glance this seems a viable stopgap to damp the carbon release feedback loops that are staring us in the face.
I'm wondering if rot resistance (perhaps of other sorts than metal accumulation) can be useful in other contexts.
For example, here in New Mexico we're experiencing a decimation of the piñon pine trees that provide pine nuts (commercially) and ecological niches for a variety of birds. The warmer winters aren't killing off the bark beetles as they used to so the beetles are killing off the trees, especially when they're stressed from drought, and the alternatives seem to be somehow making the trees less appetizing to the beetles, introducing something to eat the beetles, or else just migrating the forests north into Colorado.
Given the parallel efforts being made for bioengineered mycoremediation (which is far more likely to "escape"), I suspect that the rot-resistance effect will be fairly temporary, and the long term net effect will just be enhanced long-term biosequestration of metals in the soil that will benefit the ecosystem.
It would be pretty important not to engineer trees that are significant food sources for anything too high up the food chain, or at least somehow ensure that the metal accumulation only happens in the relatively inedible parts (like wood), but otherwise at first glance this seems a viable stopgap to damp the carbon release feedback loops that are staring us in the face.
I'm wondering if rot resistance (perhaps of other sorts than metal accumulation) can be useful in other contexts.
For example, here in New Mexico we're experiencing a decimation of the piñon pine trees that provide pine nuts (commercially) and ecological niches for a variety of birds. The warmer winters aren't killing off the bark beetles as they used to so the beetles are killing off the trees, especially when they're stressed from drought, and the alternatives seem to be somehow making the trees less appetizing to the beetles, introducing something to eat the beetles, or else just migrating the forests north into Colorado.