Soybean rust spreads quickly and easily, and Midwest farmers are worried that the disease may spread upward from the South. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)
All eyes are on the south right now for signs of a potentially
devastating fungus that attacks soybeans. A serious outbreak there could
bring soybean rust to the Midwest where most of the nation’s soybeans
are grown. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tracy Samilton
reports:
Transcript
All eyes are on the south right now for signs of a potentially
devastating fungus that attacks soybeans. A serious outbreak there could
bring soybean rust to the Midwest – where most of the nation’s soybeans are
grown. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tracy Samilton reports:
Soybean rust spores are carried on wind currents, so it is easily spread.
So far this year, only Georgia has had a small outbreak.
Ray Hammerschmidt is a plant pathologist at Michigan State University. He
says every step is being taken to protect soybean crops, including dotting
the Midwest with what are called sentinel plots.
“And once a week, starting in a few weeks, each of these plots will be scouted very intensively, looking at at least a hundred plants, looking for any signs or symptoms of the disease.”
Advance warnings will allow farmers to apply fungicide to their crops as
soon as possible. Soybean rust can’t overwinter in the cold north.
So if southern states have good luck – or do a good job treating it – it’s less
likely to make it here.
Garlic mustard looks like any average weed, but because it's
an exotic species in the Midwest, it doesn't have any natural predators. That means it can push out native plant species and disrupt ecosystems in Great Lakes states. (Photo by Corbin Sullivan)
The corn bread pudding was a crowd favorite, but volunteers made everything from salads to bread to lasagna to several Mexican dishes, each with the distinct flavor of garlic mustard. (Photo by Corbin Sullivan)
People attending the benefit assess the available choices,
each with the invasive species garlic mustard as an ingredient. Before and after the meal, the crowd got some lessons on invasive species and ways to help keep them in check. (Photo by Corbin Sullivan)
Of all the non-native plants and animals that have invaded the Great Lakes region, garlic mustard is one of the most prolific. The leafy green plant is an invasive species that can be found in people’s backyards, in wetlands, even growing through cracks in concrete. Invasive species can hurt natural areas by displacing native plants. So to get rid of garlic mustard, people are dumping it in landfills or killing it with herbicide. But a nature group in Michigan has found a better way to deal with it – by eating it. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner attended a benefit dinner where garlic mustard was featured in every single recipe. Toner produced this audio postcard:
Transcript
Of all the non-native plants and animals that have invaded the
Great Lakes region, garlic mustard is one of the most prolific. The
leafy green plant is an invasive species that can be found in people’s
backyards, in wetlands, even growing through cracks in concrete.
Invasive species can hurt natural areas by displacing native plants.
So to get rid of garlic mustard, people are dumping it in landfills or
killing it with herbicide. But a nature group in Michigan has found
a better way to deal with it – by eating it. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Erin Toner attended a benefit dinner where garlic mustard
was featured in every single recipe. Toner produced this audio postcard:
“Hi, I’m Jeremy Emmi. I’m the executive director of the Michigan Nature Association. There are a lot of invasive species out there that people don’t know about. Most people have invasive species in their backyard or their woodlot or their farm and they really don’t know they’re there. Garlic mustard is actually pretty simple to deal with, although very labor intensive.
“And the way we deal with it is pulling it, and that’s really the best way. You can use herbicide, but because it grows in such pristine habitats a lot of the time you don’t want to use herbicide because you don’t want to kill the native plants that are around it. So you’re in a catch 22. So really the best way is just to pull it.”
“Hi, I’m Natalie Kent. I’m the GIS technician and development associate for the Michigan Nature Association. I was helping out at one of MNA’s workdays and we were removing garlic mustard and I was working with my coworker Sherri. And we were coming back home and we were talking and she said she had had garlic mustard in salad the weekend before. And I said “Oh, you can eat it.” And she said “Oh yeah, it’s edible, you can have it fresh in salads, you can cook it like spinach.” And then the first thought that popped into my head was, if we can eat it, why are we throwing it away?
“…It looks different, depending on when you see it. In early spring, it’s in the form of a basil rosette and it sort of looks similar to a violet leaf, similar in the shape. But to me, I always tell people it looks like Pac Man.”
“My name is Ruth and I am eating something called Jade Soup, which I think is essentially a broth with lots of boiled garlic mustard leaves in it and actually it’s very good. It kind of tastes like a spinach soup, kind of, but it tastes good and mild and not at all overwhelming which you might think it would be. And also the garlic pesto bread is absolutely fabulous.”
“I’m Cynthia and I was born in Detroit, Michigan. Oh, I think it’s great. It has a slight zing and zip to it. It’s refreshing. It’s the kind of thing that would cleanse the palette after a heavy meal. It’s really an enjoyable plant.”
I’m Clifford Welch, and I’m a retired professor at Michigan State University and my retirement’s devoted to ecological restoration. I spend now almost 70 percent of my time on invasive species. The invasive vegetation is a huge, huge problem. What I have is a bunch of dishes that have garlic mustard in it. This is what I really need to taste, here’s the garlic mustard right here, and I’ve never eaten it before and I’m anxious to see what this tastes like.
(sound of chewing)
“It has a mustardy taste to it. It needs something on it, though, badly.”
“I’m Mary, and I was about to try – this is a cheese ball with garlic mustard. It’s actually good, it adds a, I don’t want to say peppery flavor, but I guess a garlic flavor to the cheese. It is good. So if somebody’s willing to take the time to harvest it, you can add it to things and I guess it’s supposed to be really healthy based on the literature. It has a lot of Vitamin A and Vitamin C in it. We’re all trying to eat healthier these days.”
HOST TAG: The voices of people trying foods made with mustard garlic: an invasive species that naturalists are removing from the wild and eating, rather than throwing it away. Our audio postcard was produced by the GLRC’s Erin Toner.
A surplus of carbon dioxide is created during big events like the Superbowl. To counteract this, the NFL has plans to plant trees in Detroit. (Photo by Sarah Lawrence)
Officials from the National Football League plan to plant acres of trees in Detroit. They’re hoping to offset extra greenhouse gases that will be emitted during next year’s Super Bowl. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee reports:
Transcript
Officials from the National Football League plan to plant acres of trees in Detroit. They’re hoping to offset extra greenhouse gases that will be emitted into the local atmosphere during the upcoming Super Bowl. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee reports:
The U.S. Department of Energy estimated an extra 260 tons of carbon dioxide were released into the atmosphere during the last Super Bowl in Jacksonville, Florida. A team of scientists from Princeton University determined three and a half to four acres of trees were required to absorb the extra greenhouse gases. Similar computations are now being done to determine how many trees to plant in Detroit.
Deborah Gangloff is the executive director of American Forests, a group that helps companies design what are called carbon neutral programs.
“We can address a great deal of the excess carbon dioxide issue with trees. Trees are going to sequester lots of carbon dioxide. What matters most is not the type of tree you plant, but whether that tree is well suited to the site, whether it s a healthy tree and whether it’s in its growing climate.”
She says these programs can t solve the problem of excess greenhouse gases unless they re paired with conservation and reduced consumption.
David Peterson is president of NaturNorth Technologies. The business is a spinoff from the University of Minnesota-Duluth's Natural Resources Research Institute. It has a patent on a process to extract large quantities of pure betulin, a component of birch bark. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)
When extracted and purified, betulin is a crystalline powder. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)
Skip Sandman is a traditional healer for the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe. He says it's getting harder and harder to find mature birch trees for his medicines. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)
A start-up company is banking on birch bark. The papery bark can be used for more than baskets and canoes. It’s used in skin creams, and scientists are studying it for use in treating skin rashes and even cancer. But Native American healers have been using birch bark for years, and some of them are worried about the supply. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:
Transcript
A start-up company is banking on birch bark. The papery bark can be used for more than baskets and canoes. It’s used in skin creams, and scientists are studying it for use in treating skin rashes and even cancer. But Native American healers have been using birch bark for years, and some of them are worried about the supply. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:
Have you ever noticed – walking in the woods – those cylinders of bright white bark, lying on the forest floor? Those are the remains of a birch tree. The inside of the tree rots away quickly, but the bark lasts much longer.
“The birch tree has some incredible defense mechanisms that protect the tree from weather, from rain, from sun, keep the moisture in, keep moisture out.”
David Peterson knows birch trees pretty well. He was a top manager at the Potlatch Paper Mill near Duluth, Minnesota. The plant processes thousands of trees every day, and burns the bark to make steam.
“I always was interested in trying to come with a way of using some of these low value waste streams generated from pulp paper mills and other places, it seemed like such a horrible waste, to take these really interesting compounds and put them in a boiler for boiler fuel.”
Peterson’s new company, NaturNorth Technologies, plans to make something worth a lot more than boiler fuel. The company has patented a process to extract large quantities of a chemical, betulin, that gives birch bark its anti-bacterial and anti-fungal qualities.
Mill workers remove bark from a tree that’s harvested for lumber or paper-making. It’s shredded into pellets, and put through a chemical process that extracts the betulin. It ends up looking something like salt.
“Here’s a sample of betulin, and you can see how bright and white it is. It’s got a chalky feel when you touch it.”
Apparently, what birch bark does for the birch tree, it can also do for human skin – protect it from the assaults of the physical world. Betulin is already used in some creams and cosmetics, but NaturNorth plans to be the first company in the world to market it on a large scale.
The idea of selling lots of betulin from birch bark makes Skip Sandman nervous. He’s a Native American traditional healer for the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe. He uses birch bark for medicine. He says it’s a pain-killer and blood-thinner and can be used for intestinal disorders.
“Fortunately, when people use it for medicines and stuff, one small tree does go a long way. But you might have to travel 15, 20 miles to find the right type of tree.”
Sandman says the bigger trees – ten to twelve inches in diameter – have a bigger supply of the properties he uses in medicine. And lately he’s had to go farther to find those big trees. He says that’s because timber companies have cut down so many of the big trees and now they’re working on smaller and smaller trees.
“But you see the logging trucks go by, and they’re just whacking down everything. Well they think it’s only a tree. But when the trees are gone, then what do we do?”
Sandman says in the Ojibwe creation story, each plant and animal promised to help people in some way, and birch trees offered their healing qualities. He says it’s important to use them respectfully, and not for profit, but only to help people. He says he approaches the tree with an offering of tobacco.
“I will put tobacco down and ask and talk to that tree, because it is alive.”
The folks at NaturNorth are hoping to make money from birch trees, but they’re also excited about helping people. David Peterson says he gets letters from people who want some betulin to treat a skin condition.
“When you get those letters, you can’t help but to feel that somebody out there that’s gonna benefit eventually from these compounds, I think it’s quite sobering and humbling.”
NaturNorth has started marketing betulin to cosmetics companies, and scientists are studying betulinic acid for its disease-fighting potential. Peterson says it’ll be several years before NaturNorth generates a profit.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is reviewing a plan for building a uranium enrichment plant in Ohio. Supporters of the plant welcome the jobs, but many others are worried about radioactive waste. (Photo courtesy of the NRC)
Nuclear power plants need enriched uranium to produce power. Today, there’s only one uranium enrichment facility operating in the U.S. Now, there’s a proposal to build a new one in southern Ohio. And as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Fred Kight reports, there’s debate over how safe the proposed plant will be:
Transcript
Nuclear power plants need enriched uranium to produce power.
Today, there’s only one uranium enrichment facility operating in the
U.S. Now, there’s a proposal to build a new one in southern Ohio.
And as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Fred Kight reports, there’s
debate over how safe the proposed plant will be:
The one-point-five billion dollar project is planned by USEC, Incorporated, the world’s largest producer of enriched uranium. Company officials say it would generate 500 jobs and be built at the site of an old, off-line uranium enrichment plant. Charles Wiltshire is still employed there and he’s all for building the new facility.
“I would like to see future job opportunities for my children and grandchildren who will be finishing college about the time the centrifuge plant is due to go online.”
But environmentalists and concerned citizens are worried about the radioactive waste. They’re also fearful of water pollution and health hazards for plant workers. The State of Ohio has promised more than 100 million dollars in financial incentives and is confident that the new plant will not put anyone in danger. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is reviewing the company’s application and is supposed to make a decision by early 2007.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Fred Kight.
Most people think renewable energy is a good idea. It’s better
than burning fossil fuel to create electricity. But “green energy”
alternatives
can be controversial. Windmill farms are springing up all across the
nation.
Some people think the windmills are eyesores. But others say windmill farms
can help preserve the agricultural landscape by supplementing the income of
farmers. In the second of a two-part series on wind energy, the Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Linda Stephan reports:
Transcript
Most people think renewable energy is a good idea. It’s better than burning fossil
fuel to create
electricity. But “green energy” alternatives can be controversial. Windmill farms
are springing
up all across the nation. Some people think the windmills are eyesores. But others
say windmill
farms can help preserve the agricultural landscape by supplementing the income of
farmers.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Linda Stephan reports:
For 30 years, Matt Mauer raised crops and livestock on his farm about 10 miles from
the Lake
Michigan shoreline. Today, he’s in his backyard looking at the land now farmed by
his daughter
and son-in-law. Standing there, he feels a crop they’re not harvesting.
“The good Lord makes it windy all the time for us, so let’s use it, you know.
Because I’m like
everybody else. When I get up in the morning, I want lights.”
Mauer’s hoping to put four wind turbines on his family’s farm near Ludington,
Michigan. That
would power about 24-hundred homes. Nearby, a renewable energy company’s working with
other farmers to build a hundred turbines in the area. Mauer says many of his
neighbors want in
on the deal because they think wind energy could help save their farms.
“It’s hard to make a living just farming right now. And I consider the wind one of
the crops that
we could harvest. It will help keep farmers on the land. Like if, in this place, if
we could get
seven–thousand dollars a year, six-thousand dollars a year for four of them, that’d
make it a hell
of a lot easier to keep the people here and farm.”
The state government’s backing similar projects. It’s training financial advisors
to show farmers
how they can turn a profit with windmills.
But not everyone likes the idea. Some people who live in the area around the
planned windmills
say they’re worried the towers would destroy the region’s charm. That’s linked to
property values
and to tourism. And they don’t like the size of the proposed windmills. Each one
would be four-
hundred feet tall. The blades would have a diameter nearly as long as a football
field.
It’s a story that’s heard in many places. Cape Cod, Massachusetts, the prairies of
Illinois, and
around the Great Lakes. For example, a Michigan couple who wanted large-scale
turbines on
their property ended up losing a court-battle against local government that opposed
the plan. And
two turbines already in place in Mackinaw City – between Lake Michigan and Lake
Huron –
have some unhappy neighbors as well.
Thomas and Virginia Alexander’s home is about 15-hundred feet away from the windmills.
They’re in their eighties and they both wear hearing aids… but even without them,
they say the
windmills are loud…
Tom Alexander: “There’s things about it we don’t appreciate, at times the noise –
not always –
depending upon the wind and the direction.
Virginia Alexander: “Yesterday. Very noisy yesterday. The wind was high and they,
you could
really hear them.”
Tom Alexander: “Just a continual swish, swish, swish, swish, swish.”
Windmill developers say the sound is no louder than normal speech. But this noise is
different. It
goes beyond the frequencies of normal speech. The sound can travel long distances
through both
the ground and the air. They keep Virginia Alexander awake some nights.
Tom and Virginia Alexander’s son Kelly lives next door with his family. He calls
himself a
windmill victim. He has this advice for others:
“Don’t let them go in your backyard. There are places they can go. You don’t just
put those in
somebody’s backyard. I don’t think it’s right.”
A lot of people agree with the Alexanders. Even wind energy boosters concede that
location is
key to successful projects. David Johnson heads up the program for the state of
Michigan that’s
encouraging farmers to allow windmills on their land. He says turbines should be
constructed
where there’s lots of wind and few neighbors. But he says when people say ‘no’ to
windmills,
they should consider the alternative.
“So, does that mean that you should build another big coal-fired plant? Is that the
preferable way
of doing it with the global warming impacts and the mercury pollution and so on that
go with
that? Is that the choice that the public wants to make?
States across the nation are struggling to find the right balance between clean
energy and the
beauty of an uncluttered landscape. Few regulations are in place right now. More
and more,
communities will be facing the decision of whether clean energy and keeping farmers
on the land
is worth the price of adding wind turbines to the scenery.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Linda Stephan.
Heavy rains can overwhelm sewer systems. The EPA's proposed solution, blending, is a topic of debate. (photo by Sarah Griggs)
The Environmental Protection Agency is finalizing
a policy that will allow sewage treatment operators to send largely untreated sewage directly into rivers and lakes. It’s a cost-savings effort pushed by the Bush administration. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
The Environmental Protection Agency is finalizing a policy that will allow sewage treatment operators to send largely untreated sewage directly into rivers and lakes. It’s a cost-savings effort pushed by the Bush administration. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
The process is called blending. If too much sewage is coming in to treat completely, this policy allows operators to “blend” mostly untreated sewage with already treated waste water, then release it into the waterways. That saves the federal government money by not having to pay for sewage plant expansions.
Environmentalists don’t like it. Nancy Stoner is with the group Natural Resources Defense Council.
“They’re saying that they’re going to save money by providing less treatment now even though that pushes the cost onto the public by contaminating our drinking water supply, by killing fish, by contaminating shellfish so it cant be sold, by closing beaches.”
The EPA says blending untreated sewage with treated sewage dilutes it so that it meets federal standards. The agency also argues that the policy merely sanctions a practice that already happens every time a sewer system gets swamped by heavy rains.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
PVC is used in many building materials, including pipes like these. However, due to health problems that can be caused by PVC and the emissions created in production, the expansion of a PVC plant along Lake Erie is worrisome to some environmentalists. (photo by Jason
Krieger)
A new PVC manufacturing plant is being built in the region,
and that has some environmental groups alarmed. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Joyce Kryszak reports on efforts to halt production of polyvinyl chloride:
Transcript
A new PVC manufacturing plant is being built in the region, and that has some environmental groups alarmed. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium, Joyce Kryszak reports on efforts to halt production of polyvinyl chloride:
Environmental groups are protesting the construction of a new PVC plant near Buffalo. They say manufacturing PVC releases toxic chemicals into the environment. The group recently released a report highlighting the dangers of PVC and are calling on companies to phase out production of the popular manufacturing material. Mike Schade heads the Citizens’ Environmental Coalition in western New York. The region is home to CertainTeed, a PVC plant that will soon expand to a site along Lake Erie. Schade says it’s a step backward.
“I think it’s outrageous that, given the fact the Great Lakes have seen so many environmental problems, that CertainTeed is coming in and citing a PVC plant right on the lake,” said Schade, “It certainly isn’t my vision for a clean and safe and healthy waterfront.”
Schade says residents near other Certain Teed plants show increased levels of cancer and other serious disease. But company spokesperson Dottie Wackerman disputed the claims. And she says the company’s new plant will have virtually no emissions.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Joyce Kryszak.
American chestnuts (left) are smaller than Chinese and European chestnuts. The Chinese and European varieties are also resistant to the blight, making the imports more desirable to growers. (Photo by Lester Graham)
American chestnuts were an important food source for wildlife because there was a more consistent crop each year than acorns. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Bill Nash of Nash Nurseries holds the spiny husks that hold the chestnuts. The American chestnut grove behind him is 20 years old and has not yet been hit by blight. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Food is always a big part of the holidays. But one
traditional food has – for the most part – disappeared from American tables. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
Food is always a big part of the holidays. But one traditional food has – for the most part – disapeared from American tables. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
(Sound of Nat King Cole singing, “Chestnuts roasing on an open fire…”)
That old chestnut of a song romanticizes roasting chestnuts as a part of the holidays. But a lot of us have never even seen chestnuts, let alone roasted them on an open fire. Chestnuts used to be a major part of the Eastern hardwood forest. There were millions of them. In fact, 25 percent of all the mature trees were chestnuts. But a blight, imported with some Chinese chestnut trees, slowly wiped out the American chestnuts. Now, they’re gone.
Well… almost. Much of the root stock is still alive. Sprouts grow until the blight knocks them back again. A blight only hurts the standing tree where it branches out.
And, in a few isolated pockets in the Midwest, the blight hasn’t reached the trees. A few American chestnuts are alive and growing and some of them are free of the blight. At Nash Nursuries in central Michigan, owner Bill Nash is guiding us through a rare sight… a grove of American chestnuts.
“These are 20 years old and as you can see, they’re fairly good sized. The American chestnut is quite a rapid growing tree. It’s well-suited for our climate, so it doesn’t have any of the problems that some of the hybrids do as far as growing and cultural care you have to take care of them. The Americans, you get them started and they’re pretty much on their own.”
In a few places in Michigan and Wisconsin there are small groves of chestnuts. They’re prized trees. They’re great for shade. The hardwood is rot resistant and makes great furniture and fence posts. And the chestnuts are eaten by humans and wildlife alike. Bill Nash says the tree will be popular again if it ever overcomes the blight that’s hit it so hard.
“The American chestnut will make another big comeback in this country as a yard tree, as a timber tree, as a wildlife tree.”
That part about a wildlife tree is more important than just worrying about the squirrels and bunnies. Chestnuts were an important food source for all kinds of animals.
Andrew Jarosz is a plant biologist at Michigan State University. He says the loss of chestnuts has been hard on wildlife populations.
“Chestnuts shed nuts in a more regular pattern than oaks, which will have what are called mast years – where they’ll have major crops, massive crops one year and very small crops in other years – which means it’s either feast or famine if you’re depending on oaks.”
Since the blight first began hitting American chestnuts about a century ago, researchers have been looking into all kinds of ways to stop it. One way is to cross it with the Chinese chestnut which has a couple of genes that resist the blight. But it takes a long time to breed out the Chinese characteristics from the American chestnuts and still keep the resistant genes.
Another approach is genetic manipulation. Genetically modifying the American chestnut tree to make it disease resistant. Again, work is underway, but it takes a long time. And even after success, it’s likely some people won’t like the idea of releasing a genetically modified organism into the wild.
The final approach worked in Europe when the blight hit there. It seems there’s a naturally occuring virus that kills the blight. It spread naturally in Europe. There are a few groves in Michigan that have naturally acquired the virus and it’s working to keep the blight at bay. Andrew Jarosz is working on the research. He says the trick is figuring out how to get the virus to spread to other trees short of manually spreading it on cankers infected by the blight.
“If we’re literally talking about millions of trees across probably, you know, the eastern third of the country, we obviously can’t treat every canker on every tree. And we need to be able to figure out a way to deploy the virus in a way that it can spread.”
Even with all that hopeful research, it’ll be ten years at least before some practical solutions end up in the forests, and Jarosz believes a couple of centuries before the American chestnut holds the place it once did in the forests.
Bill Nash knows it’ll be a while before there are major changes, but he is optimistic about the American chestnut.
“Oh, I would think the tree has a bright future. There’s enough people working on that, enough programs going on now… So, I would suspect that in the not-too-distant future we should have some of this progress made. You know, Robert Frost in his poem predicted the comeback of the American chestnut, that something would arise to offset that blight. And we’re starting to see that.”
Frost put it this way: “Will the blight end the chestnut? The farmers rather guess not, It keeps smoldering at the roots And sending up new shoots Till another parasite Shall come to end the blight.”
Seems Frost was an optimist too.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
Mark Kubiske checks the valve that controls the flow of greenhouse gases to a stand of sugar maples, birch and aspen. (Photo by Jennifer Simonson)
One part of the greenhouse gas-making facility. (Photo by Jennifer
Simonson)
A stand of trees is surrounded by pipes that release greenhouse gases. (Photo by Jennifer Simonson)
Scientists from around the world are studying how higher levels of carbon dioxide will affect forests 100 years from now. They’re doing that by pumping higher levels of CO2 and ozone into stands of trees. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mike Simonson visited the experimental forests and has this story:
Transcript
Scientists from around the world are studying how higher levels of carbon dioxide will affect forests 100 years from now. They’re doing that by pumping higher levels of CO2 and ozone into stands of trees. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mike Simonson visited the experimental forests and has this story:
(sound of “quiet area”)
The north woods of the Great Lakes states are stands of millions of acres of pine, maple, birch, and aspen forests. It’s a perfect place to try to figure out how trees will react to the higher levels of ozone and carbon dioxide scientists expect in the future.
(sound of beeping fence gate)
The first thing you notice at Aspen Free Air Carbon Dioxide Enrichment Project – Aspen FACE for short – is two huge tanks inside the fenced in enclosure. Each one is bigger than an 18-wheel tanker truck. They’re full of carbon dioxide… CO2. So much CO2 is used in this experiment, the tanks are filled twice a day.
(sound of filling tanks)
If you looked at the site from an airplane, you’d see 12 circular tree stands surrounded by 30 foot high pipes. Those pipes pour CO2 or ozone gases or both into the air surrounding birch, sugar maple, and aspen trees. The scientists know that greenhouse gases in the earth’s atmosphere have been increasing. They believe two centuries of industrial pollution has contributed to the problem. And they expect the CO2 and ozone levels to double by the end of this century. They’re raising the level of greenhouse gasses in different mixes to see what the predicted levels will do to forests.
This open air project is different than previous experiments. David Karnosky is with Michigan Tech. He’s the Project Manager for Aspen FACE. He says before these kinds of projects, they just tested trees inside places like greenhouses.
“We needed to get out of those chambers. We needed to have a more realistic, real world sort of situation where we had multiple trees. We wanted real intact forest communities. We didn’t want to have just a small number of trees inside of a chamber.”
The United States Department of Energy launched this experiment in Wisconsin’s northwoods seven years ago. Karnosky says they’re learning how the trees react to the higher CO2 levels, and that could shape the future of the world’s timber industry.
“Who will be the winners? Who will be the losers? Will aspen or birch or sugar maple? In northern Wisconsin here we’ve got probably 40 million acres of those species mixes. What’s going to happen under elevated CO2 in the next 100 years? Will these forests remain as they are?”
(sound of driving on gravel)
Driving to one of the experimental circles, we pull up to a ring of trees. Mark Kubiske is one of the two full-time on-site researchers.
“Now this particular ring is an elevated CO2 plot. CO2 is delivered through this copper pipe. It runs to that fan, there’s a large fan right on the end of that gray building.”
The scientists have found that trees in the CO2 circles grow 30 percent faster than trees without the gas.
“The trees are larger in diameter, they’re straight, they have lots of leaf area, they just look very healthy. That is just in tremendous contrast to the ozone ring. We’ll go up around the corner and look at one.”
Nearby another circle of trees is not doing nearly as well. The trees are skinny, twisted not as tall as the other sites. Higher ozone levels are hurting the trees.
At the sites where pipes emit both ozone and CO2, the tree growth seems normal – except for some stunted maple trees. The leaves of the aspen and birch take in much of the CO2, convert it to sugar which goes to its roots, eventually becoming a natural part of the soil. That suggests forests may help alleviate gases that cause global warming. The Project Director, David Karnosky says CO2 and ozone appear to cancel each other out. But he says it’s too early to draw any firm conclusions. Ultimately, he says governments will be able to look at this glimpse into the future and try to come up with emissions policies that help.
“The whole issue of the Kyoto protocol, our government not signing off on that. There’s been some relaxing of the feelings from what I’ve seen from the President’s report now that they’re beginning to realize that elevated CO2 is having an impact on global warming and could be impacting our plant communities.”
Karnosky says it’s possible that besides reducing emissions, governments might determine that planting more trees might be very helpful in reducing greenhouse gasses worldwide.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mike Simonson.
Soybean rust spreads quickly and easily, and Midwest farmers are worried that the disease may spread upward from the South. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)
