The Crow’s Path Blog

In looking at the results of my bark temperature study, it was clear that lighter colored bark had significantly cooler surface temperatures than dark colored bark. This was a fairly intuitive result as darker colors absorb more light and therefore heat up more while light colored objects (like snow) have a higher albedo and reflect most of the incoming light. At the extreme ends of the spectrum, when the air temperature was 91ºF, paper birch bark was just 118ºF while the much darker bark of staghorn sumac was 155ºF.