Soul of tropical trunks
2006/09/19 Roa Zubia, Guillermo - Elhuyar Zientzia
Cut the trunk of a tree transversely and you will see that it has annular drawings. One for each year of tree life. Therefore, the number of rings provides information about the age of the tree. And not only that, the large rings indicate that it was a prosperous year from the point of view of tree growth, while the narrow rings indicated that it was a scarce year. In short, the trunk also reports the evolution of time. But in the trees of the tropics there is no such information. Few trees have visible rings on the trunk. Therefore, the age of the tree, and the evolution of time, is another way of reading in these trunks, for example by analyzing radioisotopes. However, these methods are slow and costly, and scientists have tried to develop other methods. According to his study, some tropical trees do not lack rings. They have rings, but are invisible, and are even made visible through X-rays by the calcium contained in these rings. Radioisotopes allow for a four-month work in a single afternoon using X-rays.
