Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees

Page numbers in parentheses. Italics are my own questions of the text.

Chapter 14 Notes             Chapter 15 Notes

Chapter 13 Notes             Chapter 12 Notes         Chapter 11 Notes

Chapter 10 Notes             Chapter 9 Notes           Chapter 8 Notes

Chapter 7 Notes               Chapter 6 Notes           Chapter 5 Notes

Chapters 3 & 4 Notes      Chapter 2 Notes      Foreword, Introductions, and Chapter 1 Notes

Chapter 16 – Carbon Dioxide Vacuums

forest systems are complicated (93)

• co2 = humus (94)

• becomes more concentrated over time

• far distant future:

• can become coal

• bituminous

• anthracite

today’s fossil fuels (94)

• trees that died 300 million years ago

• trees looked different then

• 100 ft tall horsetail or fern

• trunk diameters of 6 ft

• most trees grew in swamps

• died of old age

• splashed down in stagnant water

• hardly rotted at all

• over thousands of years became layers of peat

• rocky layer

• pressure turned peat into coal

today no coal is formed

• forests are constantly cleared

• sun reaches down

• kicks trees into high gear (95)

• consumes humus deep down into soil

• carbon stores in our latitudes being consumed as fast as its being formed

trees have been removing carbon from atmosphere for millions of years (96)

• we’re reversing the trend

• trees are growing more quickly so not living as long

shatters long-held belief that young trees grow faster

• older the tree the more quickly it grows (97) !

IN ORDER TO USE FORESTS IN FIGHT AGAINST GLOBAL WARMING

• we must allow them to grow old (98)