Climate Change Throws Nature's Timing Out of Whack
livescience.com“Evidence going back decades and sometimes even longer shows the timing of some biological events is shifting around the world. Studies document the progressively earlier arrival of spring, by about 2.3 to 5.2 days per decade in the last 30 years, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2007 report. That report lists studies showing changes in seasonal timing, or phenology, of the first and last leaves on gingko trees in Japan, butterfly emergence in the United Kingdom, bird migrations in Australia, the first leaves and flowers of lilacs in North America, among many others.
But not everything is changing together, leading to complex results.
During his years in the Colorado mountains, Inouye has seen the winter snow melt earlier, the result of warmer springs, less snowfall during the winter and more dust carried in by storms, which accelerates melting. The last frost, however, continues to happen at about the same time.”
via Live Science
“Leaves of three, let it be.”
—Everyone—even people who aren’t allergic to poison ivy—knows this little couplet. But did you know there’s a second stanza (and in some instances a third)?
Leaves of three, let it be.
Hairy vine, no friend of mine.
Berries white, run in fright.
What? Berries? Yep, berries. Poison ivy isn’t just a threat in summer, it’s also a threat in fall and winter, a lesson learned in a painful fashion by Apartment Therapy blogger, The Gardenist. Rochelle was foraging for twigs and berries for a Thanksgiving centerpiece workshop when she stumbled upon some very pretty and very plentiful white berries. She gathered them, took them home, and soon succumbed to the pain and suffering only poison ivy can inflict.
Rochelle is a good sport though, because she then draws some really excellent conclusions based on phenology about why she had never noticed poison ivy berries before. So click through to read her tale of woe and to arm yourself with her hard-earned knowledge. And remember our little rhyme, because your iPhone isn’t a reliable reference for these kinds of things. ~AR
Great find in Seal Harbor, Maine - The Naturalist's Notebook
thenaturalistsnotebook.comOn my recent trip to Acadia National Park on coastal Maine, I stumbled upon a little shop in the town of Seal Harbor. Upon stepping through the door I met Pamelia “Pammy” Markwood, co-founder of the commercial and educational shop. She and I immediately became immersed in conversation, one that lasted about an hour and a half. We talked about citizen science, informal education, observation of the natural world, phenology, the Children and Nature Network, and lots more. She introduced Brett and I to Craig Neff, her counterpart in the shop, and the conversation went on from there. I wish I had more time to fully explain the greatest of this chance encounter and my desire to seek out more people with the same passion and inspiration to introduce children to science and natural world, but I need to get back to writing. In the meantime, check out their website. Also, take a look at the book I purchased at The Naturalist’s Notebook:
Field Notes on Science & Nature
Michael R. Canfield, Edward O. (FRW) Wilson, George B. Schaller
I’m currently transfixed by the various scientists and researchers who all believe, as I do, on the importance of observation and field note taking…
Aldo Leopold's observations help show effects of climate change
jsonline.comIt was not research but the love of nature that led Wisconsin ecologist Aldo Leopold to pen his journals more than half a century ago, meticulously documenting the times of the year that plants bloom, mammals emerge from hibernation and frogs begin to sing.
Now those observations have led to a paper showing that not only are warmer temperatures in the United States leading many plants to bloom earlier, but the changes can be accurately predicted from one year to the next.
Writing in the journal PLOS ONE, Stanley Temple from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and colleagues at Harvard University and Boston University analyzed long-term flowering records on dozens of species kept by Henry David Thoreau beginning in 1852 and by Leopold beginning in 1935.
They found that the data Thoreau and Leopold collected so long ago documents remarkable warming trends that could have important implications for plants, insects, migratory birds and a broad spectrum of the natural world.
Record-breaking spring temperatures in Massachusetts and Wisconsin in 2012 led to “the earliest flowering times in recorded history for dozens of spring-flowering plants of the eastern United States,” the study says. In Wisconsin, plants bloomed on average almost a month earlier than they had 67 years ago when Leopold penned his final entry.
Moreover, these bloom dates were predictable based on the historical trends Thoreau and Leopold began documenting.
While the public might view the early flowering of plants as a welcome relief to the winter cold, these shifts can have more far-reaching and potentially worrisome consequences.
“The Door County (Wisconsin) cherry crop was ruined in 2012 because the trees bloomed very early in response to record-breaking warmth only to be hit by subsequent frost,” explained Temple.
Also, if plants begin breaking dormancy too early, he said, they may wind up springing to life at a time of year when there is insufficient sunlight to stimulate flowering. This disturbance in the life cycle of plants, in turn, upsets the annual clock guiding other creatures: insects pollinating the plants, birds feeding their young on insects, migratory birds that count on food being available when they return from their winters down South.
“Species with key interactions with one another will no longer be in sync,” Temple said.
Using Thoreau's Journals to study Climate Change
bit.lyThoreau studied some 500 different species,
famously noting the detailed rhythms of
their flowering and setting seed.
In the interval of but 155 years since,
the study infers an increase of temp.
of ±2.4 c.
Scientists See Big Impacts on U.S. Ecosystems from Global Warming
Scientists See Big Impacts on U.S. Ecosystems from Global Warming
Revkin, Andrew C. “Scientists See Big Impacts on U.S. Ecosystems from Global Warming.”The New York Times [New York] 19 Dec. 2012: n. pag. Print.
Climate change has had huge effects on biodiversity. Human-driven changes, such as climate change, harm all types of ecosystems, and throw off the natural balances in population dynamics, predator-prey relations, biogeochemistry, phenology, and more. The report, “Impacts of Climate Change on Biodiversity, Ecosystems, and Ecosystem Services” was published recently, and, as seen by this NY Times article, has generated high response from legal and political parties.
Climate Change and Biosphere Response: Unlocking the Collections Vault
Johnson, K.G., S.J. Brooks, P.B. Fenberg, A.G. Glover, K.E. James, A.M. Lister, E. Michel, M. Spencer, J.A. Todd, E. Valsami-Jones, J.R. Young, and J.R. Stewart, 2011: “Climate Change and Biosphere Response: Unlocking the Collections Vault.” BioScience, v. 61, no. 2, pp. 147-153, doi: 10.1525/bio.2011.61.2.10.
Natural history collections (NHCs) are an important source of the long-term data needed to understand how biota respond to ongoing anthropogenic climate change. These include taxon occurrence data for ecological modeling, as well as information that can be used to reconstruct mechanisms through which biota respond to changing climates. The full potential of NHCs for climate change research cannot be fully realized until high-quality data sets are conveniently accessible for research, but this requires that higher priority be placed on digitizing the holdings most useful for climate change research (e.g., whole-biota studies, time series, records of intensively sampled common taxa). Natural history collections must not neglect the proliferation of new information from efforts to understand how present-day ecosystems are responding to environmental change. These new directions require a strategic realignment for many NHC holders to complement their existing focus on taxonomy and systematics. To set these new priorities, we need strong partnerships between NHC holders and global change biologists.
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