Tag: tree

Climate Change and Wildfires

  • Jennifer Pierce and David Wilkins stand in front of a ponderosa pine forest just outside the city of Boise. They hope to study the relationship between fire and climate here and recreate a snapshot of ancient climate. They are both teach at Boise State University's Geosciences Department. (Photo by Sadie Babits)

Twenty years ago this year, the
country watched its oldest national park
go up in flames. Looking back, scientists
believe the 1988 fires of Yellowstone
National Park were the signal fire of
climate change. Researchers have been
working ever since to understand this
relationship between climate and wildfire.
Sadie Babits reports on two scientists
searching for clues to ancient climates,
using trees as their guide:

Transcript

Twenty years ago this year, the
country watched its oldest national park
go up in flames. Looking back, scientists
believe the 1988 fires of Yellowstone
National Park were the signal fire of
climate change. Researchers have been
working ever since to understand this
relationship between climate and wildfire.
Sadie Babits reports on two scientists
searching for clues to ancient climates,
using trees as their guide:

Jennifer Pierce wears work boots as she plows down a steep slope in a
ponderosa pine forest.

(sound of walking, twigs breaking)

Her blonde hair is tucked up under her Boise State bronco cap, but it keeps
sneaking out. She has to keep brushing it back under. She and her
colleague David Wilkins are professors who work for Boise State
University’s Geosciences Department. They’re in the middle of tall pines in
a forest just outside of Boise, Idaho. Suddenly she’s crashing across the
brambles and heads for this tree.

“Oh that’s a great one! Wow! Sweet!”

She drops to her knees and shows me how this tree has been scarred by
fire.

“You see this little V shaped cat face here at the bottom of the tree that’s
blackened? So during a fire when the bark of the tree gets damaged that
preserves a record of the fire as a scar on the tree.”

Pierce says since the tree has annual growth rings, she can tell when the
tree got burned.

It’s one way Pierce and Wilkins reconstruct the fire history of this forest.
It’s a key to understanding how climate has affected forest fires in the past.

“I think as we move into a likely warmer and drier future, it’s going to be
increasingly important to understand the relationship between climate and
fire.”

She says climate is the primary control for wildfires. As the West warms,
there’s less control. Recently, that’s meant a lot more wildfires.

(popping sound) “There you go!” (sound of a drill bit going through the tree
with sound of birds and forest)

David Wilkins is twisting an auger into the tree.

“It’s a good upper body workout!” (laughs)

It’s a way to take a sample of the rings of this tree. Within a half-minute,
Wilkins’ auger is stuck. The tree is rotten inside. An eight-inch core is all he
gets.

(sound of drill bit coming out of the tree)

Jennifer Pierce takes a look at this sample Wilkins twisted out. The rings –
some light, some dark – reveal just how the tree has responded to moisture
and temperature.

“If you have a tree that kind of is at the edge of its comfort zone so to
speak, it will be more of a sensitive recorder of those environmental
stresses. See this one looks pretty good.”

Tree rings aren’t the only clue these scientists use to reconstruct historic
climates.

(scraping sound)

“I didn’t bring my big shovel. I kind of feel naked without it.”

Pierce scrapes away dirt and she finds bits of charcoal. She can sometimes
use charcoal for radio carbon dating. But these won’t do.

“But, um, I wouldn’t use them for dating because you want to make sure
that the charcoal is stratographicly in place and that you haven’t had
critters burrowing and mixing things up.”

Charcoal can be dated much further back than the tree rings. It helps
Pierce and Wilkins understand what happened here thousands of years
ago. With samples from other scientists, they’ll get a snapshot of ancient
climate and how it affects wildfire.

And possibly determine what climate change will mean for forests in the
future.

For The Environment Report, I’m Sadie Babits.

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Planting More Trees on Coffee Farms

  • Many coffee growers in Latin America are now replanting the shade trees. (Source: MarkSweep at Wikimedia Commons)

Songbirds on their way south might
find more trees at coffee plantations. Lester
Graham reports there’s a shift in thinking by
coffee growers. And a new study might encourage
more farmers to plant shade trees:

Transcript

Songbirds on their way south might
find more trees at coffee plantations. Lester
Graham reports there’s a shift in thinking by
coffee growers. And a new study might encourage
more farmers to plant shade trees:

A few decades ago, coffee growers in Latin America were given incentives to clear the
shade trees on their plantations. More sun equals more coffee beans. They also found
more sun meant more weeds. So they had to spray expensive herbicides.

Now a new study published in BioScience shows cutting down those shade trees has
also left the coffee plants more exposed to damage from bad weather. Ivette Perfecto
at the University of Michigan is one of the authors.

“The vulnerability of the farms are much higher if they eliminate the shade. The shade
trees provide like a buffer against extremes.”

Many coffee growers in Latin America are now replanting the shade trees. The added
benefit is the trees provide habitat for wildlife, including those migrating birds that spend
their summers here and travel south to that region.

For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

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Only Trees Can Prevent Forest Fires?

  • Active flame front of the Zaca Fire, the second largest fire on record in California. (U.S. Forest Service photo by John Newman)

New technology might help the US
Forest Service detect fires in remote areas
more quickly. Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

New technology might help the US
Forest Service detect fires in remote areas
more quickly. Lester Graham reports:

A chemical reaction makes batteries generate electricity. There’s a ph difference
between trees and the soil around them. MIT researchers say they can use that
chemical difference to generate a tiny amount of electricity.

Andreas Mershin and his MIT colleagues say it’s just enough power to trickle charge
sensors that read temperature and humidity. Then they send that data to the U.S.
Forest Service so it can determine the risk of fire.

“The advantage comes from the fact you no longer need to be going to very remote
locations and changing batteries all the time.”

The Forest Service will be testing these sensors next spring. They cost about one-tenth
of other sensors that need batteries. So it could mean more sensors in remote
locations. That way the Forest Service could have a better idea of if and when it needs
to put fire equipment near hot, dry areas.

For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

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Trees as Odor-Eaters

  • Researchers at the University of Delaware have found that planting trees around poultry farms has many benefits (Photo courtesy of the USDA)

As suburbs are built closer to
farms, there are sometimes complaints
about the odors. Researchers are now
working to smooth things out between
farmers and their new neighbors. Jessi
Ziegler has the story on one
of the simple solutions they found:

Transcript

As suburbs are built closer to
farms, there are sometimes complaints
about the odors. Researchers are now
working to smooth things out between
farmers and their new neighbors. Jessi
Ziegler has the story on one
of the simple solutions they found:

If you’ve ever driven by a chicken farm, you know the
smell can get pretty bad.

So, imagine living by one, and smelling it every single day.

Well, researchers may have come up with a solution –
trees.

Planting a few rows of trees around a farm can do all sorts
of good.

They capture dust and ammonia. And they block noise
and odor.

Also, they make the farm look a lot prettier. Which,
researcher George Malone says, can make a big difference.

“There’s been other studies to indicate that attractive
farms, statistically, have less odor than unattractive farms.
Perception is reality of what we deal with.”

And the perception is, the better you think a farm looks,
the better you think it smells.

For The Environment Report, this is Jessi Ziegler.

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Woody the Woodpecker: Save My Home!

  • Chet Meyers surveys the Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve for Red-headed Woodpeckers. He's heading up a study to identify the bird's preferred habitat, and to encourage landowners to let dead and dying trees stand, as woodpecker homes. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)

Red-headed woodpeckers used to
be just about everywhere east of the Rocky
Mountains. But these days the number of
red-headed woodpeckers is about half of
what it was fifty years ago. Stephanie
Hemphill reports volunteers
are working on a new project to get people
to help red-headed woodpeckers. They’re
encouraging landowners to let dead or dying
trees stand rather than cut them down:

Transcript

Red-headed woodpeckers used to
be just about everywhere east of the Rocky
Mountains. But these days the number of
red-headed woodpeckers is about half of
what it was fifty years ago. Stephanie
Hemphill reports volunteers
are working on a new project to get people
to help red-headed woodpeckers. They’re
encouraging landowners to let dead or dying
trees stand rather than cut them down:

You can’t miss Red-headed Woodpeckers. They have long beaks,
bright red heads and snowy white breasts. And if you go to the right
place, you can find a lot of them.

“Somebody told me that there was Red-headed Woodpeckers up
here, so I walked five minutes, and there was a Red-headed
Woodpecker, and it flew into a hole in a tree, and I says, ‘wow, this is
easy.’”

Lance Nelson first visited the Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science
Reserve about a year ago.

“And then I came up this year and found 8 nests. But the young
make a lot of chattering, so you can usually tell where the nest is.”

Today they’re not hammering on trees – the sound most of us
associate with woodpeckers – but they’re doing plenty of chattering.

This reserve in southern Minnesota looks a lot like how much of the
Midwest used to look.

There are clumps of big oak trees here, separated by open areas of
native grasses, shrubs and wildflowers. The biologists call it an oak
savannah.

And there are Red-headed Woodpeckers everywhere – about fifty of
them on this 500-acre patch of ground.

“There’s a red-headed, and he’s got a baby with him. God, they’re
beautiful. They are so beautiful.”

That’s Chet Meyers. After a career as a college professor, he’s now
in charge of an effort to make more places where Red-headed
Woodpeckers can build their nests and raise their young.

If they can figure out exactly what the woodpeckers like so much
about this place, maybe they can come close to reproducing the
same conditions other places.

Chet Meyers is marking every tree where the woodpeckers have
nested.

“See these two trees to the left, go to the right-most one, it forks, and
there’s a broken-off snag up there, looks like a ‘Y’. That’s where the
babies were sticking their head out a couple weeks ago. It was really
cute.”

Once the trees are marked, the group will catalog exact descriptions
of each tree. They’re hoping to come up with a profile of the perfect
home for Red-headed Woodpeckers.

“And we’re going to measure the diameter of the tree, how high the
nest cavity is, the species of the tree, is it alive or is it dead, so we
can get some data on what seems to be the preferred habitat.”

Once they’re pretty sure they know what the woodpeckers like, they’ll
reach out to land owners. They’ll to try to get them to leave dead and
dying trees standing.

That could work on old abandoned farms, where there are trees and
open spaces. Or in cemeteries. Or around golf courses.

“If our theory – see, this is all theory – if our theory is correct, the golf
course replicates an oak savannah and there should be birds there.
So, that’s what we’re hoping.”

And Meyers says helping woodpeckers means helping other wildlife
too.

“The woodpecker is called a primary nester, it digs the cavity. But
flying squirrels, mice, snakes, bluebirds, tree swallows – there are lots
of other animals that are secondary nesters. They can’t drill the hole.
But they live there. So what we’re trying to do is preserve the habitat
so the woodpeckers drill the hole and when they leave, something
else will come in and live in it.”

The researchers think if you have dead or dying tree, that could be a
home for a Red-headed Woodpecker. But usually homeowners are
worried the tree could fall and damage something, Meyers says you
can cut off the top and some of the bigger branches and leave the
rest of the tree standing. They think the red-headed woodpecker will
be just as happy.

For The Environment Report, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

Related Links

Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho, on a Singing Hike We Go

  • Music teacher Maura Volante leading students on her "Woods Walk Singing", a singing hike (Photo by Karen Kelly)

In many cultures, people sing as
they work or as they travel. But in North
America, most of us aren’t comfortable
singing out loud in public. Karen Kelly
reports on a music teacher who’s trying
to change that – by taking her students
into the woods:

Transcript

In many cultures, people sing as
they work or as they travel. But in North
America, most of us aren’t comfortable
singing out loud in public. Karen Kelly
reports on a music teacher who’s trying
to change that – by taking her students
into the woods:


“Ooh, ah. Ooh ah. Here’s another part: aay-oh”

Maura Volante is leading a troupe of six students through a path in the forest.

It’s rainy, buggy and muddy. But everyone quickly gets into a groove – both with their
feet and with their voice.

(sound of walking song)

“There’s lots to look at all the time: the green and the shadows, the lake, the sky and all
the different vegetation. And when I’m feeling relaxed and I’m in my body and I’m
walking along and I’m in nature like that, it just makes me want to sing. It inspires me to
let my voice out.”

Volante teaches singing in Ottawa, Canada. For her, people don’t need a good voice to be
able to sing. Instead, she says singing just comes naturally to humans, like breathing and
walking. Which is why she tries to get people outside where they can experiment and
make mistakes.

“It’s kind of like recreational softball. It doesn’t matter if someone sucks at it. They can
still play. It’s for fun.”

(sound of more singing)

We spend about two hours hiking around the heavily-wooded Mud Lake.

I did some research to see if I could find any other organized singing hikes. I found one
at a bible camp in Virginia. And there’s one at a kibbutz in Israel. And, at Yellowstone
National Park? They recommend singing loudly – or shouting – to scare the bears away.

Of course, lots of people like to sing when they hike. On this walk, Kathy Woodgold
says she sings differently when she’s walking in nature.

“When we’re in the woods, it brings sort of a primitive spirit. Like, I’m thinking, let’s
pretend we’re not civilized, instincts, and so on. And maybe that opens up a creative
spirit. It frees us to sing random notes, instead of having to feel like we have to do a
predefined melody.”

This isn’t really a conservationist group. But teacher Maura Volante says, in some small
way, doing this helps the planet.

“I think there is a benefit to the environment for people to sing more because that gets
them to appreciate nature more and appreciating nature helps you be committed to
preserving it.”

(sound of singing “O Canada”)

The small group stops at a dock overlooking Mud Lake for their only performance of the
day. The audience? Ducks, frogs and mosquitoes.

But they give it their all.

For The Environment Report, I’m Karen Kelly.

Related Links

Songbirds’ Numbers Flying South

  • A Nashville Warbler - one of the birds that Matt Etterson heard during this bird count in Canada (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

The numbers and types of songbirds
are dropping dramatically in many areas of
the country. A lot of people are trying to
get a better count on the number of birds
that are still around. Stephanie Hemphill recently went with researchers
on one of the more ambitious bird count projects:

Transcript

The numbers and types of songbirds
are dropping dramatically in many areas of
the country. A lot of people are trying to
get a better count on the number of birds
that are still around. Stephanie Hemphill recently went with researchers
on one of the more ambitious bird count projects:

The jumping off point for this trip is a tiny airport with a grass runway in
northern Minnesota, about 20 miles from the Canadian border.

We fly for 15 minutes, over trees and swamps as far as the eye can see. Down
below we get a glimpse of a moose. And, later, a pair of rare trumpeter swans
in their nest.

The helicopter sets down in what’s known as a floating bog. Its runners are
sitting in six inches of water.

We jump out in knee-high boots and rain jackets, and douse with DEET to try
to keep the mosquitoes away.

I’m following Heidi Seeland, a graduate student who seems to know her way
around a bog.

We’re in knee-deep water. Then it’s thigh-deep Pretty soon it’s waist-deep. I try
to step on a clump of sphagnum moss. But it sinks. It holds onto my boot, and
I’m sitting in water.

Heidi helps me up, and we catch up with the others.

They fan out on different points of the compass. I follow Matt Etterson. He’s an
ornithologist, a bird expert. We slog through the bog for nearly half an hour.
Etterson is aiming for a piece of higher ground, where the trees are a little
taller, better for nesting.

Suddenly he stops. He’s found the spot he was looking for. He sets his watch
for 10 minutes and pulls out a notebook.

Etterson cocks his head this way and that, jotting the names of the birds he can
hear, and the time he hears them. He doesn’t pay any attention to the mosquito
biting the back of his neck. He just listens and takes notes.

“We had a couple of hermit thrush — that’s the singing to the north of us. A
veery called a couple of times to the west of us. A Nashville warbler, and a
couple of western palm warblers, and that was about it. It was pretty quiet
otherwise,” Etterson said.

We trudge through the muck for another 20 or 30 minutes and he repeats the
process.

It’s two hours later, and the three researchers meet at the helicopter landing spot
and compare notes. They’re excited about Etterson’s veery and Nashville
warbler. The others heard a Connecticut warbler and a Lincoln’s sparrow.

They would have been really happy if they’d heard a golden-winged warbler.
It’s one of the most threatened of bird species. The number of golden-winged
warblers has declined by some 80% during the last 50 years.

Today’s trip is an experiment to see how well it works to count birds in remote
places, using a helicopter.

It’ll take five years to finish the bird count here. Then, in 10 or 20 years, they’ll
do it all over again, to see how the birds are faring.

For The Environment Report, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

Related Links

Westward Ho for the Ash Borer

  • Adult emerald ash borer (Photo by David Cappaert, Michigan State University, courtesy of the Michigan Department of Agriculture)

The emerald ash borer has eaten through
millions of trees in the US and is spreading
west. Erin Toner has more:

Transcript

The emerald ash borer has eaten through
millions of trees in the US and is spreading
west. Erin Toner has more:

For six long years, the tiny metallic-green emerald ash borer has been a killing machine,
starting with millions of ash trees in Michigan and Canada, and then munching its way
into 10 states.

It was recently discovered in Missouri, and now, it’s in Wisconsin.

The prognosis is not good.

Darrell Zastrow is with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

“Our forests are not typically resilient against non-native species and that is true for
the emerald ash borer. It is generally considered to be a poster child for invasive
species.”

Officials in Wisconsin are doing what everyone else has done – restricting the movement
of firewood and telling people how to protect their trees.

Some promising treatments to fight the emerald ash borer are being tested, but so far,
nothing has worked at keeping the insect from spreading west.

For The Environment Report, I’m Erin Toner.

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Green Side of Floods

  • Flooded corn in southern Illinois (Photo by Robert Kaufmann, courtesy of FEMA)

The flooding in the Midwest has destroyed
people’s homes and businesses. It’s also caused
some environmental problems. But reporter Alex
Heuer finds flooding can also benefit the
environment:

Transcript

The flooding in the Midwest has destroyed
people’s homes and businesses. It’s also caused
some environmental problems. But reporter Alex
Heuer finds flooding can also benefit the
environment:

When rivers flood, they can wash pesticides and fertilizers from farm fields
into backyards, homes, and even into drinking water supplies. Floods also
destroy crops on the low-lying farm fields.


But, those lowlands are fertile soil because of flooding.

Sean Jenkins is the Director of the Western Illinois University Kibbe Life Sciences
Station. He says flood waters carry soil and nutrients that benefit crops and wild plants.

“A lot of areas you get sediment build-up, which gives more
nutrients for the plants, so you can actually have more vigorous growth in certain areas the next year after
a flood.”

Some of the trees in the river bottomlands along the Mississippi have
adapted to frequent flooding. Jenkins says silver maples and Eastern
cottonwoods can survive in flood waters for months and then do even better
the following years.

That’s good, because trees can help slow the rush of
the flood waters when they come again.

For The Environment Report, I’m Alex Heuer.

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Today’s Signs of Warming Planet

  • The classic photograph of the Earth, taken by the Apollo 17 crew on December 7, 1972 traveling toward the moon (Photo courtesy of NASA-JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth)

Climate change is already affecting crops,
forests, water and wildlife. That’s according to
a new government report. Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Climate change is already affecting crops,
forests, water and wildlife. That’s according to
a new government report. Lester Graham reports:

Climate change is not something that’s coming. It’s here, according to a report from the
U.S. Climate Change Science Program.

Peter Backlund is one of the chief authors of the new report.

“What was really striking was just how many different changes have been documented
and how much is changing more rapidly than we would have expected ten or fifteen
years ago. And we’re seeing widespread impacts sooner than we expected.”

The report basically says for every good thing climate change brings, there’s something
bad.

Faster growing crops, but more crop failures. Warmer winters mean livestock
survive better, but then hotter summers will be harder on the animals. And there are already
more forest fires and more insects killing trees.

For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

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