Scientists looking for giant trees in Taiwan discovered a hidden forest filled with some of East Asia's tallest trees

Hidden forest filled with some of East Asia's tallest trees/Image: AI Generated Hidden within Taiwan's steep mountain ranges, beyond roads and well-trodden hiking trails, lies a forest that remained largely unknown to science until recently. While searching for exceptionally tall trees using airborne laser scanning, researchers discovered an extraordinary landscape filled with towering conifers, ancient broadleaf forests and some of East Asia's largest living trees. Many rise more than 70 metres into the sky, while together these forests store vast amounts of carbon, making them among the region's most important natural climate reserves. The discovery, described in the peer-reviewed paper ‘Taiwan's giant forests: distribution, tree height, aboveground carbon stock, and conservation’ published in Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, reveals that Taiwan's mountains preserve one of the world's last great strongholds of giant temperate forests.Scientists used airborne lasers to map Taiwan's hidden giantsRather than relying solely on ground surveys, the research team employed airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) technology, which uses laser pulses fired from aircraft to creat...