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The World's Tallest Tree in 3D

NCEO and UCL scientist, Professor Mat Disney, working in a collaboration with 16 scientists, reported the discovery of the World’s tallest tree. They produced a three-dimensional survey of the tree, which led them to speculate what drives the limits of tree height.

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The team reported the recent discovery of the world’s tallest tropical tree (Shorea faguetiana), possibly the world’s tallest angiosperm (flowering plant), located in the rainforests of Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. In addition, they provided a novel three-dimensional exploration of the dimensions of this remarkable tree and used these data to speculate on what drives the limits of tree height. Through consideration of both mechanical (risk of wind damage) and ecophysiological constraints they argued that this tree is close to the maximum height possible for angiosperms, around 100 m, and discuss more broadly what the nature and location of this tree imply about the limits to tree height. They named this remarkable tree “Menara,” Malay for “tower.”

This tall tree (“Menara”) was first identified during an airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) survey conducted in 2014 and is located in the Danum Valley Conservation Area (DVCA) – an area in Sabah with an elevation of 436 m a.s.l on a slope of 33° and an aspect of 72°. This area also holds the previous record holder for tallest tropical tree. Because airborne LiDAR is prone to significant errors when used to estimate heights of individual trees (Wan Mohd Jaafar et al., 2018), and because hilly topography will likely exacerbate those errors, record claims need to verified by reliable and calibrated instruments (such as Terrestrial Laser Scanning [TLS]) and, ideally, manual tape measurement. So the researchers returned in August 2018 to manually measure the trunk diameter and conduct TLS scans and a drone flight to construct a detailed 3D model and to calculate tree height and other dimensions. A further visit was conducted in January 2019, during which the tree was climbed to the top of its crown so the height could be directly verified with a measuring tape (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Jamiluddin (Unding) bin Jami climbing the tree in January 2019 to verify its (A) height and (B) diameter above buttress.