In the last week, a group of bowlers had a lucky escape when a tree crashed down onto a green. A few days later, an MP in the House of Commons revealed a mature tree had fallen on her house. So could this be linked to the recent soaring temperatures?<\/p>\n
Trees can really suffer during a heatwave and the heat stress can show in lots of different ways. <\/p>\n
It can affect processes on a molecular level, right up to the biology of the whole tree itself.<\/p>\n
A three-day heatwave has been shown to be more than enough time to cause real damage to a tree population.<\/p>\n
Dr Anna Gardner, a research fellow at the University of Birmingham’s Institute of Forest Research, studies the effects of climate change on trees.<\/p>\n
“During prolonged hot, dry weather, trees lose more water through their leaves than they can replace from the soil, placing them under water stress,” she said.<\/p>\n
“This can alter the physical properties of their tissues and reduce the margin of safety against mechanical failure, making large branches more likely to fail under their own weight, even in calm conditions.”<\/p>\n
Not every tree or branch would respond in the same way, she explained, with factors such as species, age and overall health influencing their resilience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the last week, a group of bowlers had a lucky escape when a tree crashed down onto…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":662437,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-662436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=662436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/662437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=662436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=662436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=662436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}