Climate Change and the Northern Appalachian Forests

[Fiddleback]

Climate Change Complexities in the Northern Hardwood Forests
"... until now, there has been no exhaustive study conducted to see how the climate change will affect the biosphere of the northern hardwoods." http://www.enn.com/wildlife/article/45248

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FB

[prain4u]

The "study" in the this article examines just 50 years of climate data. That is not a long enough period of time when we are looking at potential "climate change"

I talk to lots of OLDER people--in their 80s and 90s. They remember having weather (like we are having in recent years) back when they were younger. A quick look at some climate data going back to 1925 for the Adirondacks confirms that weather was warmer in the Adirondacks in the early 1930s and also in the late 1940's and early 1950s. (Both of those periods are outside the 50 year period covered in the study in the article). Much of the current weather conditions have nothing to do with "climate change". It is just the typical CYCLICAL change in weather.

The article mentions a decline in maple syrup production. The Spring of 2012 was a horrid year for maple syrup production in most of New England. Yet, 2011 was a near record year for production. That 2011 data pretty much shoots down the theory that maple syrup production is declining. (We need to remember that market forces also impact how much syrup is produced),

[Pedaling Fool]

It's not just the Northern Appalachian Forests. http://news.yahoo.com/upon-further-r...185737665.html



Upon further review, giant sequoia tops a neighbor



FRESNO, Calif. (AP) —

"Deep in the Sierra Nevada, the famous General Grant giant sequoia tree is suffering its loss of stature in silence. What once was the world's No. 2 biggest tree has been supplanted thanks to the most comprehensive measurements taken of the largest living things on Earth.

The new No. 2 is The President, a 54,000-cubic-foot gargantuan not far from the Grant in Sequoia National Park. After 3,240 years, the giant sequoia still is growing wider at a consistent rate, which may be what most surprised the scientists examining how the sequoias and coastal redwoods will be affected by climate change and whether these trees have a role to play in combatting it.

"I consider it to be the greatest tree in all of the mountains of the world," said Stephen Sillett, a redwood researcher whose team from Humboldt State University is seeking to mathematically assess the potential of California's iconic trees to absorb planet-warming carbon dioxide.

The researchers are a part of the 10-year Redwoods and Climate Change Initiative funded by the Save the Redwoods League in San Francisco. The measurements of The President, reported in the current National Geographic, dispelled the previous notion that the big trees grow more slowly in old age.

It means, the experts say, the amount of carbon dioxide they absorb during photosynthesis continues to increase over their lifetimes.

In addition to painstaking measurements of every branch and twig, the team took 15 half-centimeter-wide core samples of The President to determine its growth rate, which they learned was stunted in the abnormally cold year of 1580 when temperatures in the Sierra hovered near freezing even in the summer and the trees remained dormant.

But that was an anomaly, Sillett said. The President adds about one cubic meter of wood a year during its short six-month growing season, making it one of the fastest-growing trees in the world. Its 2 billion leaves are thought to be the most of any tree on the planet, which would also make it one of the most efficient at transforming carbon dioxide into nourishing sugars during photosynthesis.

"We're not going to save the world with any one strategy, but part of the value of these great trees is this contribution and we're trying to get a handle on the math behind that," Sillett said.

After the equivalent of 32 working days dangling from ropes in The President, Sillett's team is closer to having a mathematical equation to determine its carbon conversion potential, as it has done with some less famous coastal redwoods. The team has analyzed a representative sample that can be used to model the capacity of the state's signature trees.

More immediately, however, the new measurements could lead to a changing of the guard in the land of giant sequoias. The park would have to update signs and brochures — and someone is going to have to correct the Wikipedia entry for "List of largest giant sequoias," which still has The President at No. 3.

Now at 93 feet in circumference and with 45,000 cubic feet of trunk volume and another 9,000 cubic feet in its branches, the tree named for President Warren G. Harding is about 15 percent larger than Grant, also known as America's Christmas Tree. Sliced into one-foot by one-foot cubes, The President would cover a football field.

Giant sequoias grow so big and for so long because their wood is resistant to the pests and disease that dwarf the lifespan of other trees, and their thick bark makes them impervious to fast-moving fire.

It's that resiliency that makes sequoias and their taller coastal redwood cousin worthy of intensive protections — and even candidates for cultivation to pull carbon from an increasingly warming atmosphere, Sillett said. Unlike white firs, which easily die and decay to send decomposing carbon back into the air, rot-resistant redwoods stay solid for hundreds of years after they fall.

Though sequoias are native to California, early settlers traveled with seedlings back to the British Isles and New Zealand, where a 15-foot diameter sequoia that is the world's biggest planted tree took root in 1850. Part of Sillett's studies involves modeling the potential growth rate of cultivated sequoia forests to determine over time how much carbon sequestering might increase.

All of that led him to a spot 7,000 feet high in the Sierra and to The President, which he calls "the ultimate example of a giant sequoia." Compared to the other giants whose silhouettes are bedraggled by lightning strikes, The President's crown is large with burly branches that are themselves as large as tree trunks.

The world's biggest tree is still the nearby General Sherman with about 2,000 cubic feet more volume than the President, but to Sillett it's not a contest.

"They're all superlative in their own way," Sillett said."

[joshuasdad]

This post was deleted by the author, because it is now out of context, as several posts have been deleted from this thread.

[Alligator]

This thread is about a research paper that discusses possibilities of changes to Northern Hardwood forests in a changing climate. If you would like to discuss, it will require that you actually read the research paper, not just the article about the paper. So the thread is going to have a narrowed focus. Rants and raves will be removed, and continued off topic posting can result in lack of access to the thread.

I will see about getting the actual article or if someone has the off post it.

[Creek Dancer]

Why they heavy moderation? This is not a straight forward thread. I enjoy reading the viewpoints, even if they are not exactly as you dictate.

[joshuasdad]

I would like to see the paper, as it looks to be consider atypical factors such as land use. I hike the AT to escape from the politics of environmental issues--in fact I was given express permission to hike the AT to do so. So when I see two spins on studies posted in a short time--without links to the actual studies--this is an unwanted jolt to reality.

I was actually more responding to the second paper, as the hidden message is that one needs to go to extraordinary measures to remove CO2 from the air. Again, all of the attention to CO2 distracts from the other issues that affect our hikes, like the acid rain that kills our forests, the toxins that pollute the water we drink, the ozone that causes that blue haze, etc.

[joshuasdad]

Why they heavy moderation? This is not a straight forward thread. I enjoy reading the viewpoints, even if they are not exactly as you dictate.

I am more than a little concerned about the heavy moderation as well. I think about 6-8 posts were deleted. True, one of them was a pithy (but somewhat enjoyable) "overgeneralism" by LW, but I did not see anything inappropriate for a General posting.

[Alligator]

Problem is, climate change/global warming threads here on WB have degenerated into stupidity on multiple occasions. Some members get a kick out of this but from a moderation standpoint it's a PITA so these threads generally get closed. Part of the problem is the intertwining of politics. From a scientific standpoint, changes in this forest would affect the AT. Therefore, the topic is being left open and posts will be expected to be on topic and to adhere to the user agreement.

Also threads do not have be in Straight Forward to be held on topic,

Do not post inflammatory messages, spam, “off topic” posts, or hijack topics.

[fcoulter]

It's difficult to talk about the original paper when the title of the original paper isn't mentioned in the article. Also, there's no guarantee that the paper is available outside the academic community. (I lost access to the academic paper databases when I finished my second Masters. I'm not planning on starting a Ph.D. for at least a year. That leave me out of the loop.)

However, my concern about these studies is that, in general, there's an assumption that recent (50-100 years) history is the norm. While I don't agree with prain4u about the strong cyclic view of climate, there is plenty of evidence that the climate for the last 100 years does not represent "normal" climates. In the last 2,000 years there have been two periods with significantly hotter temperatures than current times (specifically during Rome [0 AD] and medieval [1000 AD]). It's also been significantly colder than current time [Little Ice Age 1350 AD].

If you look out much farther -- and, yes, the farther you look the more questionable the data becomes -- the farther back you go, the more the temperature record varies. It has been argued that the rise of civilization was due to a decrease in climactic variability during the last 10,000 years. But the last 10,000 years is a blip in the 4.5 billion year life of the Earth. There is no guarantee that our current relatively stable climate will remain stable into the future. And even during the relatively stable recent times, there are multiple stories of civilizations which vanished due to climactic changes.

So, back to the article.

Climates have changed in the past and ecosystems have adapted. Climates will change in the future, and I see no reason why ecosystems won't adapt. Isn't that fundamentally the definition of evolution? Adaption to changing circumstances?

If temperatures rise a little more, maybe Baxter State Park will remain open longer. Maybe more people will hike into Canada.

I don't see the start at Springer Mountain becoming too hot too hike, although the hiking season may start sooner. That's good news for us old fogies, who have been told that it's much harder for us to through hike the entire trail in a year once you've reached 65.

As for Florida where I normally hike: I use hiking as a way to acclimate myself to the summer. If I hide in the airconditioning at the beginning of summer, I really FEEL the heat. But the summers I've been in the woods -- with LOTS of water -- I am far more comfortable in general. A one degree difference (which is all the IPCC predicts for the rest of my life) won't do anything to my hikes.

[JAK]

Read the article in the OP, but not whatever it is referencing. Some sketchy bits, like about deer and moose, which could be confused with what happened to woodland caribou. Nonetheless I do agree with the general assertion that climate change models are limited in their complexity, as are all models, but they are still useful.

I would like to see a study on how much soil loss has occurred over past 200 years. Even without climate change, it does not appear that we are even yet managing our forests sustainably. We just keep changing the goal posts of what we consider to be normal, and that is not sustainability.

[Prime Time]

Climate change is a serious problem, and to the extent that humans are contributing to it should be a concern to us all. Proponents of taking action to slow, stop, or reverse these effects, however, do their cause a disservice by jumping on every severe storm or unusually mild winter or hot summer as further evidence of the reality of man made climate change. Here in Northern NH the winter of 2011 was one of the snowiest and coldest in several decades. The following winter, 2012 was one of the mildest, driest on record. The mild winter was declared "proof positive" that the planet was getting warmer because of man. One year made that much of a difference? Really? It shifts the argument away from asking what we can do to reduce emissions, pollution, and generally destroying our planet over to is or isn't climate change caused by man? We're guilty of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic as it sinks. Crazy.

[prain4u]

I like what fcoulter wrote, above. I think the comments are pretty much on target.

Some of us in my small town were talking about this stuff just the other day. Climate changes have come--and gone for billions of years. Animal species have become extinct and new ones have come into existence. Water levels have risen and fallen. Coastlines have changed. The planet has survived.

A century or two ago, people heated their houses with coal fires and wood fires. Coal fires powered many factories. Some of the paintings and photos of the smoke / smog of that era are almost unbelievable It is hard to imagine that the emissions from the dirty coal and wood fires of a century or two ago did not impact the climate of that era as much (or more) than the emissions of today. Even if humanity suddenly became extinct today---and there was no more man-made global warming--good old Mother Earth would continue to experiences climate shift--just as it has for billions of years.

Yes, humans play a role in this--and we need to do whatever we can do (within reason) to limit our impact upon the environment and climate. However, at the end of the day, the climate will continue to change no mater what we humans do.

(Climate) Shift happens!

[JAK]

It's going to be a very interesting century.

[Alligator]

It took some time, but I was able to acquire the article under discussion. I do not think it is at all unreasonable to ask people to actually read something before commenting on it. If it was a piece of gear a solid review of the item should include actually using the item. If it was book, one should generally actually read the book before issuing a review. Eat at the restaurant before eviscerating the chef. Too often in science, the scientist or scientists publish a paper and the general media then places their own spin on the science. Go to the source and form your opinions, don't just spew out what the talking heads (both sides) tell you to. I'm not suggesting you have to agree or disagree with the article but please try to read it. In academia, there is a format called a seminar where sometimes a paper or study is presented then the participants discuss (collegially). So try that without trying to score cheap points and do please focus in on the core issue of possible change to Northern forests as that is the reason the thread is still open.

The manuscript is still in the uncorrected proof stage. This means that it is just about to be published in final form. The article has gone through peer review and passed the editor and they would simply be looking for graphical and other minor errors in formatting, etc.

[Slo-go'en]

^^^ An interesting if not some what difficult read. As I suspected, as our winters become shorter with less snow pack, we'll start to loose the confiers, which will be replaced by the hard woods making our woods look much like those much farther south.

It was 50 degrees and raining here in the Whites at 2 AM this morning.

[prain4u]

O.K. I have now read the entire article. My comments remain essentially the same as they were when I had only read a synopsis of the article. (Except, that I am even less impressed with the "study" after reading the entire article).

Except for the authors looking at some old surveyor's records and selectively using those old records to bolster their conclusions, this less-than-impressive study pretty much looks at climate and weather factors from just a 30-50 year period--primarily in a very localized area. A nice start--but certainly not an extensive period of time in terms of the study of climatology. The authors come to the "cutting edge" conclusion that any weather changes (even from year-to-year) impact vegetation type, vegetation distribution and vegetation vitality--and all of this (in turn) impacts wildlife. Thanks for the newsflash, Captain Obvious! The authors also reveal to the readers the "groundbreaking" discovery that the forest vegetation patterns and the animal populations and animal distribution patterns have changed in New England the past 200-300 years. (Gee, until I read this article I always thought that the New England forests of today were EXACTLY like they were 300 years ago. Thanks to this study I am now more enlightened!)

The article uses a great many important and impressive sounding words and phrases--but (overall) this article (in my opinion) was not great science nor does it break any significant or earth shattering new ground. It is pretty much an 8th Grade Science Fair project written with a PhD-level vocabulary. These researchers pretty much started out with an assumption (conclusion) regarding climate change and it's impact upon a local area in a Northern region and they then set out to PROVE and support their CONCLUSION. Sure enough, the data that they self-selected supported their conclusion (Surprise! Surprise!)

I was even less impressed by their secondary conclusion--which (loosely paraphrased goes something like this: "We need to have more studies like this one--because we think such studies are important". (I am guessing that the authors are trying to fund their ongoing research--and if you keep telling people how important such studies are--eventually someone might pay for your ongoing study).

This concludes my "book report" regarding the article entitled: "Long-Term Integrated Studies Show Complex and Surprising Effects of
Climate Change in the Northern Hardwood Forest" which appeared in the December 2012 edition of BioScience Magazine. I trust that this latest post of mine is infinitely more acceptable than my previous posts on this same thread because I have now read the entire article and this latest post confines its focus to discussing the glaring inadequacies of this less-than-stellar article in a semi-obsure quarterly publication.

[WingedMonkey]

"cutting edge" conclusion
"groundbreaking" discovery

After reading the short fourteen pages twice, I can not find the words "cutting edge" or "groundbreaking" anywhere in the report.
I'll assume that's part of your editorial opinion.

[prain4u]

After reading the short fourteen pages twice, I can not find the words "cutting edge" or "groundbreaking" anywhere in the report.
I'll assume that's part of your editorial opinion.

Definitely my editorial opinion. However, my sarcastic and satirical response is a somewhat tongue-in-cheek" reaction to the lengthy title of this article, which states (in part): "....Surprising Effects of Climate Change in the Northern Hardwood Forest". I sure didn't read anything "surprising" in this article.

[fcoulter]

It took some time, but I was able to acquire the article under discussion.

Thanks for getting the article. I'll be reading it this weekend, and may have more pertinent comments at that time.

Or I'll just be grumpy about the whole thing.