PrimalNature

Accelerated Rate of Tree Growth in Maryland

EcoPerspectives — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 02:39:19 +0000

In a report entitled Evidence for a Recent Increase in Forest Growth, Sean M. McMahon, Geoffrey G. Parker, and Dawn R. Miller document an increase in the rate of growth of fifty-five mixed hardwood plots at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, 2600 acres on thean increase in the rate of growth of fifty-five mixed hardwood plots at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, 2600 acres on the edge of Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. The land-use histories of the plots were known and the stands ranged in age from 5 to 250 years. Parker and associates tracked trees over a period of twenty-two years and found that ninety percent of the stands grew two to four times faster than the expected growth rate caused by natural recovery. The rapid accumulation of biomass is apparently a result of climate change. During the years of measuring trees, CO2 levels at the Research Center grew twelve percent, the mean temperature increased almost three tenths of a degree, and the growing season became 7.8 days longer. The authors do not anticipate that the accelerate growth rate will continue indefinitely and wonder how its slowing down will affect CO2 levels. Their report, which adds to accumulating evidence of accelerated tree growth at a variety of locations, was published February 2 in the online Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Sources in addition to the report are

David A. Fahrenthold, “Climate Change’s Impact on Forests Being Measured via Expanding Tree Trunks,” The Washington Post, February 20, 2010;

and Tina Tennessen, “Smithsonian Ecologists Discover Forests Are Growing at a Faster Rate,” Science at the Smithsonian, posted February 1, 2010 at http://smithsonianscience.org/2010/02/forests-growing-at-a-faster-rate .

–Mary Byrd Davis

Nova Scotia Purchases 9710 acres, including old-growth forest

EcoPerspectives — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 02:23:09 +0000

The Nova Scotia Natural Resources Minister, John MacDonell, announced February 17 that the province has bought 9710 acres (3900 hectares) of land from Wagner Forest Nova Scotia Ltd. The parcels include:

–22 kilometers of continuous coastline on the Bay of Fundy at Apple Head, Cumberland County;

–950-acres surrounded by Eigg Mountain-James River Wilderness Area in Antigonish County;

–a 237-acre parcel of old-growth forest near Panuke Lake, Halifax County. Except for the southeast corner, the parcel is embedded in land already owned by the Department of Natural Resources.

The purchase price was $9 million. In return for a price that Natural Resources could afford, the province is allowing Wagner to log about one-fourth of the Apple Head area over the next two years. Logging will be limited or not permitted within two hundred meters of the coast, in ravines, and in special wildlife areas.

A Panuke Lake Nature Reserve was established in Hants County in 1992, as the result of an agreement between the government of Nova Scotia and Bowater Mersey Paper Co. This preserve is comprised of an old-growth forest of Eastern Hemlock and Red Spruce on 373 acres (150.9 hectares) on the shore of Panuke Lake. The site has trees well over three hundred years old.

The province intends to protect 12 percent of its land by 2014. At this time, 8.6 percent is protected.

Sources: Department of Natural Resources, Government of Nova Scotia, “Wagner Land Purchase,” accessed Feb. 18, 2010, online at http://www.gov.ns.ca/natr/land/wagner-2010/ ; and “Nature Reserves of Nova Scotia, accessed Feb. 18, 2010, online at http://www.gov.ns.ca/nse/protectedareas/docs/NatureReserves.pdf .

–Mary Byrd Davis

Connectivity: British Columbia and Colorado

EcoPerspectives — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 15:04:30 +0000

Two items in the news underscore the importance of connectivity for preserving wildlife as the climate changes. Both are from western North America, but have implications for the East.

A coalition of conservation organizations has released a report, A New Climate for Conservation, asking the government of British Columbia to develop a joint strategy for nature conservation and climate change leading to biodiversity protection for half the province’s land base. The minimum of 50% is “necessary to give our plants and animals a fighting chance to adapt, while also keeping and drawing more carbon out of the atmosphere so that over time we can slow and reduce climate change,” the report’s author Dr. Jim Pojar writes.

In discussing management of the forest matrix, Pojar states that establishing protected areas is not sufficient; we have to make sure that the matrix in which these areas are located is hospitable to species on the move, a point also made by the Wildlands Network and the Ecological Society of America. In the forest matrix, primary forest must be preserved, protected areas buffered, and the reduction of natural forests to plantations reduced.

The report was commissioned by BC Spaces for Nature, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, David Suzuki Foundation, ForestEthics, Land Trust Alliance of British Columbia, West Coast Environmental Law, and Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative. Signers of a letter to B.C. Premier Gorden Campbell, which accompanied the report, include Dr. James Hansen, Dr. Michael Soulé , and Bill McKibben.

Farther south, Paul R. Vahldiek, Jr., CEO of The High Lonesome Ranch, comprising approximately 300 square miles of deeded private and permitted Bureau of Land Management Lands, in Colorado has strong evidence that gray wolves are inhabiting the ranch. He is awaiting DNA tests as the final evidence. The wolves would have naturally migrated from Wyoming. Vahldiek is on the board of the Wildlands Network and is committed to conserving the ranch as a linkage within the Network’s “Western Wildway.” Dr. Michael Soulé, Network president, states that “The return of wolves to Colorado would be proof that safe landscape connections are key to maintaining critical, keystone species in the West.”

–Mary Byrd Davis

Sources:

Jim Pojar,, A New Climate for Conservation (Forest Ethics et. al, 2010). Available online at http://forestethics.org/downloads/NewClimate_report_FE.pdf

Michelle Nihuis, “Prodigal Dogs: Have Gray Wolves Found a Home in Colorado?, High Country News, February 15, 2010. Available online at http://www.hcn.org/issues/42.3/prodigal-dogs

The Wildlands Network. “Colorado Ranch Owner Anticipates Wolf’s Return” [News Release], February 8, 2010.

The Ecological Society of America on Climate Change

EcoPerspectives — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 02:28:03 +0000

The Ecological Society of America (ESA) released a position statement: Ecosystem Management in a Changing Climate at approximately the same time that the Wilderness Network put out a report Climate Disruption and Connectivity, already reviewed here. The two overlap, but ESA presents a wider range of issues though in less detail than WN. In fact, ESA gives suggestions for limiting climate change, before it gives suggestions for adapting to climate change.

Under limitation or mitigation, the statement notes that management strategies can help limit climate change either by accelerating the uptake of carbon or by preventing the release of stored carbon; but it warns that the less that strategies alter natural environments the better. Low-alteration strategies should be top priority. Management-intensive strategies must be critically evaluated. The ecological implications of geo-engineering must be recognized; and long-term risks of actions must be taken into consideration.

Adaptation strategies should include taking additional steps to protect water quality and quantity, enabling natural species to migrate across human-dominated landscapes, improving the capacity to predict extreme events such as wildfires and major storms, and managing collaboratively at the ecosystem level.

To a conservationist, ESA’s statement seems eminently sensible. One can only hope that the principles will be followed, and that the statement will turn out to be more than a wish list. Representing 10,000 scientists in the United States and abroad, the society has a better chance than many of impacting policy.

The Ecological Society of America’s statement is available at http://www.esa.org/pao/policyStatements/pdfDocuments/Ecosystem%20Management%20in%20a%20Changing%20Climate.pdf in a Changing Climate.pdf.

–Mary Byrd Davis

Buffering the Impact of Climate Change on Biodiversity

EcoPerspectives — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 00:50:21 +0000

The Wildlands Network has released a report by Barbara L. Dugelby , titled Climate Disruption and Connectivity: A Strategy for Nature Protection. Dr. Dugleby is Latin America Program Director at Round River Conservation Studies. Climate change, she writes, is expected to become the most important or the second-most important driver of global biodiversity loss. She succinctly presents the ways in which climate change will impact biodiversity and strategies to assist wildlife in coping with climate change.

The preservation of isolated protected areas will not help species to adapt to climate change, Dugelby says. What is needed is an “interlocking network of protected core areas and managed connections designed at local, region, and continental scales.” Existing protected areas and reserves are not enough. Additional protected areas need to be created in order to reduce the spatial distance between already protected cores. Connections need to include corridors of natural habitat and areas used by humans that are nevertheless permeable to wildlife, privately owned agricultural and forest land that wildlife can freely cross. The network can only be created and maintained through cooperation among agencies, organizations, and private landowners.

The Wildlands Network, with many partners, is creating two continental-scale networks: Spine of the Continent (from Mexico to Alaska along the intermountain West) and Eastern Wildway (from Florida to Quebec), implementing these strategies. The western network is farther along than the eastern. The Wildlands Network hopes that these two networks, which are science-based, will become models for additional networks.

The report is documented with notes and an extensive bibliography. I wish that outline maps of the Spine of the Continent and Eastern Wildway projects, showing large existing protected areas, had been included. However, a map of Spine of the Continent and a map of the continent as a whole are available on the Wildlands Network Web site.

The report can also be accessed on the Web site.

–Mary Byrd Davis

A Seven-Foot Rise in Sea Level This Century

EcoPerspectives — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 02:12:31 +0000

In an opinion piece published by Yale 360, Rob Young and Orrin Pilkey, authors of The Rising Sea, explain that planners need to assume that oceans will rise seven feet in this century.

The most recent (2007) report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) did not take into account the melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. The Panel settled on a two-foot rise this century by taking into consideration only the expansion of the oceans and the melting of mountain glaciers outside the poles. Since the 2007 report was released, melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets has accelerated. Most climate scientists now predict that the melting of these ice sheets will be the main cause of rising sea level in this century, though the rate of future melting is still uncertain.

In describing impacts of the rising seas in this piece Young and Pilkey speak largely of cities and smaller human communities. Obviously, however, a rise of seven feet would also have a severe impact on natural communities.

The most vulnerable of all coastal environments, the authors say, are the deltas of major rivers, including the Mississippi. In the Mississippi delta, land subsidence, already occurring, will increase the rate at which seawater swallows the land. The specter of a seven-foot rise in sea level raises the question of whether efforts since Katrina to restore natural areas in the delta in order to absorb the impacts of future storms can be effective in the long term.

On the barrier islands, which stretch along the eastern seaboard, a rise in sea level of only three feet would be sufficient to prevent development, unless the islands are protected by massive sea walls. A few of the barrier islands support natural communities undisrupted by humans. “The only way to preserve the barrier islands themselves will be to abandon them so that they may respond naturally to rising sea level, ” Young and Pilkey write. The barrier islands have been shaped by the action of the sea. Possibly, their original communities will survive the rising seas, though changed.

“How High Will Seas Rise? Get Ready for Seven Feet” can be accessed online at http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2230

–Mary Byrd Davis

Rabbits a Threat to Juniper in Britain

EcoPerspectives — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 01:22:26 +0000

At the Porton Down range in England, where chemical weapons used to be tested, the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) is heading up a campaign to preserve Dwarf Juniper (Juniperus communis). This evergreen shrub or small tree, the most widely distributed woody plant in the world, is not endangered globally, but it has become the subject of a Biodiversity Action Plan in Britain, where juniper colonies are decreasing in distribution and in size, at least in part due to excessive populations of deer and rabbits and the burning of moors.

The blue berries of juniper are a food source for birds and mammals. At Porton Downs, which has the largest population of juniper bushes in southern England, rabbits prevent juniper from regenerating. Dwarf Juniper has a lifespan of around one hundred years. The juniper now at Porton Downs falls into two age classes: juniper bushes that became established about one hundred years ago, before the rabbit population exploded, and bushes about fifty years old that obtained their start when myxomatosis decimated the rabbit population. Rabbits are not native to Britain, but have lived and multiplied there since at least the eleventh century.

DSTL is working with a local conservation organization Plantlife and volunteers to collect berries, process them, and plant them. During germination the conservationists will set up cages to protect the seeds from the rabbits and also from voles. (Restoring predators of rabbits could also help, but unfortunately is not part of the plan.) The juniper, which supports more than forty species of insects, is considered vital to the range’s ecosystem.

Juniperus communis (not to be confused with the generally taller Juniperus virginiana), is found throughout North America, except for some southeastern and southern midwestern states. It is ranked in Maryland and Ohio as endangered; in Illinois as threatened; in Kentucky (the variety depresse) as threatened;, and in Indiana as rare. Does anyone reading this know if rabbits are a major threat to juniper in this country?

For further information on the species in Britain:

Deal, Paul. “Porton Down Scientists in Mission to Protect Juniper.” BBC News. January 15, 2010.

Featherstone, Alan Watson. “Species Profile: Juniper.” Web site of Trees for Life, accessed January 16, 2010.

–Mary Byrd Davis

Hickory Branch and the USFS Centennial

EcoPerspectives — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 19:37:31 +0000

In April and November 2009 Tom Kenney, Rob Messick, Hal Morgan, and Kenyon Kelly located a new (or additional) big tree area on a tributary of the Right Fork of Hickory Branch in McDowell County. This is on the first tract of land purchased as national forests in the eastern United States. It is not known now exactly which tributary of the Right Fork ,Verne Rhoades and W. W. Ashe described as having significant tulip poplars in their initial report of 1911, but it is clearly one or the other of the two main tributaries on the Right Fork.

The US Forest Service has proposed a bland and customarily management-oriented ‘centennial event’ for March 2011, but it is clear from their prospectus of September 2009 that the Progressives who envisioned the need for national forests in the East, and pulled things together a century ago will not get the recognition they deserve.

The most important legacy of national forest land acquisitions in the east is that the land base still exists. Through benign neglect, inaccessibility, or ignorance, uncut places like parts of Hickory Branch have persisted from day one.

May places like Hickory branch remain in the hold of national forest processes for centuries to come.

–Rob Messick (11/8/09)

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