I dimly recall that tall trees lose sap transport capacity to cavitation: the column of water in the tube of xylem cells is under tension, with water being pulled up by evaporation rather than just pushed up by active absorption of water in the roots, so whenever a gas bubble forms in the wood it expands and persists. There's no mechanism to remove the bubbles; rather, the capacity is made up by the growth of new wood around the outside. So I would expect that a log from a tall tree would float even when fresh, until it becomes waterlogged, although it would be nowhere near as buoyant as kiln- dried lumber.
On Jan 31, 11:07 pm, Ning Zeng <z...@atmos.umd.edu> wrote: > Hello Andy: > Thanks for the post! > > My colleague, oceanographer Jim carton and I wrote a rough draft last > year on an idea of sustainably harvesting wood from the Black Sea > drainage basin including the Alps, rafting down the logs and sink to > the bottom of the Sea. Tom Schelling mentioned to me of this 'pickled > tree' idea, but we haven't been able to track down the references and > exactly what was proposed decades ago. Do you have any lead on this? > > Hello Greg: > On two issues you raised: > 1) methane generation in anoxic environment: apparently methanogenic > bacteria don't like lignin. This is evidenced by the observation that > wood hardly decays in landfills while other organic matter like food > decomposes quickly. While paper in landfill also decomposes (though > slowly), the cellulose in wood is hardly attacked because they are > incorporated together with lignin. So there is reasonable chance for > long-term sequestration of woody material. > 2) I was told fresh wood sinks by itself before it looses water. Or > may be your are right it depends on what kind of trees? I'd love to > have some references on this. > > Cheers! > -Ning > > Ning Zeng > Associate Professor, University of Marylandwww.atmos.umd.edu/~zeng > > On Jan 30, 5:47 pm, Andrew Revkin <anr...@nytimes.com> wrote: > > > Jesse Ausubel discusses the "Black Pickle" concept for sequestering > > carbon in the sea at the tail end of this updated post: > > http://tinyurl.com/dotUrbanJungle > > -- > > Andrew C. Revkin > > The New York Times / Environment > > 620 Eighth Ave., NY, NY 10018 > > Tel: 212-556-7326 Mob: 914-441-5556 > > Fax: 509-357-0965http://www.nytimes.com/revkin --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
