science

Old Survivor

Old Survivor is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Old Survivor rather than just read about it. In short: Old Survivor, also known as the Grandfather Tree, is the last remaining old-growth coastal redwood of the East Bay Redwoods that once populated the Oakland Hills in California. Description Old Survivor has a unique shaggy appearance with several large branches drooping outward from its sparse upper crown.

Key takeaways

Old Survivor belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Old Survivor to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Old Survivor from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Old Survivor, also known as the Grandfather Tree, is the last remaining old-growth coastal redwood of the East Bay Redwoods that once populated the Oakland Hills in California.

Description Old Survivor has a unique shaggy appearance with several large branches drooping outward from its sparse upper crown. The tree is much taller than the surrounding trees, all of which are second growth. Despite its name, the tree, which dates to 1549–1554, is actually young for an old-growth coastal redwood, many of which live between 1200 and 1800 years old or more. Between 7-12 years before Old Survivor was seeded, Spanish/Portuguese explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo had led the first expedition to explore the coast of what is now California. The tree can be observed at a distance from the York Trail of Leona Heights Park, or from the parking lot of Carl B. Munck Elementary School where there is a plaque detailing the tree's statistics and history.

History From 1845 to 1860, logging of the coastal redwoods in the area for their valuable timber wiped out much of the dense coastal redwood forest that once populated the Oakland Hills of East Bay. A second wave of logging following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake further contributed to the forest's destruction, leaving only a few scattered pockets of old-growth redwoods left in the entirety of East Bay. Old Survivor's location on an exceptionally steep and rocky slope beside Horseshoe Creek made it unprofitable to log, and thus the tree was spared the fate of its neighbors. In 1916, the land where the tree stands was purchased by the city of Oakland in order to preserve the remaining redwoods in the area. The tree was rediscovered in 1969 by Oakland Parks naturalist Paul Covel in what was then McCrea Memorial Park (today called Leona Heights Park). A core ring count at the time made by Glen Strouse at Humboldt State University estimated the tree's age to be between 415 and 420 years old relative to 1969. Old Survivor was designated a City of Oakland Historic Landmark on June 24, 1980. In 2018, the documentary film Old Survivor celebrated the tree and reflected back on the history of Oakland's coastal redwood forests.

See also List of individual trees Redwood Regional Park East Bay Regional Park District

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Old Survivor

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Old Survivor claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Old Survivor before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Old Survivor ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Old Survivor

In research: Old Survivor appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Old Survivor in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Old Survivor is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Individual coast redwood trees, Oakland, California, Tree stubs, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Old Survivor outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Old Survivor in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Old Survivor means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Old Survivor out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Old Survivor in simple terms?

Old Survivor, also known as the Grandfather Tree, is the last remaining old-growth coastal redwood of the East Bay Redwoods that once populated the Oakland Hills in California. Description Old Survivor has a unique shaggy appearance with several large branches drooping outward from its sparse upper…

Why does Old Survivor matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Old Survivor?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Old Survivor.