Answer to Question #210300 in Statistics and Probability for Lydia Binti Mohd K

Question

Measuring the height of a Yellow Meranti is very difficult because these trees grow to heights over 300 feet. In 2016, a group of Yellow Meranti in Sabah’s Danum Valley was announced as the tallest tropical trees in the world. People familiar with these trees understand that the height of a Yellow Meranti is related to other characteristics of the tree, including the diameter of the tree at the breast height of a person (in inches) and the thickness of the bark of the tree (in inches). The file YellowMeranti contains the height, diameter at breast height of a person, and bark thickness for a sample of 40 Yellow Meranti trees.

Answer 1

In the last few years exceptionally tall yellow meranti trees (Shorea faguetiana) have been discovered growing in Sabah, a Malaysian state on the island of Borneo, again and again. The record height of an individual jumped from 288 feet (88 meters) to 308.7 feet (94.1 meters) in 2016, when an entire grove of 90-meter (295-feet) plus yellow meranti were found. That record has been further eclipsed this week as a team led by the Universities of Nottingham and Oxford, working with the South East Asia Rainforest Research Partnership, announced the discovery of a 330.7-foot (100.8-meter) giant growing in Sabah’s forests (the scientific study on the find is being published in bioRxiv this week, and is in review in a scientific journal).

This discovery is the first 100-meter tropical tree (and the world's tallest known flowering plant) recorded anywhere in the world. If it were laid along the ground the tree would be longer than a soccer field. The team named the tree “Menara,” which is Malaysian for tower. They estimated it weighs 81,500 kilograms, or more than the maximum takeoff weight of a Boeing 737-800, excluding roots.

It's possible an even taller tree is still waiting to be found in the region, the team notes.

These rainforest giants have been found growing in the Danum Valley Conservation Area, at the center of one of the best protected, and least disturbed, tracts of lowland rainforest left in South East Asia. Danum protects Borneo’s iconic and endangered orangutan, clouded leopard, and forest elephants. Danum is also, it turns out, providing refuge for the tallest known tropical trees in the world.