Global Warming effects on the Cedars of Lebanon

30Jul08

The biggest challenge now for the cedars of Lebanon is climate change,” said Nizar Hani

Global Warming effects on Cedars of Lebanon

The cedar’s natural range is now 1,200 to 1,800 metres above sea level, Hani said. A warmer climate would mean cedars could only prosper higher up, where it’s colder, and risk drying out, Hani said.

Cedars once covered vast swathes of southern Turkey, Syria and Lebanon, but their timber and resin has long been in demand, as indicated by the Epic of Gilgamesh, written in the second millennium BC, and by the Biblical tale of King Solomon importing Lebanese cedar wood for his temple in Jerusalem.

Valued by Phoenician shipwrights, Egyptian builders and many others, the forests shrank over the millennia. Ottoman Turks axed many of Lebanon’s surviving cedars. British troops used cedar wood to build the Tripoli – Haifa railway in World War Two.

Now cedars cover only 2,000 hectares (5,000 acres) in Lebanon, clinging on in just a dozen high-altitude redoubts.