“The Sugar Pine Foundation is friends with two of the leading discoverers of the world’s tallest trees: Michael Taylor and Dr. Steve Sillett. For 30 years, Taylor and Sillett have slogged through dense, punishing underbrush and up and down vertiginous ravines in search of the tallest trees on Earth. Their pursuits are the subject of the New York Times Bestseller “The Wild Trees,” by Richard Preston – yet their quests never cease and their list of accomplishments just keeps growing. This year proved to be very successful for Taylor and Sillett. As Sillett put it, “2021 has seen some of the biggest discoveries in the tree world in many years.” We are excited to share the news and significance of the trees that they found here in Episode 1 of our Big Tree Stories and in upcoming articles as well… LiDAR – short for Light Detection and Ranging – employs laser technology to generate 3D maps of the Earth’s surface. As a LiDAR specialist, Taylor uses a bit of computer wizardry to process the LiDAR of forested areas and search for tall trees before ever setting foot on the ground. This approach is highly effective and very accurate if the data are clean. When the LiDAR is bad, it takes a whiz like Taylor to resurrect and make use of the information. Last August, Taylor came across an obscure LiDAR set for measuring snowpack across the interior of the Olympic Peninsula. The data came with a warning label, “This LiDAR set cannot be processed.” Ever the zealot, this did not deter Taylor. Instead, he grappled with mislabeled axes, poor scan density and improper scaling. He even concocted a new algorithm to make use of the data – for he knew that the highly productive rainforests protected within the boundaries of Olympic National Park are capable of housing arboreal giants and he was determined to find them. What Taylor found once he re-worked the LiDAR was incredible: multiple hot spots of enormous coastal Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii var. menziesii). Thus began a spate of record-breaking Douglas-fir discoveries in 2021. Taylor invited his old tree hunting partner and friend Dr. Steve Sillett to ground-truth the LiDAR hits in Washington with him. Sillett is the Kenneth L. Fisher Chair of Redwood Forest Ecology at Humboldt State University. Not just a redwood ecologist, he has conducted extensive studies on the world’s five tallest tree species, including Douglas-fir.

In 2018, he published a seminal paper in the scientific journal Forest Ecology and Management entitled “The Development and Dominance of Douglas-fir in North American Rainforests.” As a Douglas-fir expert, it is significant that when Sillett accompanied Taylor to Olympic National Park, he was blown away by the gloriously intact forest and specimens that they found in previously unexplored areas. By investigating the LiDAR hits, Taylor and Sillett found four of the ten tallest known Douglas-fir in the world. The two tallest trees that they found in Olympic National Park measured 315.3 ft and 313.6 ft and are now respectively ranked #4 and #5. Sillett deemed Taylor’s LiDAR work that led them to these trees “a stroke of genius.”