It’s the time of year when many gardens reach their peak – and even grow a little bit wild. That has made one essayist’s loss all the more painful. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly remembers a special garden:
Transcript
It’s the time of year when many gardens reach their peak –
and even grow a little bit wild. That has made one essayist’s loss all the more painful.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly remembers a special garden:
It looked like a crime scene.
Everything in the garden was gone.
The morning glories no longer crowded the sidewalk. Sunflowers were cut down in their
prime. There was a hole instead of the lilac. And one stubby trunk – where someone had
hacked off the sand cherry tree.
We started the garden just over a year ago. I found out I was pregnant and next thing I
know, my husband is incubating black-eyed susans on top of the refrigerator.
He seemed to have that nesting instinct. Suddenly, he was spending every weekend at
the nursery. He came home with tools and soil and plants and even trees.
The scraggly yard in front of our apartment building was being transformed.
For me, it was just what I needed – a patch of nature in the middle of the city.
This summer, the flowers came back. And we shared the garden with our 6 month old.
We were pointing out the buds on the trees, and the bees buzzing around.
We didn’t tend it much as we got ready to move. And it grew pretty wild.
There were flowers, but also grass and weeds.
Two weeks after we moved, all that life was torn up. Eleven different kinds of plants – all
carefully chosen and tended. We visited them every time we walked in or out of the
building.
I can’t imagine the person who could just rip flowers out of the ground. It was a tiny,
imperfect oasis. Now, it’s just dirt.
Ironically, the only thing that survived was a plum tree we planted on the city property –
between the sidewalk and the road. We thought city workers might pull it up – since it
wasn’t official. Instead, they plunked an iron gate around it and now, every week, a city
truck comes to water it.
We always laugh about how it survived its brush with the city officials.
Now, that tree has proved it really is a survivor – but all that perennial color that was
once a backdrop to it is gone. It was not just a bit of our past, but an investment in the
future as well.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Kelly.
Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm is asking the Federal Emergency Management Administration for disaster funds to deal with the Emerald Ash Borer. She says the aid is necessary to prevent the tree-killing pest from spreading into more states. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rick Pluta reports:
Transcript
Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm is asking the Federal Emergency
Management Administration for disaster funds to deal with the Emerald Ash
Borer. She says the aid is necessary to prevent the tree-killing pest from
spreading into more states. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rick Pluta reports:
The Governor’s request is for money to remove and destroy infested trees, and to come
up with ways to contain the pest. The ash borer has already killed an estimated six
million trees in Michigan, and it’s also been found in Ohio, Indiana, Maryland, and
Virginia.
Governor Granholm says it’s too big a problem for her state to handle
by itself.
“We need additional resources, and certainly I know the federal
government would be interested in making sure that it doesn’t spread to other
states or the entire country. We need help. This is an emergency.”
She says the state’s not assured it will get that help, and is getting
mixed signals from the federal government on its request.
Linda Sacia of the Federal Emergency Management Administration says a review of the
request is still underway, and there’s no word on when an answer might be coming.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Rick Pluta.
Researchers are looking at ethanol from corn as an environmentally-friendly way to power fuel cells. However, some studies show corn-based ethanol takes more energy to produce than the fuel provides. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Researchers are looking at ways to use corn-based ethanol as a way to power hydrogen fuel cells. It would appear to be an environmentally friendly way to get into the hydrogen fuel economy. However, ethanol might not be as environmentally friendly as its proponents claim. Backed by the farm lobby and ag industries such as Archer Daniels Midland, ethanol has plenty of political support. But some researchers say corn-based ethanol is a boondoggle. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mary Stucky reports:
Transcript
Researchers are looking at ways to use corn-based ethanol as a way to power hydrogen fuel cells.
It would appear to be an environmentally friendly way to get into the hydrogen fuel economy.
However, ethanol might not be as environmentally friendly as its proponents claim. Back by the
farm lobby and ag industry such as Archer Daniels Midland, ethanol has plenty of political
support. But some researchers say corn-based ethanol is a boondoggle. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Mary Stucky reports…
This reactor is in a laboratory at the University of Minnesota ticking as it converts ethanol into
hydrogen. Researchers here envision thousands of these inexpensive reactors in communities
across America using ethanol to create hydrogen, which would then be used in fuel cells to
generate electricity.
Lanny Schmidt, a Professor of Chemical Engineering, directs the team that created the reactor.
“We’re not claiming our process is the cure-all for the energy crisis or anything like that. But it’s
a potential step along the way. It makes a suggestion of a possible way to go.”
Hydrogen is usually extracted from fossil fuels in dirtier and more costly refineries.
Schmidt says it’s much better to make hydrogen from ethanol.
“It right now looks like probably the most promising liquid non-toxic energy carrier we can think
of if you want renewable fuels.”
Not so fast, says David Pimentel, an agricultural scientist at Cornell University. For years,
Pimentel has warned about what he calls the cost and efficiency and boondoggle of ethanol.
Pimentel says ethanol is a losing proposition.
“It takes 30-percent more energy, including oil and natural gas, primary those two resources to
produce ethanol. That means importing both oil and natural gas because we do not have a
sufficient amount of either one.”
Pimentel says most research on ethanol fails to account for all the energy needed to make the fuel,
such as energy used to make the tractors and irrigate crops. Adding insult to injury, says
Pimentel, ethanol relies on huge government subsidies going to farmers and agri-business.
“If ethanol is such a great fuel source, why are we subsidizing it with 2-billion dollars annually?
There’s big money, as you well know, and there’s politics involved. And the big money is leaking
some of that 2-billion dollars in subsidies to the politicians and good science, sound science,
cannot compete with big money and politics.”
Pimentel also points to environmental damage of growing corn – soil erosion, water pollution
from nitrogen fertilizer and air pollution associated with facilities that make ethanol. But
Pimentel has his detractors.
David Morris runs the Institute for Local Self Reliance in Minneapolis. Morris is not a scientist,
but he commissioned a study on ethanol. He says Pimentel relies on out-of-date figures and fails
to account for the fact that ethanol production is getting more efficient.
Morris’ findings – a gallon of ethanol contains more than twice the energy needed to produce it.
As for subsidies…
“There’s no doubt that if we did not provide a subsidy for ethanol it would not be competitive
with gasoline. But what we need to understand is that we also subsidize gasoline, and if you took
the percentage of the Pentagon budget, which is spent directly on maintaining access to Middle-
Eastern oil, and impose that at the pump, it would add 25- to 50-cents a gallon. At that point,
ethanol is competitive, under the assumption that you will not need a large military budget to
protect our access to Iowa corn.”
But more efficient than making ethanol from corn might be grass, or even weeds. David Morris
says that’s because you don’t have fertilize or irrigate those kinds of plants, the way you do corn.
“So if we’re talking about ethanol as a primary fuel to truly displace gasoline, we have to talk
about a more abundant feedstock. So instead of the corn kernel, it become the corn stock, or it
becomes fast-growing grasses, or it becomes trees, or sawdust or organic garbage. And then
you’re really talking about a carbohydrate economy.”
Pimentel scoffs at that idea.
“You’ve got the grind that material up, and then to release the sugars, you’ve got to use an acid,
and the yield is not as high. In fact, it would be 60-percent more energy using wood or grass
materials.”
While scientists and policy people debate whether ethanol is efficient or not, Lanny Schmidt and
his team soldier on in the lab undeterred in their efforts to use ethanol for fuel. Schmidt
understands some of Pimentels’s concerns, but he thinks scientists will find an answer, so ethanol
can be used efficiency enough to help power the new hydrogen economy.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mary Stucky in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
New light is being shed on one of your shopping choices. Some conservation biologists have been critical of coffee that its distributors tout as better for the environment because it’s shade grown. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
New light is being shed on one of your shopping choices. Some conservation biologists have been critical of coffee that its distributors tout as better for the environment because it’s shade grown. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports…
The idea is that shade grown coffee is better for the environment than coffee grown in full sunlight. That’s because rather than clearing the land for the coffee bushes, it leaves tropical rain forest trees standing. But some biologists say that’s not the same as leaving the rainforest intact. So, they say it actually accelerates the destruction of tropical forests.
Stacy Philpott is a co-author of an article in the December issue of Conservation Biology. She says with rigorous certification programs and fair trade policies, shade grown does mean conservation-friendly coffee bean farming.
“If there is a high diversity of shade trees, that helps maintain a lot of particular species of animals that live there.”
Philpott notes that shade-grown coffee certainly beats the alternative of clearing the land and planting coffee bush varieties that produce higher yields in the full sun.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
Christmas tree sellers are in the height of their season right now. Truckloads of spruces, pines and firs are being delivered to stores and Christmas tree lots all across the region. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
Christmas tree sellers are in the height of their season right now. Truck loads of spruces, pines
and firs are being delivered to stores and Christmas tree lots all across the region. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Christmas tree growers are hoping sales are up this year. Last year they were down substantially.
Sales dropped from the year before by about five-and-a-half million trees. That’s because of two
things. Thanksgiving came late last year, making the buying season shorter. Then, the hustle and
bustle of the condensed holiday season caused some families to skip the tree altogether.
Andy Cole is a grower in Michigan and a spokesperson for the National Christmas Tree
Association. He says hopefully newer trends in trees will help sales this year. In recent years
instead of Scotch pines, people are leaning toward true fir trees such as the Frasier fir and the
Balsam fir.
COLE “Well, they’re a more open layered tree and they have a sturdy branch pattern that will take
the large ornaments that are so popular now.”
The National Christmas Tree Association expects one out of every four households will buy a
fresh tree this year. That amounts to 28 million trees purchased between Thanksgiving and
Christmas.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
The Emerald Ash Borer is destroying hundreds of thousands of ash trees in Michigan, Ohio, Maryland, and Ontario. The Asian insect likely made its way to North America in wood packing materials. (photo courtesy of David Cappaert, Michigan State University)
An exotic pest called the emerald ash borer is laying waste to millions of trees in Michigan and Ohio. Now it’s affecting sales of ash trees across the entire country. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tracy Samilton reports:
Transcript
An exotic pest called the emerald ash borer is laying waste to
millions of trees in Michigan and Ohio. Now it’s affecting sales of ash
trees across the entire country. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tracy
Samilton reports:
The attractive, adaptable, and fast-growing ash tree is a favorite of
growers, landscapers and homeowners. But sales of the tree have plummeted
nationwide, even though the emerald ash borer has only infested trees in
Michigan, Ohio and Maryland so far. Dave Bender is President of the
Illinois Nurserymen’s Association. Bender says the city of Chicago, the
biggest buyer of trees in the state, recently issued a moratorium on
buying ash trees. One Illinois grower lost a big chunk of his business
almost overnight.
“Last year he sold 5,000 ash trees – a little over 5,000 ash trees. This year he sold one.”
Bender says the emerald ash borer is an energetic insect that travels
great distances quickly, so it’s only a matter of time before it arrives
in Illinois and beyond. He says Great Lakes growers are developing
contingency plans to try to slow and control its spread until researchers
find ways to eradicate it.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tracy Samilton.
One of the gases that figures prominently in the global climate debate is carbon dioxide. Scientists believe CO2 emissions can be reduced if carbon in the atmosphere is “stored.” Economists want to incorporate carbon storage into a market-driven solution to regulate emissions. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Ann Murray has this story about climate change, forests, and the emergence of a carbon trading market:
Transcript
One of the gases that figures prominently in the global climate debate is carbon
dioxide.
Scientists believe CO2 emissions can be reduced if carbon in the atmosphere is
“stored.”
Economists want to incorporate carbon storage into a market driven solution to
regulate
emissions. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Ann Murray has this story about climate change, forests, and the
emergence of a
carbon trading market:
Climate experts say the earth’s temperature started to change about 150 years ago.
That’s when
people began to burn coal and gas and oil to run factories and generate electricity.
These fossil
fuels release carbon dioxide into the air. CO2, a “greenhouse gas,” traps the
sun’s heat.
Climatologists warn that unless carbon dioxide emissions are curbed, the planet will
continue to
heat up. Scientists are now looking to nature to counteract this human influx of
carbon.
Coeli Hoover with the U.S. Forest Service is among these scientists.
“There’s a plot over there.”
For the past three summers, Hoover and technicians from the Forestry Sciences Lab in
Warren
County, Pennsylvania have traveled to hardwood forests in the northeastern United
States.
“What we’re doing is trying to get a basic handle on how much carbon is stored in
these different
forests and how management might change that.”
Today, Hoover is in the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia. She and her
team gather
their equipment from their van. As they head to a stand of cherry, maple and beech
trees, Hoover
explains some basic biology about carbon storage and trees.
“They pull carbon dioxide out of the air to make sugars, carbohydrates for trees to
live on. And in
the process that carbon gets stored as wood. And carbon also get stored in the soil.”
Hoover’s study is the first to examine carbon stored in forest floors and soils.
The regional study
looks at uncut forests and those that have been thinned. Hoover wants to see if
different forest
management practices affect the amount and type of stored carbon.
(knife cutting around forest floor)
This morning, Hoover and a technician use a knife and template to cut small sections
of the forest
floor, the layer of organic material above the soil. After the forest floor samples
are labeled and
bagged, the crew takes samples of the soil.
(sound of slide hammer core)
They dig 12 holes per plot with a slide hammer core. That’s a metal cylinder with a
cutting tip on
the edge and brass core sleeves inside.
“This method allows us to get these really nice depths without having any doubt of
what we’re
getting.”
Hoover says the whole point of her study is to eliminate the carbon guessing game.
Because
there’s little information about belowground carbon, it’s been hard to establish
how much carbon
is stored in forests. Scientists call this a “carbon budget.” The big picture,
says Hoover, is
important because of the emergence of a domestic carbon trading market. A market
where
foresters can grow trees, store carbon and make money.
“Right now carbon dioxide isn’t regulated as a pollutant. There are people who
think that it
probably will be. There’s voluntary reporting where companies can report their C02
emissions
and their uptake for different projects. So there’s a lot of experimental work
going on.”
An experimental program in Chicago is working to give industry a reason to reduce
carbon
dioxide output. The Chicago Climate Exchange will begin trading carbon credits. If
a company
reduces its CO2 output by installing new technologies, that difference can be sold
on the
exchange. Companies will buy credits that represent storage of carbon in either
trees or soil. Dr.
Richard Sandor is the founder of the Climate Exchange.
“We are going to have projects which would have to be monitored and verified and
approved by
our offset and forestry committees where people would agree to reforest. If a
particular project
that absorbs 100,000 tons of carbon in the aboveground biomass can be measured, then
people
sell those on the exchange.
Sandor says this isn’t the first time that pollution credits have been traded in the
United States.
He points to the success of the sulfur dioxide market. Sulfur dioxide is the main
component in
acid rain. The U.S. EPA estimates that this market driven program has cut sulfur
dioxide output in
half and saved $50 billion a year in health and environmental costs.
Not everyone sees such a sunny future for carbon trading. Some critics believe that
CO2
emissions must be regulated by the government or through the international
greenhouse gas
agreement called the Kyoto Protocol.
Others worry that foresters or landowners will resort to single age, single species
tree plantations
to quickly fulfill contracts.
(forest sounds)
Back in the Monongahela National
Forest, Coeli
Hoover says biodiversity need not suffer.
“I don’t think that you have to manage for carbon or sustainable timber production.
I think you
can do both and manage for wildlife. I don’t think there are a lot of tradeoffs
there.”
We probably won’t know the success of carbon trading in the United States for
another five or ten
years. The Bush administration has refused federal regulation of carbon dioxide and
for now, has
left the solution to the markets.
For The Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Ann Murray.
Across the region, the leaves are beginning to change color. One forestry expert says it’s a slow start, but the autumn foliage could become brilliant before the leaves fall this year. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
Across the region, the leaves are beginning to change color. One forestry expert says it’s a slow
start, but the autumn foliage could become brilliant before the leaves fall this year. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
This fall, most of the region has seen a lot of cooler, overcast days. Burt Barnes is a forestry
professor with the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources and Environment. He
says if we’re to see great fall color, we need some more sunshine.
“Well, so far we haven’t had the crisp, sunny, warm days and cold nights that are sometimes
characteristic of fall, which give us the best coloration.”
Barnes says the temperature differential between day and night affects the fall color. With
brighter, warmer days and cool nights, the colors become spectacular. He adds if there’s a sharp
frost, that will cut short the display, but if we get a long frost free period, the colors will continue
to intensify.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
The infestation of Asian long-horned beetles is spreading in North America. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports:
Transcript
The infestation of Asian long-horned beetles is spreading in North America. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports:
An Asian long-horned beetle, about two inches long and black with white spots was found in an
industrial park outside of Toronto.
It arrived in packing material from Asia. And it burrowed into nearby trees – making this the first
infestation in Canada.
Forestry specialist Gordon Henry says the beetle poses a serious threat to Canada’s native
hardwoods.
“If it was to get into wild areas and attack maple trees, it would impact probably on tourism, it
would certainly pose a problem for anybody producing maple syrup, would also be a nuisance
pest for any homeowner who’s trying to grow one of the host trees.”
The beetle has also infested trees in Chicago, New York City and New Jersey.
Henry says it takes years to fully eradicate them.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Kelly.
It’s no wonder the International Migratory Bird Day is held in the month of May. This is the time when trees leaf out and provide a welcome habitat to birds returning from their southern dwelling spots. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jim Blum ventures beyond the backyard to see who’s back:
Transcript
It’s no wonder the International Migratory Bird Day is held in the month of May. This is the time
when trees in the Great Lakes states leaf out and provide a welcome habitat to birds returning
from their southern dwelling spots. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jim Blum decided to
venture beyond the backyard to see who’s back:
Blum: Take a stroll into a forest and you may notice that trees have greened out this month.
There are thick canopies overhead that weren’t there just a week or two ago. Naturalist Dan Best
says, that times out very nicely for returning migratory birds.
Best: That’s right. A few warm days and the leaves just explode out of the buds. And we have
full leaf-out already. May is just an amazing month. You still have the wildflowers, lots of
wildflowers. And well, Jim, what do you hear?
Blum: Well, certainly a parade of birds that I didn’t hear a month ago. The nuthatches and the
chickadees are still here, but who’s joined them?
Best: Lots and lots of birds. New arrivals here. We have thrushes and warblers and vireos and
tanagers, flycatchers – a tremendous variety of birds that have come to us from their wintering
areas in Latin America. That is South America, Central America, the Caribbean nations. These
birds have made their way, many of them traveling at night, using amazing means of navigation.
They’re using celestial navigation, that is, using the stars. They’re using perhaps the earth’s
magnetism, sensitivity to polarized light, a variety of different means to make their way
thousands of miles over land and ocean to return here to our forests to nest.
Blum: Why May, why now, why so many?
Best: Well, let’s take a walk over to some of these leaves, and no matter what kind of tree you’re
looking at here, what do you notice on these leaves?
Blum: Well, it seems as if several of them have little chew marks or holes.
Best: That’s right, holes. And no sooner does a leaf out, then the salad bar is served for
hundreds of different kinds of caterpillars, whether they be butterflies or especially moths. Their
hatching of these eggs of these caterpillars is synchronized with this leaf-out.
Blum: So, apparently there are many visitors to this buffet, but who, what, and where?
Best: Well, ok. Let’s listen here. (bird chirps) Hear that over there? That’s a hooded warbler.
(bird chirps again) Yeah, there it goes. Now that one will tend to stay low. Oh, the male might
go up a little higher to sing to announce its territory, but generally it’s gonna forge in this shrub
layer in the lower part of the forest.
Blum: (another bird chirps) Now what was that?
Best: Well, I can hear a nice warble up there. That’s the rose-breasted grosbeak. They all
spend most of their time in the understory – that’s about halfway up in this mature forest we’re in.
And then listening a little higher above us, I can hear that nice hoarse, robin-like song of the
scarlet tanager. And I’m even picking up the cerulian warbler, and a little bit of the hoarser vireo
sound, as well as the yellow-throated vireo, and those birds like to stay high up in the canopy.
Blum: So in order for this forest restaurant, if you will, to accommodate so many different
customers, it needs different stories.
Best: That’s right. These birds are here because of the big insect menu that the forest has to
offer. And they’re not fighting for the same seat at the same table because they’re distributed in
these different levels of the forest.
Blum: So if you’re talking about a canopy, an understory, and a shrub layer, you’re indicating a
mature forest.
Best: That’s right. That’s a characteristic of a mature and old growth forest is it has these defined
layers. This kind of habitat, these large tracts of mature forests are getting harder to come by, as
the large trees are logged out, or even worse, these remaining forest tracts are continually
fragmented into smaller parcels, which are less suitable for this big diversity of forest-nesting
birds.
Blum: Now, Dan, I’ve seen the bird books. These birds are extremely colorful. Any tips on the
best chance of actually seeing them?
Best: Well, bring your binoculars into the forest with you. And don’t charge up to every song
that you hear. Just slow down, take it nice and easy. Look where you hear a song. Watch for that
little movement of leaves. Spot that movement. Raise your binoculars and you’ll eventually see
them. You’ll get to see these different kinds of birds.
Blum: That’s naturalist Dan Best. Some of us live in one story houses and some in high-rise
buildings. It’s a good idea when bird-watching to remember that birds also have their own
preferred level. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jim Blum.
