It took me quite a few years of study until it dawned on me that the main body of a plant is its homogenous mass of roots. Its in the soil where plants do most of their living, and where most complex interactions occur with other organisms. The above ground parts are highly specialised organs of the plant designed for harvesting solar energy and reproduction. Much like the fungi, where the above ground mushroom is solely for reproduction, the main body of the fungi lives underground.
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Ahhh, root systems communicate with chemicals in trees in ways we don't yet understand completely. As you so eloquently described, fungi development eliminated the coal development.
That because of how they evolved. First molecular life was in the sea so how did plants come to live on land? Algae and similar plants life could survive on rocks in water but needed a source of water to sustain themselves. This was provided by the mycelium (fungi underground) as this provided advantages for the fungi - plants growing on the top of the soil provided cover against soil erosion and provided insulation against the cold. Dead plant foliage provided fertiliser for the mushrooms that the fungi produced as the rotting vegitation after summer provided the right temperature for the mycelium to produce mushrooms in autumn. This symbiotic relationship lead to the evolution of root systems in plants and has been demonstrated that plants communicate via mycelium connections under ground - parents can identify their own offspring and transfer nutrients directly to them through the mycelium networks.
Only last month, I was thinking about how it is possible for the black, gray, and brown soil to manifest itself as green each year in a garden (obviously I was aware of photosynthesis, the “why are the plants green?” is a childhood question) but in thinking about the other “common fact” that plants take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen, I was suddenly struck by the thought, the carbon isn’t coming from the ground. Don’t be ashamed, nobody is talking about this, this is conceptually a mind blower - The trees are the sky, they are the same thing (especially when you allow wind blown dust to be considered part of the atmosphere). I am wondering now what a great widespread discussion of this phenomenon would do to philosophy, it’s so fundamental, yet so unrealized - and basically never talked about. How could the transparent be the rich browns and blondes of solid wood? In some ways, it’s the most astoundingly magical reality, and it goes unspoken. When the idea hits, it feels like a major, life-changing revelation. Welcome!
@@wailinburnin trees are the half of your lungs. What you inhale the trees exhale. What you exhale the trees inhale. Nature is inclusive. Man's can be very exclusive especially today's culture. This video is presenting in a way we logically understand thru logic and dissection. No sun, no micros, no earthworms, no bees, no soil, no trees equal no LIFE.
@@wailinburnin it is basic stuff that used to be taught at school. If they don't teach it now it is because they don't want you to think about it, because it ruins their narrative. In truth if you actually wanted to reduce co2 you would grow more vegetation not keep cutting it down for biomass. But that would prevent the grifting on expensive projects that will ultimately fail because many are not based on science
Civil engineer, here. And a wetland inspector. Trees and vegetation in general move water about their mass by a physics phenomena called "capillary action". It's slower and more passive than mechanical pumping but does the job very well indeed. Read more about it.
Yes. I've heard capillary action is the same way blood moves in the body. Heart is not a pump, but rather a brake to let the CO2 and O2 exchange before the blood continues its journey.
I cut down a large popular once and the base was fizzing like soda so there must be some pressure there. Also some of the healthiest evergreens I've seen were growing in a sand and gravel quarry with little nutrients, everything came from the air. Roots also need air and absorb nitrogen. If the roots are buried with fill the tree will likely die. I worked many years as an Arborist. This was still very informative.
Poplar as in Cottonwood, Aspen, etc., or as in Tuliptree? (Calling those "Tulip Poplar" is a misnomer everyone seems to be guilty of.) Either species can grow to magnificent statures.
You are absolutely right. The first steps of water and mineral uptake by the roots are done by osmotic pressure. The osmotic pressure is controlled by the roots and can actively be modified.
@@boomer3150 - It was probably a Quaking Leaf Aspen or Common Poplar is the local name which are numerous in Southern Ontario. I have removed some giants in my time. 120'+
Yep. And no tree or any other organic matter will turn to coal because it will be broken down by microorganisms before it has a chance. Those microorganisms had yet to evolve during the Carboniferous so trees didn't decompose the way they do today.
I came to this on my own a while back. I always assumed that trees got their mass from the ground. Then I learned about the conservation of mass. In a closed system total mass is always the same. You can take mass from one thing and give it to another thing, but the total mass of both things is unchanged. If trees get mass from the ground, there would be a hole in the ground. Mind blowing to think trees are not made from dirt, they are made form air.
@@kakhavalthe big bang doesn't state that something came from nothing. It states that per our best guess through observation and interpolation the universe we inhabit is expanding from single origin point. Meaning all the mass contained in the observable universe must have existed prior to the big bang in some form. We just don't know what existed before the big bang. It is kind of heavy to think that every atom in our bodies has existed for millions of years and they just continually recycle into different molecules based on whatever is exciting them. "We are stardust" as the song goes. Just as fascinating is the idea that trees (and other things) can extract mass from the carbon molecules in the air. You should look up the efforts to mechanically extract carbon and make physical objects from it as a form of carbon capture.
@@kakhaval Big bang theory purports that the universe was all energy at the center. You split and combine atoms to release energy. What is to say that mass cannot be created from that energy?
I watched the first two minutes or so, video got a little long winded. And I don't mean that as a pun. The answer is "from the air". almost all the carbon a tree uses to make itself comes from the conversion of CO2 into sugars then other compounds. If you think about it, it takes 6 CO2's and 6 H2O's to make one glucose, and the by-product is 6 O2. Just think about the mass balance there... that's about 372 daltons taken in and converted but only 192 daltons emitted as the by-product. The other 180-ish remains in the tree as sugar. Similarly, when you or I "lose weight" most of it is lost to the atmosphere through our lungs via a very similar reaction occuring in the opposite direction. O2 drawn in, reacting with glucose, being exhaled as CO2 and H2O. Photosynthesis and respiration are of course quite a bit more complicated than that, but that is the overall net transformation that occurs once all the very many steps are accounted for.
What you're forgetting is that E=MC2. Energy is mass and trees absorb and convert almost 100% of the energy within the light that falls on its leaves. The chemical reactions that convert nutrients from the soil and the air into new molecules required additional energy, if it didn't the reaction would happen naturally and we wouldn't have CO2 because it all reacted. It is that energy input into the molecules that actually adds a lot of weight to the individual molecules and there are trillions in every leaf. It's why so much energy is released when you burn wood or petrol - it's the huge amounts of energy stored within every molecule and it adds a fair bit of weight
@greghenry3228 what you're forgetting is that if something absorbs most of the energy from light it would appear to be black in color. In fact plants reject most of the energy in the light that hits them and that's why they look green to us. Yeah there is a little mass energy conversion but there's not really a whole lot of nuclear or anything going on. So the carbon that makes up the structures of the plant itself comes from the carbon that is in the air. Any conversion of light into Mass would be small discrepancies between the pure Elemental forms of the plants constituent matter and it's assembled fully bonded versions. And that would only be a small fraction of a percent
Boom! Well said..... And how about this to ponder. The world barely knows to us is the soil. We're finding that plants utilize and pick up nutrients through the relationship with microbes- mycorizzha (don't think it's spelled right) They're finding that when you have soil loaded organic fertilizers and nutrients: macro, micro and Trace nutrients. The plants do not use up the fertilizer only small tiny less than 1% it's always there it's the microbes that need the food in the nutrients so the roots can take up the nutrients there lies the problem with our agriculture using tons and tons of chemical nutrient salts because the soil is dead and lacking beneficial microbes so it cost so much money and fertilizer and guess what happens when it rains it all washes away into our local watersheds that's why lake Erie nearest Southern Michigan and northwestern Ohio is that one of its worst states from toxic algae blooms because all the fertilizer runoff feeds the algae.... Solve the soil was alive what's my carbs and organic fertilizer there would be no runoff pollution , there would be billions of tons of chemical fertilizer not used - creating a huge surplus of money for agriculture and the most important but least sought after goal of food crops: nutrients minerals and vitamins.😢 There's been many studies that show minerals and vitamins are up to 30% more when crops are grown in organic , healthy, alive soil.....
We're finding now that the Mycelium in the forest soil communicates faster than light to all the trees the old trees the young trees. The finding this out by chemicals moving from one area to another. So the trees are talking to each other about diseases, pests, and God knows whatever else LOL The largest organism in the world is of mycelium colony in Oregon
If CO2 were to go up from 0.04% to 0.044%, it would cause 50% of deserts to grow and turn green. But if CO2 were to go down to 0.036, 20% of all plant species would go extinct, and we can only assume deserts would double or worse.
That's just misinformation being spread around by people that don't understand the science. I've even heard one or two scientists say similar thing, which immediately tells me not to trust anything else they say. Plants do respond to increasing CO2 under artificial conditions where all other growth factors are supplied in abundance (basically an ideal greenhouse environment with plants supplied artificial fertilizers). In the natural world, many factors limit plant growth, the primary one of course is water, temperature is also very important, soil conditions, nutrients etc etc. Atmospheric CO2 is probably at the very bottom of the list of all the growth limiting factors in a natural environment.
Not quite. That's more along pole shifts and sun activity. Research "solar forcing" it'll destroy every climate model you're ever paid attention to. But I digress. More CO2 = healthier & bigger vegetation = more food. Low c02 levels = ice age. We are currently have one of the lowest c02 levels in all of history. It is similar to the level during the dark age where virus' killed population centers around the world.
@@PhoenixTide69 Its bogus information being spread by people who don't understand the science, More CO2 doesn't make plants grow in a natural environment. It only happens when plants are grown under ideal greenhouse conditions with an abundant supply of nutrients. In nature, CO2 is the least limiting growth factor. Searching the internet is not research. Research is done by reading scientific journal articles.
More CO2 doesn't make plants grow more in the natural environment, It only happens under artificial ideal conditions when plants are given an abundant supply of all other nutrients. In a natural environment, CO2 is the least limiting growth factor. Searching the internet is not research, you are reading garbage and don't have the knowledge to realise it.
A tough act for a magician to follow. I used to wonder as a kid why the ground beneath a huge tree didn't have some voids. Wood made from air pushes into the ground. The crown is a "root" system of a tree gathering gases and sunshine to grow into the earth. It's so bizarre!
On mountains above 8000' the trees get twisted and look old and stressed. The fact is they are stressed due to a lack of CO2. Above 10,000' there a very few trees for due to a significant drop in CO2 levels. The planet needs CO2 levels at 500ppm or more.
This twisting and stressed appearance is due to environmental factors like temperature and wind, not primarily a lack of CO2. Less than 1/2 of 1% of the Earth's surface is higher than 10,000 feet, so this is not something people should be losing sleep over.
Weather/climate makes the difference as to whether a "tree" grows or not. There is such a thing as "the tree line" which goes higher nearer the equator, and lower nearest the poles. On some mountains in Colorado you can find a species of tree growing up to an altitude of 12,000 feet. It has nothing to do with a lack of CO2, but rather the cold climate! As you get nearer the poles, the cold weather causes trees to become stunted and not grow even at sea level. Please explain how CO2 levels drop as you climb in altitude.
Osmotic action! I've been using capillary felt wicking to water my plants for 30 years and the attributes of capillary are disrupted by modern felt oddly enough
@@GreenCanvasInteriorscape probably because modern felt isn't made from completely natural fibers. A lot of it is synthetic and not as absorbent as fabrics made decades ago. Also lots of fibers today are treated with hydrophobic coatings during production.
@jbcasesoriginal I'd known of coatings but didn't know specifically that they were hydrophobic, I speculated that they were flame proof in the way that children's pajamas became treated in the 70s. What's the advantage/ purpose of hydrophobic coatings? In the context of a raincoat I get it but... Puzzle organizers that roll up from thrift stores are the best source of vintage thick felt
Simply giving a name or even an explanation to phenomenon doesn’t necessarily remove the miraculous quality of it. There are many things that science can explain yet still cannot replicate. Gravity, the ability of bees and other insects to fly and even life itself.
Because CO2 does not allow the infrared energy to radiate back into space on the dark side of the planet, thereby raising the total temperature of the atmosphere.
This is a valid question, and speaking as someone who is not a biologist I think the answer is the answer to this question: If you see a plant wilting in your house, is the answer to add more C02 to the room?
Excellent video. Clear, concise and easily understandable. Plus, no obnoxious background music/noises and NO silly flashing inserts of goofy things to hold the viewers attention.
@@yellostallion There is no balance point for CO2, it has always varied and has been much higher in the past and did not cause a temperature problem. Over millions of years this planet has been removing CO2 from the atmosphere and storing it as carbonate rocks. That CO2 never goes back into the atmosphere. Because of this we almost ran out of usable CO2 during the last glaciation. The next glaciation could very well finish off all plant life and us, so we should appreciate every bit of CO2 that we produce.
The Earth maintains balance of all elements and just because today, the ppm of one gas vs. another is different, all it means is today, it is the "normal" for today. The talk of average is just a number. 1000 years ago and 1000 years from now it will be different. You have to also remember that people are being misled about the CO2 is heating the Earth. Temperature changes are leading indicators of CO2 ppm, not the other way, not the lie they have been forcing on us.
@@jdilksjr Blah, blah. Yours is a typical science denier argument. The climate is changing because of humans burning fossil fuels. Repubs (and other conservatives world wide) and fossil fuel companies had no problem with this fact until it became politically expedient to deny it. They've been caught in the lie, only idiots still believe it.
This should be required knowledge for school students. Want to reduce C02? Plant more trees, not spend money building factories to suck it out of the air, which has a huge cost of structure and power to run the pumps.
Thank you for correctly recognizing the miracle of water. Water is indeed a necessary molecule. Yet odd. It expands when frozen whilst other materials contract. It can create, sustain, then destroy life. It's a solvent which allows it to push dynamics of chemistry without stopping. Always wearing away even toughest substances. This is necessary for life. Static chemistry = dead life Dynamic chemistry = prospering life About capillary action. I learned a lot from this video even though the host never explicitly called water movement in a plant as CA. In hydraulic engineering, which is my specialty, CA isn't a major player. CA requires the pipe to be no larger than a set diameter. And this diameter is indeed so small that it's useless for us H&H engineers. Likely, CA is more useful for mechanical engineering side. They work at finer scales than we do. As do biomedical engineers. About the concept of H2O molecules aligned in a continuous array inside a plant' tube. One of several conditions for analyzing fluid mechanics (a branch of physics) is the homogeneity (pure water) and continuousness (no gas bubbles) of fluid like water. It's this same concept of continuity of stream of h2o molecules that actually keeps a massive tree alive! This is amazing!!!
@@davidbryden7904 The atmospheric CO2 level has been as high as 7000 ppm in the past and the earth was fine. The dinosaurs thought the air was fine when the CO2 level was 2000 ppm. So why would you think that 400 ppm would be too much? It appears to me that we dodged a bullet because at the end of the last glacial period the CO2 level was only 180 ppm. At about 150 ppm C3 plants stop growing and stop producing the oxygen we need to breathe, So be careful what you wish for.
@@MatthewBerginGarage It was fine for the creatures that evolved under those conditions. I don't think there is any chance we'll see 150ppm CO2 anytime in the realistic future. I'm not worried about C3 plants; I'm worried about the C4s, which provide so much of our food and do not benefit from elevated CO2.
This is a better explanation than Derek Muller's Veritasium on the same topics. I don't know what I'll do with my new knowledge but I enjoyed learning it. Thank you.
From sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water. Wood is mostly cellulose, a starchy polymer composed of glucose molecules linked together. The glucose is produced by photosynthesis from CO2 and H2O. A plant uses a small fraction of its manufactured sugar for its metabolism. However, the overwhelming majority is used for structure. Animals use proteins and minerals for structure (flesh and bone). A tree uses starch (wood) for the structure used to advance the ultimate purpose -- to elevate the leaves into the sunlight.
You can really believe it in BC Canada where huge trees like Douglas Fir grow on rocks. But it’s even better than this video says, as the trees drop stuff in large quantities that then allows bacteria and fungi to live around the base, providing a source of essential nutrients! So it lifts itself by its own ‘farming’ practice. Quite amazing. In BC’s temperate rain forest you can see this in quick time. And of course it’s known that the ‘rich’ soil of the Amazon rainforest is not very rich and so slash and burn farming was bad and there was a huge campaign against it 30 years ago. Oh no! I’m so old!
@@ScienceSimplified4All It would have been nice to mention the fourth thing... that when trees consume the glucose they use respiration ( instead of photosynthesis) . This consumes oxygen and releases carbon dioxide, just like animals. Since photosynthesis stops at night, then the highest relative amount of CO2 is released at night.
All of those are bad for our children's future. BTW plastic production is positively correlated with elevated CO2 in the atmosphere. Plastics are primarily made from petroleum.
I use to refuse to use a grass catcher on my lawn mower because i didn't want to cause the ground to "fade away" My thinking was if i keep hauling away the clipping then the ground would sink over time. When i learned about Carbon i started using the bagger.
@@oldpossum57 Very few mowers pulverize the clippings fine enough to decompose rapidly. Large clumps of clippings on top of the grass burn it as they decompose.
My lawn is 6 inches higher than the sidewalk from many years of not bagging the grass clippings. I'm going to have to dig it back down to sidewalk level and reseed the lawn.🤷♂😉
@@MatthewBerginGarage That's too funny. There was a time i had to clean out a buildup of very fine dust/dirt from under a concrete ramp. The ramp was solid except for a two foot square tunnel that had drainage in the center of it. I had to scrap out years of accumulated dust/soil in order to allow water to drain from an area that would retain a couple inches of water. Every time it rained over the years the dust would accumulate over time.....
@tjburr1968 this is true and considering the 1/5 - 1/6 ratio of root to trunk on average, some trees would leave a very large hole indeed , but as roots absorb the moisture it causes the soil to shrink away leaving a space to expand into when the soil is rehydrated it creates a pressure on the surrounding soil witch in turn moves to compensate for the volume to which the root had taken. This moves the soil uniformly and as such is generally unnoticed, unlike the dramatic affect of suddenly removing the mass of the root system all at once. Hope this help explain your query
Very good explanation. Can you add links to many scientific research papers on this? I always wondered how plants got its weight- and this explanation seems logical.
Some of it is just logic - for instance, that the vast majority of the bulk of wood comes from the air is really the only viable explanation. If very much came from the soil, there would be huge depressions around every tree where the soil had been take up. In addition, it is an inevitable conclusion from what is known about photosynthesis. Not every empirical fact needs a study or experiment - would you really need a reference or experiment to support the statement that vision is required to drive a car? Like do an experiment with half of the drivers with black bags over their heads to see if they crash more than those that can see where they are going?
We learned the process of plants and trees pulling water up through the plant was called capillary action. I'm curios why this video never used that word 🤷. Call me confused.
CO2 retains heat longer than Nitrogen or Oxygen. It is denser and has greater thermal mass. So, as the percentage of CO2 rises due to the burning of fossil fuels, the atmosphere gets incrementally hotter. Hotter air leads to a greater percentage of water vapor, and water vapor retains heat longer than Oxygen or Nitrogen, which compounds the heat problem. Bit by bit, the earth's atmosphere, warmed by the sun, is getting hotter. Humans have been releasing CO2 that took a hundred millions years to store at a rate vastly faster than that, and that rate is accelerating as oil and coal are used to power more and more machines and industrial processes, like steel making. CO2 is great for trees, but even if the entire land mass of the earth were covered in trees, not enough of them would fit to reabsorb all the 100 million years of CO2 we have released from 'storage' in the past 300 years. As it says in the video, no trees are ever going to be turned into coal ever again because of the evolution of bacteria that decomposes trees, releasing all the CO2 they contain. CO2 storage in trees is now limited to the duration of the undecomposed tree. There is no going back to harmless storage of excess CO2 as coal and oil under the ground. When you burn one gallon of gas, you are taking part of that chemical reaction from the atmosphere, the oxygen. So you take oxygen from the atmosphere, combine it with carbon from the gasoline, and you end up with 20 pounds of CO2 from every gallon of gas. You are not simply adding CO2 to the atmosphere, you are turning part of the atmosphere into CO2, so, from about six pounds of gas, you end up with 20 pounds of CO2, and some number of pounds less of atmospheric Oxygen. Do your own research and see how many gallons of gas are sold in the world every day.
as a gardener who uses co2 to grow more plants(quite common in greenhouses and aqua cultures) and as a natural science nerd. 🌱 I would like to share that plants/vegetations carbon absorption is substantial. It’s the other half of earths ecosystem’s inhale and exhale, cycle. we need both equally : (the oxygen and CO2, one is not bad). Nature balances itself by creating More plants from excess co2, and more plants bring more moisture from the ground to prevent deforestation& desertification. It’s self balancing system. We do not have carbon surplus we only have deforestation& pollution problems and bad politics with skewed science,to scare people from breathing 😷 . All climate prediction models exclude cloud coverage, which means they ignore the largest natural sun shield made by the self balancing system. Daily across the planet. This is admitted by thousands of climate scientists who seek to get some sense the situation. That is more politically driven to control, than it is driven to actually help to reduce deforestation or pollution. That and the fact that CO2 is well under 1% of atmospheric composition, with basic physics proves that there is not enough CO2 to drive excess heating/ climate change. The reasons for heating and cooling are solar system wide and part of its seasonal great cycles. Have great life on this blue green planet ! ❤ 🌞 💧 🌱
@@duanehorton4680 but - they are bark and it is their bulk. The real question is - If there were no dogs in the forest, would there still be bark in their bulk?
I guess since we're correcting grammatical errors, I'll correct the sentence structure: 'I'm not sure where they get their bulk. But, their bark they get from dogs.' Sorry for being so pedantic. 😉😉
They may have gotten their barks from dogs, but their trunks came from elephants! That alone explains the massive bulk!
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5 gallon bucket with aquarium air pump tube and stone in bottom, fine mesh screen four inches or so above bottom, with capped feed tube for adding water. Add clean soil (happy frog) to top. Hatch seedlings in tray of water, transfer to bucket and turn on air pump. No water in soil, only the vapor from the air bubbler, No added water on top keeps soil dry without typical bugs, etc. Plants grow perfectly without touching water, only vapor. I grew lots of 'vegetables' this way back in the day. ;>)
For those who confused with the Carbon subject, remember we emit Carbon Monoxide with our machines. We exhale Carbon Dioxide which is safe and good for the environement. Reducing Carbon emission is focus more on Carbon monoxide which is a toxic gas that's harming the environement. There is also carbon suboxide which we don't have to talk about at the moment.
Several years ago I was thinking about the mass of large trees and thought about the ground around it. I too thought its mass came from the ground, but realized it should cause the ground to sink if a lot of mass was taken out from the soil to the tree, so I searched this and found its mass mostly comes from the air.
The question of "where do plants get material to grow?" occurred to me last year or so. If it was getting it from the ground, why didn't the ground get depleted? It's interesting how something solid can be made by using something we can't see.
Are we moving towards a realisation that life on earth came from air and not water. I think a safer assumption will be from combination of multiple natural elements air, water, fire and earth. Maybe
Teardrop As I look out my window today I see a tree. In the field over there, among friends It stands tall and strong and I don’t know his name I do not know trees as some do Botanists and horticulturists know these names Greek and Latin. And family and ancestry too How tall they can be and how deep their roots go Bark and buds and leaves Me, I don’t know such things I just look out my window and see this tree Majestic and imposing. Kingly you might say And I don’t even know his name He has probably been here for a long time Long before my little window came to look upon him When these were fields busy, foxes and squirrels Wild grasses and noisy creeks Old and wise I imagine my tree to be And I look at him looking back at me His leaves dance gracefully in formal salute I would dare a question if only I knew his name How did you come to be Who have you met in your days. Were they kind and friendly What do you dream about in the cold of winter Is the summer shower warmer after the storm I should probably stop this daydreaming now Trees do not mind for intrusive onlookers Who know nothing about them Not even their name As I go back to work, I see a leaf falling from my tree
Great video, extremely interesting! Question xylem tubes need to be so smooth as to not create nucleation points for the water to turn to gas? Does this mean the is negative pressure in them? is that possible? Also Does this physical property of xylem tubes mean that all of them have to be the same size regardless of the plant species?
Plant physiologist here. Good intuition; no nucleation points = less cavitation. Yes, the pressure in xylem tracheary elements is much lower than atmospheric pressure. It is not only possible, it is a major field of study in plant physiology because it is universal in vascular plants. This is why the cell walls of xylem tracheids and vessel elements are very thick and reinforced with lignin polymers, so they can resist collapse under high negative pressure - a couple of orders of magnitude below ambient. Xylem vessels are present in a range of diameters within and across species. Cell wall molecular structure varies and affects the ability to resist collapse. It is more complicated than I can explain here.
The water in that straw absolutely will adhere to the sides of it and slightly move up the tube. Same as in a beaker or flask. That’s why you read fluid levels at the meniscus.
For plants higher levels of atmospheric CO2 improve the reactions and stomata can be reduced in size meaning less water is lost which allows plants to survive in drier conditions. Plants need more CO2 or Carbon as politicians call it not less.
@@mikeottersole Absolutely. And the amazing thing is that animals who eat the plants produce that equation exactly in reverse. C6H1206 + 602 --> 6CO2 + 6H2O + Energy This means that we consume the glucose created by the plants + the breath in the oxygen created by the plants to produce water needed by the plants + carbon dioxide needed by the plants + energy so that we can have the strength to harvest the plants. HOW beautifully elegant is nature!
Look up Henry's law, most of the CO2 increase is from a slight warming of the ocean. Over 90% of the earth's CO2 is dissolved in the ocean water. Cold water can hold more CO2 than warm water. Open a warm beer and it foams all over as the CO2 escapes but cool the beer and it barely foams at all. That is henry's law, so since most of the surface of the earth is water, a slight warming of the ocean can make quite a change in the CO2 level.
It is both. Thirty years ago a reliable carbon isotope study comparing historical air trapped in ice bubbles to modern air confirmed that most of the CO2 that's been added to the atmosphere is from fossil fuels.
I've been attempting to explain this to people for years... but I'm bad at that 😆 glad I've got a video to show people now. Basically the tree takes in CO2, knocks off the O2 and keeps the C... I study wildlife (predatory mammals) and I cannot stress enough as one of those predatory mammals that we NEED all things green more than we may ever truly understand.
So, on pumping and sucking water, if it's the atmosphere that dictates the water pump level, if you transfer the water to water pressure, like with a funnelled cone, so the pump can all the wait of some water to water in a chamber around the cone, could localized pressure be increased and brake the 33 foot rule? I feel that will simulate pumping from below as the water will act as though the pump is underwater by relative pressure, but without a closed space. Would have a max output still. Also, in a confined well, could a heavy weight made to float help pressurize the water? I know pressurizing the air could do the job, but feel like that would be pumping from below, so doesn't count.
A further explanation of the process of sap moving upwards in sugar maple trees in the spring would be interesting since it seems to contradict the idea that if the tree loses the water in its trunk it will die.
@@danielgladish1691 Yes, I’m aware of that but the water in the tree goes into the roots for the winter and rises back up into the tree in the spring and that seems to contradict the idea presented that there’s always moisture in the wood tissues and if they dry out they die. I’m simply wondering if the whole process is a bit different for northern trees that go dormant than it is for more tropical trees that don’t.
I am going to have to listen to this again to understand how this works. 🥃🤔 So inside a Sequoya Tree for example. There's an unbroken vein of water 💦 from the soil to the tippy top ⁉️⛄🤠
It took me quite a few years of study until it dawned on me that the main body of a plant is its homogenous mass of roots. Its in the soil where plants do most of their living, and where most complex interactions occur with other organisms. The above ground parts are highly specialised organs of the plant designed for harvesting solar energy and reproduction. Much like the fungi, where the above ground mushroom is solely for reproduction, the main body of the fungi lives underground.
Ahhh, root systems communicate with chemicals in trees in ways we don't yet understand completely.
As you so eloquently described, fungi development eliminated the coal development.
Fungi are the precursors to animal life
Great shift in perspective. The roots are the organism-proper.
That because of how they evolved. First molecular life was in the sea so how did plants come to live on land? Algae and similar plants life could survive on rocks in water but needed a source of water to sustain themselves. This was provided by the mycelium (fungi underground) as this provided advantages for the fungi - plants growing on the top of the soil provided cover against soil erosion and provided insulation against the cold. Dead plant foliage provided fertiliser for the mushrooms that the fungi produced as the rotting vegitation after summer provided the right temperature for the mycelium to produce mushrooms in autumn. This symbiotic relationship lead to the evolution of root systems in plants and has been demonstrated that plants communicate via mycelium connections under ground - parents can identify their own offspring and transfer nutrients directly to them through the mycelium networks.
The trees harvest a huge amount of carbon from the air.
3 things I'm a bit ashamed to say that I've never thought about before. Excellent video!
+100
Only last month, I was thinking about how it is possible for the black, gray, and brown soil to manifest itself as green each year in a garden (obviously I was aware of photosynthesis, the “why are the plants green?” is a childhood question) but in thinking about the other “common fact” that plants take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen, I was suddenly struck by the thought, the carbon isn’t coming from the ground.
Don’t be ashamed, nobody is talking about this, this is conceptually a mind blower - The trees are the sky, they are the same thing (especially when you allow wind blown dust to be considered part of the atmosphere). I am wondering now what a great widespread discussion of this phenomenon would do to philosophy, it’s so fundamental, yet so unrealized - and basically never talked about. How could the transparent be the rich browns and blondes of solid wood? In some ways, it’s the most astoundingly magical reality, and it goes unspoken. When the idea hits, it feels like a major, life-changing revelation. Welcome!
@@wailinburnin trees are the half of your lungs. What you inhale the trees exhale. What you exhale the trees inhale. Nature is inclusive. Man's can be very exclusive especially today's culture. This video is presenting in a way we logically understand thru logic and dissection. No sun, no micros, no earthworms, no bees, no soil, no trees equal no LIFE.
You put your point across very well. Nice writing 👏
@@wailinburnin it is basic stuff that used to be taught at school. If they don't teach it now it is because they don't want you to think about it, because it ruins their narrative.
In truth if you actually wanted to reduce co2 you would grow more vegetation not keep cutting it down for biomass. But that would prevent the grifting on expensive projects that will ultimately fail because many are not based on science
Civil engineer, here. And a wetland inspector.
Trees and vegetation in general move water about their mass by a physics phenomena called "capillary action".
It's slower and more passive than mechanical pumping but does the job very well indeed.
Read more about it.
Yes. I've heard capillary action is the same way blood moves in the body. Heart is not a pump, but rather a brake to let the CO2 and O2 exchange before the blood continues its journey.
@@jd01665 :D
Remember, everything you read on the internet is not true.
:)
They also got no air inside, so even pumps would work.
Thats what he's explaining as cohesion and adhesion pull
@@kevincaruthers5412 Go ahead and give your version of the truth. Vague comments are not useful.
I cut down a large popular once and the base was fizzing like soda so there must be some pressure there. Also some of the healthiest evergreens I've seen were growing in a sand and gravel quarry with little nutrients, everything came from the air. Roots also need air and absorb nitrogen. If the roots are buried with fill the tree will likely die. I worked many years as an Arborist. This was still very informative.
Bacteria and fungi in the soil, even poor soils, allow the trees to take up plenty of nutrients
Poplar as in Cottonwood, Aspen, etc., or as in Tuliptree? (Calling those "Tulip Poplar" is a misnomer everyone seems to be guilty of.) Either species can grow to magnificent statures.
You are absolutely right. The first steps of water and mineral uptake by the roots are done by osmotic pressure. The osmotic pressure is controlled by the roots and can actively be modified.
@@boomer3150 - It was probably a Quaking Leaf Aspen or Common Poplar is the local name which are numerous in Southern Ontario. I have removed some giants in my time. 120'+
@@robertalan4717 Cool; thanks for sharing. I read about the 400-year-old Cottonwoods in Canada, now on the decline.
From the air. They suck carbon dioxide out of the air.
Yep. And no tree or any other organic matter will turn to coal because it will be broken down by microorganisms before it has a chance. Those microorganisms had yet to evolve during the Carboniferous so trees didn't decompose the way they do today.
Which begs the question….according to darwin, weren’t single cell organisms first? Nope, not logical.
Which in one fell swoop demolishes the “threat” of CO2 to the environment.
@chuckles3265 Yeah,that sounds good. Let's go with that.
También el nitrógeno, o mejor dicho las bacterias lo capturan.
I came to this on my own a while back. I always assumed that trees got their mass from the ground. Then I learned about the conservation of mass. In a closed system total mass is always the same. You can take mass from one thing and give it to another thing, but the total mass of both things is unchanged.
If trees get mass from the ground, there would be a hole in the ground.
Mind blowing to think trees are not made from dirt, they are made form air.
except for big bang when nothing made everything. It doesn't make sense though
Nothing is everything. And vice versa.
@@kakhavalthe big bang doesn't state that something came from nothing. It states that per our best guess through observation and interpolation the universe we inhabit is expanding from single origin point. Meaning all the mass contained in the observable universe must have existed prior to the big bang in some form. We just don't know what existed before the big bang.
It is kind of heavy to think that every atom in our bodies has existed for millions of years and they just continually recycle into different molecules based on whatever is exciting them.
"We are stardust" as the song goes.
Just as fascinating is the idea that trees (and other things) can extract mass from the carbon molecules in the air.
You should look up the efforts to mechanically extract carbon and make physical objects from it as a form of carbon capture.
it is wrong, obviously. If there is no NPK, tree cannot grow. All proteins need nitrogen and all cells need potassium and phosphorus.
@@kakhaval Big bang theory purports that the universe was all energy at the center.
You split and combine atoms to release energy. What is to say that mass cannot be created from that energy?
I watched the first two minutes or so, video got a little long winded. And I don't mean that as a pun. The answer is "from the air". almost all the carbon a tree uses to make itself comes from the conversion of CO2 into sugars then other compounds. If you think about it, it takes 6 CO2's and 6 H2O's to make one glucose, and the by-product is 6 O2. Just think about the mass balance there... that's about 372 daltons taken in and converted but only 192 daltons emitted as the by-product. The other 180-ish remains in the tree as sugar. Similarly, when you or I "lose weight" most of it is lost to the atmosphere through our lungs via a very similar reaction occuring in the opposite direction. O2 drawn in, reacting with glucose, being exhaled as CO2 and H2O. Photosynthesis and respiration are of course quite a bit more complicated than that, but that is the overall net transformation that occurs once all the very many steps are accounted for.
Pechanga
What you're forgetting is that E=MC2. Energy is mass and trees absorb and convert almost 100% of the energy within the light that falls on its leaves. The chemical reactions that convert nutrients from the soil and the air into new molecules required additional energy, if it didn't the reaction would happen naturally and we wouldn't have CO2 because it all reacted. It is that energy input into the molecules that actually adds a lot of weight to the individual molecules and there are trillions in every leaf. It's why so much energy is released when you burn wood or petrol - it's the huge amounts of energy stored within every molecule and it adds a fair bit of weight
@greghenry3228 what you're forgetting is that if something absorbs most of the energy from light it would appear to be black in color. In fact plants reject most of the energy in the light that hits them and that's why they look green to us. Yeah there is a little mass energy conversion but there's not really a whole lot of nuclear or anything going on. So the carbon that makes up the structures of the plant itself comes from the carbon that is in the air. Any conversion of light into Mass would be small discrepancies between the pure Elemental forms of the plants constituent matter and it's assembled fully bonded versions. And that would only be a small fraction of a percent
Boom! Well said.....
And how about this to ponder.
The world barely knows to us is the soil. We're finding that plants utilize and pick up nutrients through the relationship with microbes- mycorizzha (don't think it's spelled right)
They're finding that when you have soil loaded organic fertilizers and nutrients: macro, micro and Trace nutrients. The plants do not use up the fertilizer only small tiny less than 1% it's always there it's the microbes that need the food in the nutrients so the roots can take up the nutrients there lies the problem with our agriculture using tons and tons of chemical nutrient salts because the soil is dead and lacking beneficial microbes so it cost so much money and fertilizer and guess what happens when it rains it all washes away into our local watersheds that's why lake Erie nearest Southern Michigan and northwestern Ohio is that one of its worst states from toxic algae blooms because all the fertilizer runoff feeds the algae.... Solve the soil was alive what's my carbs and organic fertilizer there would be no runoff pollution , there would be billions of tons of chemical fertilizer not used - creating a huge surplus of money for agriculture and the most important but least sought after goal of food crops: nutrients minerals and vitamins.😢
There's been many studies that show minerals and vitamins are up to 30% more when crops are grown in organic , healthy, alive soil.....
We're finding now that the Mycelium in the forest soil communicates faster than light to all the trees the old trees the young trees. The finding this out by chemicals moving from one area to another. So the trees are talking to each other about diseases, pests, and God knows whatever else LOL
The largest organism in the world is of mycelium colony in Oregon
If CO2 were to go up from 0.04% to 0.044%, it would cause 50% of deserts to grow and turn green.
But if CO2 were to go down to 0.036, 20% of all plant species would go extinct, and we can only assume deserts would double or worse.
That's just misinformation being spread around by people that don't understand the science. I've even heard one or two scientists say similar thing, which immediately tells me not to trust anything else they say. Plants do respond to increasing CO2 under artificial conditions where all other growth factors are supplied in abundance (basically an ideal greenhouse environment with plants supplied artificial fertilizers). In the natural world, many factors limit plant growth, the primary one of course is water, temperature is also very important, soil conditions, nutrients etc etc. Atmospheric CO2 is probably at the very bottom of the list of all the growth limiting factors in a natural environment.
Not quite.
That's more along pole shifts and sun activity.
Research "solar forcing" it'll destroy every climate model you're ever paid attention to.
But I digress. More CO2 = healthier & bigger vegetation = more food.
Low c02 levels = ice age.
We are currently have one of the lowest c02 levels in all of history. It is similar to the level during the dark age where virus' killed population centers around the world.
dont tell wef and billy boy gates
@@PhoenixTide69 Its bogus information being spread by people who don't understand the science, More CO2 doesn't make plants grow in a natural environment. It only happens when plants are grown under ideal greenhouse conditions with an abundant supply of nutrients. In nature, CO2 is the least limiting growth factor.
Searching the internet is not research. Research is done by reading scientific journal articles.
More CO2 doesn't make plants grow more in the natural environment, It only happens under artificial ideal conditions when plants are given an abundant supply of all other nutrients. In a natural environment, CO2 is the least limiting growth factor.
Searching the internet is not research, you are reading garbage and don't have the knowledge to realise it.
A tough act for a magician to follow. I used to wonder as a kid why the ground beneath a huge tree didn't have some voids. Wood made from air pushes into the ground. The crown is a "root" system of a tree gathering gases and sunshine to grow into the earth. It's so bizarre!
Great explanatory science! Thank you for illuminating the life of trees!
Read the book The Hidden Life of Trees.
Without watching, I thought the answer was obvious, largest element in a tree is carbon, it comes out of the air!
On mountains above 8000' the trees get twisted and look old and stressed. The fact is they are stressed due to a lack of CO2. Above 10,000' there a very few trees for due to a significant drop in CO2 levels. The planet needs CO2 levels at 500ppm or more.
Of course, the climate hysteria crowd doesn't see it that way.
This twisting and stressed appearance is due to environmental factors like temperature and wind, not primarily a lack of CO2. Less than 1/2 of 1% of the Earth's surface is higher than 10,000 feet, so this is not something people should be losing sleep over.
This is true, the partial pressure from CO2 is greatly diminished to the point that the trees are stunted.
Weather/climate makes the difference as to whether a "tree" grows or not. There is such a thing as "the tree line" which goes higher nearer the equator, and lower nearest the poles. On some mountains in Colorado you can find a species of tree growing up to an altitude of 12,000 feet. It has nothing to do with a lack of CO2, but rather the cold climate! As you get nearer the poles, the cold weather causes trees to become stunted and not grow even at sea level.
Please explain how CO2 levels drop as you climb in altitude.
@@ivanivonovich9863 He can't. CO2 is kinda like clingy ex-wives and GFs - they follow you everywhere and never let go.
1:00 It's not a mystery. Trees don't pump water, water is drawn up by capillary action.
Osmotic action!
I've been using capillary felt wicking to water my plants for 30 years and the attributes of capillary are disrupted by modern felt oddly enough
@@GreenCanvasInteriorscape probably because modern felt isn't made from completely natural fibers. A lot of it is synthetic and not as absorbent as fabrics made decades ago. Also lots of fibers today are treated with hydrophobic coatings during production.
@jbcasesoriginal I'd known of coatings but didn't know specifically that they were hydrophobic, I speculated that they were flame proof in the way that children's pajamas became treated in the 70s. What's the advantage/ purpose of hydrophobic coatings? In the context of a raincoat I get it but...
Puzzle organizers that roll up from thrift stores are the best source of vintage thick felt
They use both...Osmosis and capillary action.
Simply giving a name or even an explanation to phenomenon doesn’t necessarily remove the miraculous quality of it. There are many things that science can explain yet still cannot replicate. Gravity, the ability of bees and other insects to fly and even life itself.
The elephant in the room: If more CO2 equals more trees, equals more oxygen, why the push to reduce carbon emissions?
balance
They want us to be poor, dependent and, as soon as possible, dead.
Because CO2 does not allow the infrared energy to radiate back into space on the dark side of the planet, thereby raising the total temperature of the atmosphere.
CO2 impacts other parts of our environment that accumulates heat. This slowly changes the weather to a warmer temperature.
This is a valid question, and speaking as someone who is not a biologist I think the answer is the answer to this question: If you see a plant wilting in your house, is the answer to add more C02 to the room?
Excellent video. Clear, concise and easily understandable. Plus, no obnoxious background music/noises and NO silly flashing inserts of goofy things to hold the viewers attention.
And no climate emergency bs
I definitely noticed that, too.
EXCELLENT video! I haven't seen this kind of information in over 50 years. I really appreciate your efforts. Thank you.
Tries make wood out of thin air - absolutely wonderful!!!
Actually, THICK air gives them a bit more to work with! :P
And the sun Mother Nature is a bad ass chick🌲
TRIES
CO2 is not bad. It's necessary for life, all life, plants, and animals.
When it's balance in nature
@@yellostallion There is no balance point for CO2, it has always varied and has been much higher in the past and did not cause a temperature problem. Over millions of years this planet has been removing CO2 from the atmosphere and storing it as carbonate rocks. That CO2 never goes back into the atmosphere. Because of this we almost ran out of usable CO2 during the last glaciation. The next glaciation could very well finish off all plant life and us, so we should appreciate every bit of CO2 that we produce.
The Earth maintains balance of all elements and just because today, the ppm of one gas vs. another is different, all it means is today, it is the "normal" for today. The talk of average is just a number. 1000 years ago and 1000 years from now it will be different.
You have to also remember that people are being misled about the CO2 is heating the Earth. Temperature changes are leading indicators of CO2 ppm, not the other way, not the lie they have been forcing on us.
@@jdilksjr Blah, blah. Yours is a typical science denier argument. The climate is changing because of humans burning fossil fuels. Repubs (and other conservatives world wide) and fossil fuel companies had no problem with this fact until it became politically expedient to deny it. They've been caught in the lie, only idiots still believe it.
@@johnvrabec9747 So what is the source of the temperature increase? and how does that affect the CO2?
I like the style of this channel. Simplified, but not in a silly or juvenile way. Please persist.
Oh Lord How Great Thou art!
CO2, H2O and sunlight.
Plus macro and micro in live soil. Not dead sand like the dry desert
Excellent diction. Easily understood.
It's a computer...
This should be required knowledge for school students.
Want to reduce C02? Plant more trees, not spend money building factories to suck it out of the air, which has a huge cost of structure and power to run the pumps.
Very clear and concise explanations, very well presented and narrated.
Air,water and sun light.
Plus soil
And carbon.
@@crazysquirrel9425 Yes. from air.
Thank you for correctly recognizing the miracle of water. Water is indeed a necessary molecule. Yet odd. It expands when frozen whilst other materials contract. It can create, sustain, then destroy life. It's a solvent which allows it to push dynamics of chemistry without stopping. Always wearing away even toughest substances. This is necessary for life.
Static chemistry = dead life
Dynamic chemistry = prospering life
About capillary action. I learned a lot from this video even though the host never explicitly called water movement in a plant as CA. In hydraulic engineering, which is my specialty, CA isn't a major player. CA requires the pipe to be no larger than a set diameter. And this diameter is indeed so small that it's useless for us H&H engineers. Likely, CA is more useful for mechanical engineering side. They work at finer scales than we do. As do biomedical engineers. About the concept of H2O molecules aligned in a continuous array inside a plant' tube. One of several conditions for analyzing fluid mechanics (a branch of physics) is the homogeneity (pure water) and continuousness (no gas bubbles) of fluid like water. It's this same concept of continuity of stream of h2o molecules that actually keeps a massive tree alive! This is amazing!!!
C02 good
Everything in moderation
CO2 is plant food!
Plants would love 2,000 ppm of CO2; they were gasping at 180 ppm 20k years ago.
@@davidbryden7904 The atmospheric CO2 level has been as high as 7000 ppm in the past and the earth was fine. The dinosaurs thought the air was fine when the CO2 level was 2000 ppm. So why would you think that 400 ppm would be too much? It appears to me that we dodged a bullet because at the end of the last glacial period the CO2 level was only 180 ppm. At about 150 ppm C3 plants stop growing and stop producing the oxygen we need to breathe, So be careful what you wish for.
@@geraldfrost4710 Yet the Earth was heavily forested then, except where the glaciers were.
@@MatthewBerginGarage It was fine for the creatures that evolved under those conditions. I don't think there is any chance we'll see 150ppm CO2 anytime in the realistic future. I'm not worried about C3 plants; I'm worried about the C4s, which provide so much of our food and do not benefit from elevated CO2.
This is a better explanation than Derek Muller's Veritasium on the same topics. I don't know what I'll do with my new knowledge but I enjoyed learning it. Thank you.
brillant heartwarming with just the right amount of intelligent snark!! ❤❤❤
Always had this doubt. It was shocking to find out that only a small percentage of their bulk is from soil.
WoW this information is fascinating. I took DNR tree school and knew very little about this. Thanks for the great video
Great video and explanation of how trees grow and transport water.
Gods amazing creation!
From sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water. Wood is mostly cellulose, a starchy polymer composed of glucose molecules linked together. The glucose is produced by photosynthesis from CO2 and H2O. A plant uses a small fraction of its manufactured sugar for its metabolism. However, the overwhelming majority is used for structure. Animals use proteins and minerals for structure (flesh and bone). A tree uses starch (wood) for the structure used to advance the ultimate purpose -- to elevate the leaves into the sunlight.
Great video. I’ve been pondering this for decades! I hope you can make a video describing in more detail the workings of the Xylm Tubes.
You can really believe it in BC Canada where huge trees like Douglas Fir grow on rocks. But it’s even better than this video says, as the trees drop stuff in large quantities that then allows bacteria and fungi to live around the base, providing a source of essential nutrients! So it lifts itself by its own ‘farming’ practice. Quite amazing. In BC’s temperate rain forest you can see this in quick time. And of course it’s known that the ‘rich’ soil of the Amazon rainforest is not very rich and so slash and burn farming was bad and there was a huge campaign against it 30 years ago. Oh no! I’m so old!
I am happy to learn this.
Very informative..
I never know about the coal and suction limit before watching this
I'm glad you found it helpful! 😊
@@ScienceSimplified4All It would have been nice to mention the fourth thing... that when trees consume the glucose they use respiration ( instead of photosynthesis) . This consumes oxygen and releases carbon dioxide, just like animals. Since photosynthesis stops at night, then the highest relative amount of CO2 is released at night.
To hell with reducing carbon footprint! Let's help the trees grow!
The main environment problem is chemical/plastic pollution, not "carbon footprint"
All of those are bad for our children's future. BTW plastic production is positively correlated with elevated CO2 in the atmosphere. Plastics are primarily made from petroleum.
Excellent video. I thought I knew this but you've added to my understanding.
I use to refuse to use a grass catcher on my lawn mower because i didn't want to cause the ground to "fade away" My thinking was if i keep hauling away the clipping then the ground would sink over time. When i learned about Carbon i started using the bagger.
If your mower is the sort that mulches the clippings, let the grass sit. It provides soil structure and food for decomposers.
@@oldpossum57 Very few mowers pulverize the clippings fine enough to decompose rapidly. Large clumps of clippings on top of the grass burn it as they decompose.
@@shadeburst Okay…didn’t know that. Thanks.
My lawn is 6 inches higher than the sidewalk from many years of not bagging the grass clippings. I'm going to have to dig it back down to sidewalk level and reseed the lawn.🤷♂😉
@@MatthewBerginGarage That's too funny. There was a time i had to clean out a buildup of very fine dust/dirt from under a concrete ramp. The ramp was solid except for a two foot square tunnel that had drainage in the center of it. I had to scrap out years of accumulated dust/soil in order to allow water to drain from an area that would retain a couple inches of water. Every time it rained over the years the dust would accumulate over time.....
Absolutely fascinating! Thank you!
I knew the first two, but the third one was a great chance to learn. Thanks for the interesting content.
If the building materials come from the ground, thier would be a tree size hole
If you were able to pull all roots out in tact of a tree, wouldn't there be a big low spot in the soil?
@tjburr1968 this is true and considering the 1/5 - 1/6 ratio of root to trunk on average, some trees would leave a very large hole indeed , but as roots absorb the moisture it causes the soil to shrink away leaving a space to expand into when the soil is rehydrated it creates a pressure on the surrounding soil witch in turn moves to compensate for the volume to which the root had taken. This moves the soil uniformly and as such is generally unnoticed, unlike the dramatic affect of suddenly removing the mass of the root system all at once. Hope this help explain your query
Brilliantly explained!!
I have learned alot from this video!
Very good explanation. Can you add links to many scientific research papers on this? I always wondered how plants got its weight- and this explanation seems logical.
Some of it is just logic - for instance, that the vast majority of the bulk of wood comes from the air is really the only viable explanation. If very much came from the soil, there would be huge depressions around every tree where the soil had been take up. In addition, it is an inevitable conclusion from what is known about photosynthesis. Not every empirical fact needs a study or experiment - would you really need a reference or experiment to support the statement that vision is required to drive a car? Like do an experiment with half of the drivers with black bags over their heads to see if they crash more than those that can see where they are going?
The author has done enough for all. Use google search to further your own knowledge without asking for someone else to do everything for you.
Keen childlike observation can surpass logic. But it requires honesty
Google it.
We learned the process of plants and trees pulling water up through the plant was called capillary action. I'm curios why this video never used that word 🤷. Call me confused.
I remember having the same confusion on a multiple-choice test in eighth-grade biology!
And we are told by the socalled Experts that CO² is bad for the Environment and must be reduced by any means!
Future historians will poke fun at the Carbon hysteria of our times.
That is why they should not be believed. If they can't get the easy basic stuff right ,just imagine what else they are misinforming you about.
Large amounts of extra CO2 "suddenly" added is bad for Earth's environments because it changes climates.
CO2 retains heat longer than Nitrogen or Oxygen. It is denser and has greater thermal mass. So, as the percentage of CO2 rises due to the burning of fossil fuels, the atmosphere gets incrementally hotter. Hotter air leads to a greater percentage of water vapor, and water vapor retains heat longer than Oxygen or Nitrogen, which compounds the heat problem. Bit by bit, the earth's atmosphere, warmed by the sun, is getting hotter. Humans have been releasing CO2 that took a hundred millions years to store at a rate vastly faster than that, and that rate is accelerating as oil and coal are used to power more and more machines and industrial processes, like steel making. CO2 is great for trees, but even if the entire land mass of the earth were covered in trees, not enough of them would fit to reabsorb all the 100 million years of CO2 we have released from 'storage' in the past 300 years. As it says in the video, no trees are ever going to be turned into coal ever again because of the evolution of bacteria that decomposes trees, releasing all the CO2 they contain. CO2 storage in trees is now limited to the duration of the undecomposed tree. There is no going back to harmless storage of excess CO2 as coal and oil under the ground. When you burn one gallon of gas, you are taking part of that chemical reaction from the atmosphere, the oxygen. So you take oxygen from the atmosphere, combine it with carbon from the gasoline, and you end up with 20 pounds of CO2 from every gallon of gas. You are not simply adding CO2 to the atmosphere, you are turning part of the atmosphere into CO2, so, from about six pounds of gas, you end up with 20 pounds of CO2, and some number of pounds less of atmospheric Oxygen. Do your own research and see how many gallons of gas are sold in the world every day.
This quenching information...its well digested and easy to understand.....
as a gardener who uses co2 to grow
more plants(quite common in greenhouses and aqua cultures)
and as a natural science nerd. 🌱
I would like to share that plants/vegetations carbon absorption is substantial.
It’s the other half of earths ecosystem’s inhale and exhale, cycle. we need both equally : (the oxygen and CO2, one is not bad). Nature balances itself by creating
More plants from excess co2,
and more plants bring more moisture from the ground to prevent deforestation& desertification.
It’s self balancing system.
We do not have carbon surplus we only have deforestation& pollution problems and bad politics with skewed science,to scare people from breathing 😷 .
All climate prediction models exclude cloud coverage, which means they ignore the largest natural sun shield made by the self balancing system. Daily across the planet. This is admitted by thousands of climate
scientists who seek to get some sense the situation. That is more politically driven to control, than it is driven to actually help to reduce deforestation or pollution.
That and the fact that CO2 is well under 1% of atmospheric composition, with basic physics proves that there is not enough CO2 to drive excess heating/ climate change.
The reasons for heating and cooling are solar system wide and part of its seasonal great cycles.
Have great life on this blue green planet !
❤ 🌞 💧 🌱
Fascinating...🎉
Not sure where they get their bulk, but they're bark.They get from dogs.
Their, not they're.
@@duanehorton4680 but - they are bark and it is their bulk. The real question is - If there were no dogs in the forest, would there still be bark in their bulk?
I guess since we're correcting grammatical errors, I'll correct the sentence structure: 'I'm not sure where they get their bulk. But, their bark they get from dogs.'
Sorry for being so pedantic. 😉😉
That is the Dog wood tree.
They may have gotten their barks from dogs, but their trunks came from elephants! That alone explains the massive bulk!
5 gallon bucket with aquarium air pump tube and stone in bottom, fine mesh screen four inches or so above bottom, with capped feed tube for adding water. Add clean soil (happy frog) to top. Hatch seedlings in tray of water, transfer to bucket and turn on air pump. No water in soil, only the vapor from the air bubbler, No added water on top keeps soil dry without typical bugs, etc. Plants grow perfectly without touching water, only vapor. I grew lots of 'vegetables' this way back in the day. ;>)
It was called 'carbon fixation' when you went through high school for a reason, most people just don't remember..
Amazing,
Thank you
It's not a pump..capillary action...grade 8 science.
You don't have it figured out. And it's not as simple as "capillary action, grade 8 science."
For those who confused with the Carbon subject, remember we emit Carbon Monoxide with our machines. We exhale Carbon Dioxide which is safe and good for the environement. Reducing Carbon emission is focus more on Carbon monoxide which is a toxic gas that's harming the environement. There is also carbon suboxide which we don't have to talk about at the moment.
Very beautiful topic and explanation ❤❤❤❤
Several years ago I was thinking about the mass of large trees and thought about the ground around it. I too thought its mass came from the ground, but realized it should cause the ground to sink if a lot of mass was taken out from the soil to the tree, so I searched this and found its mass mostly comes from the air.
The question of "where do plants get material to grow?" occurred to me last year or so. If it was getting it from the ground, why didn't the ground get depleted? It's interesting how something solid can be made by using something we can't see.
Amazing info! Thanks for sharing. Absolute WOW knoledge!
Excellent video! Thanks!
Spirit Lake at Mt. Saint Helen was filled to the brim with trees. Now scientists are witnessing trees becoming coal. 😮
My guess is that they got buried before they had a chance to decompose, no....?
@@normg2242 there was a massive volcanic explosion there in the eighties. Billions of tons of rock thrown out all over the forest.
Carbon doesn't decompose, because it is an atom. It will still become oil eventually.
This answered so much more than I already knew.
Excellent easy to understand video thanks to everyone who helped make it !
A very well done and interesting video I've worked with trees over 40 years and enjoyed learning something new thank you for sharing
Fascinating. I first learned of this in Rutherford Platt's "This Green World".
Very enlightening indeed . Thank you and subscribed.🙂
Are we moving towards a realisation that life on earth came from air and not water.
I think a safer assumption will be from combination of multiple natural elements air, water, fire and earth. Maybe
The SUN & CELLS amazing
Teardrop
As I look out my window today
I see a tree. In the field over there, among friends
It stands tall and strong and I don’t know his name
I do not know trees as some do
Botanists and horticulturists know these names
Greek and Latin. And family and ancestry too
How tall they can be and how deep their roots go
Bark and buds and leaves
Me, I don’t know such things
I just look out my window and see this tree
Majestic and imposing. Kingly you might say
And I don’t even know his name
He has probably been here for a long time
Long before my little window came to look upon him
When these were fields busy, foxes and squirrels
Wild grasses and noisy creeks
Old and wise I imagine my tree to be
And I look at him looking back at me
His leaves dance gracefully in formal salute
I would dare a question if only I knew his name
How did you come to be
Who have you met in your days. Were they kind and friendly
What do you dream about in the cold of winter
Is the summer shower warmer after the storm
I should probably stop this daydreaming now
Trees do not mind for intrusive onlookers
Who know nothing about them
Not even their name
As I go back to work, I see a leaf falling from my tree
This is a cool video!
Talk about something appearing out of thin air!😮
Great video, extremely interesting! Question xylem tubes need to be so smooth as to not create nucleation points for the water to turn to gas? Does this mean the is negative pressure in them? is that possible?
Also Does this physical property of xylem tubes mean that all of them have to be the same size regardless of the plant species?
Plant physiologist here. Good intuition; no nucleation points = less cavitation. Yes, the pressure in xylem tracheary elements is much lower than atmospheric pressure. It is not only possible, it is a major field of study in plant physiology because it is universal in vascular plants. This is why the cell walls of xylem tracheids and vessel elements are very thick and reinforced with lignin polymers, so they can resist collapse under high negative pressure - a couple of orders of magnitude below ambient. Xylem vessels are present in a range of diameters within and across species. Cell wall molecular structure varies and affects the ability to resist collapse. It is more complicated than I can explain here.
The water in that straw absolutely will adhere to the sides of it and slightly move up the tube. Same as in a beaker or flask. That’s why you read fluid levels at the meniscus.
2:31 So, does this mean that trees get a lot of their bulk like humans, from consuming a lot of carbohydrates?
No they make the carbohydrate.
Topics of your videos are very intresting 🙂
They buy their bulk cheaply, and in bulk, from Costco.
Right. If they would buy their material from Home Depot, there would be no straight trees... lol
Isn't it obvious CO2 and sun we literally learned this in elementary school
Yes but there has been a lot of bull crap spewed about CO2 the last 35 or so years so some have forgotten.
Very informative.. 👍
Aren't trees brilliant! Brilliant! More Co2 please 😋.
It's almost as if trees evolved naturally to grow as they do. Wow. (Sarcasm)
Very informative video.
6CO2 + 6H2O + light --> C6H12O6 + 6O2.
Yeah. But MOST people don't know/understand that.
For plants higher levels of atmospheric CO2 improve the reactions and stomata can be reduced in size meaning less water is lost which allows plants to survive in drier conditions.
Plants need more CO2 or Carbon as politicians call it not less.
A fundamental equation for all life on the planet.
@@mikeottersole Absolutely. And the amazing thing is that animals who eat the plants produce that equation exactly in reverse.
C6H1206 + 602 --> 6CO2 + 6H2O + Energy
This means that we consume the glucose created by the plants + the breath in the oxygen created by the plants to produce water needed by the plants + carbon dioxide needed by the plants + energy so that we can have the strength to harvest the plants. HOW beautifully elegant is nature!
Thanks
Cellulose is Carbohydrate Carbo Carbon Hydrate Water
So Carbondioxide and Water
Co2 + H2O > carbonic acid.
This is why rain is slightly acidic.
@ CO2 + H2O plus photosynthesis + krebs cycle = Carbohydrates = cellulose
Wonderful
The rise in co2 in the atmosphere probably isn’t due to emissions, but to the reduction of rainforest and other deforestation methods.
Look up Henry's law, most of the CO2 increase is from a slight warming of the ocean. Over 90% of the earth's CO2 is dissolved in the ocean water. Cold water can hold more CO2 than warm water. Open a warm beer and it foams all over as the CO2 escapes but cool the beer and it barely foams at all. That is henry's law, so since most of the surface of the earth is water, a slight warming of the ocean can make quite a change in the CO2 level.
It is both. Thirty years ago a reliable carbon isotope study comparing historical air trapped in ice bubbles to modern air confirmed that most of the CO2 that's been added to the atmosphere is from fossil fuels.
@@danielgladish1691 So what. Adding extra CO2 to the atmosphere is a good thing for the planet. There is no climate crisis
We seen the trees making new bark this past few years. It does itself. No dirt needed.
To think tree growing taller is mind blow😅😅 and thank you for show
Photosynthesis and evolution.
Wow. New knowledge for me. Thanks. Let me see you other videos and if I still am amazed bu the new knowledge from it, I would be your new subscriber.
Glad you enjoyed it! Hope you find my other videos enlightening as well.
I always figured it was from carbon in carbon dioxide
I've been attempting to explain this to people for years... but I'm bad at that 😆 glad I've got a video to show people now.
Basically the tree takes in CO2, knocks off the O2 and keeps the C...
I study wildlife (predatory mammals) and I cannot stress enough as one of those predatory mammals that we NEED all things green more than we may ever truly understand.
Nope. The CO2 goes in the the food molecules. The O2 comes from water, as the video stated.
Great explanation.
So, on pumping and sucking water, if it's the atmosphere that dictates the water pump level, if you transfer the water to water pressure, like with a funnelled cone, so the pump can all the wait of some water to water in a chamber around the cone, could localized pressure be increased and brake the 33 foot rule? I feel that will simulate pumping from below as the water will act as though the pump is underwater by relative pressure, but without a closed space. Would have a max output still. Also, in a confined well, could a heavy weight made to float help pressurize the water? I know pressurizing the air could do the job, but feel like that would be pumping from below, so doesn't count.
A further explanation of the process of sap moving upwards in sugar maple trees in the spring would be interesting since it seems to contradict the idea that if the tree loses the water in its trunk it will die.
Robert, maple syrup harvesters barely dent the water supply in the trees they tap.
@@danielgladish1691 Yes, I’m aware of that but the water in the tree goes into the roots for the winter and rises back up into the tree in the spring and that seems to contradict the idea presented that there’s always moisture in the wood tissues and if they dry out they die. I’m simply wondering if the whole process is a bit different for northern trees that go dormant than it is for more tropical trees that don’t.
Mind blown. Thanks!
I am going to have to listen to this again to understand how this works. 🥃🤔
So inside a Sequoya Tree for example. There's an unbroken vein of water 💦 from the soil to the tippy top ⁉️⛄🤠
Plant physiologist: Exactly. Many "veins" actually.
Facinating