LOGAN – Utah State University researchers Jim Lutz, Joseph Birch and Justin DeRose made a unique discovery recently inside the boundaries of Cedar Breaks National Monument.
During their work to decipher how individual tree species survive changes they face, the research team can predict future big-picture changes in forests.
They found a certain Colorado blue spruce they named “Old Blue,” for good reason. In identifying Old Blue they pulled a core sample that showed the tree-rings and then carefully counted backward through the tree’s remarkable lifetime, estimating it germinated about the time Shakespeare was born: that’s 457 years of growth.
The researchers from USU’s Department of Wildland Resources fittingly christened it the oldest known Colorado blue spruce in existence.
Lutz, author of the team’s recently published research, said Old Blue is the type of tree the team works to identify and monitor because it is a “survivor.”