Another impact of massive fires.
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f you were to suddenly walk into a smoky room, you'd likely instinctively cover your mouth and stop breathing—at least while you find your way to cleaner air. Trees don’t have the luxury of running from smoke, but they do ‘hold their breath’ when exposed to it, researchers have discovered.
While ponderosa pines don’t have lungs, the trees take in carbon dioxide and emit oxygen through small pores in their leaves called stomata—an exchange that researchers liken to breathing. A team of scientists happened to be studying these pores and the compounds going in and out of them in a forest in Colorado in 2020 when smoke from the season’s nasty fires settled in. They were shocked to discover that the trees completely closed their stomata in response, “effectively holding their breath,” they write in a piece for The Conversation.
Ponderosa pines are a common species in the Northern California forest where the Park fire currently rages, so it’s likely that they—and perhaps other plants—are holding their breath in this manner while firefighters try to contain the blaze. Why they might do this isn’t clear. When people breathe in wildfire smoke, the small bits of ash can wreak havoc on their insides . It’s possible these tiny particles harm plants’ internal organs, too.
Whatever the reason the trees stop breathing, with fires increasing in frequency, size, and severity because of climate change, it’s more important than ever to figure out the effects of smoke, the researchers behind the study say.
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a tip of the hat to Sukie
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