Study based on fossil sloth dung found in desert caves and packrat middens
From the US Geological Survey, because doing mapping and boundary lines are sooo yesterday:
Uncertain Future for Joshua Trees Projected with Climate Change
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — Temperature increases resulting from climate change in the Southwest will likely eliminate Joshua trees from 90 percent of their current range in 60 to 90 years, according to a new study led by U.S. Geological Survey ecologist Ken Cole.
The research team used models of future climate, an analysis of the climatic tolerances of the species in its current range, and the fossil record to project the future distribution of Joshua trees. The study concludes that the species could be restricted to the northernmost portion of its current range as early as the end of this century. Additionally, the ability of Joshua trees to migrate via seed dispersal to more suitable climates may be severely limited.
“This is one of the most interesting research projects of my career,” said Ken Cole, a USGS ecologist and the study’s lead author. “It incorporated not only state-of-the-art climate models and modern ecology, but also documentary information found in fossils that are more than 20,000 years old.”
By using fossil sloth dung found in desert caves and packrat middens — basically, the garbage piles of aptly named packrats — scientists were able to reconstruct how Joshua trees responded to a sudden climate warming around 12,000 years ago that was similar to warming projections for this century. Prior to its extinction around 13,000 years ago, the Shasta ground sloth favored Joshua trees as food, and its fossilized dung contained abundant remains of Joshua trees, including whole seeds and fruits. These fossil deposits, along with fossil leaves collected and stored by packrats, allowed scientists to determine the tree’s formerly broad range before the warming event.
The study concluded that the ability of Joshua trees to spread into suitable habitat following the prehistoric warming event around 12,000 years ago was limited by the extinction of large animals that had previously dispersed its seeds over large geographic areas, particularly the Shasta ground sloth. Today, Joshua tree seeds are dispersed by seed-caching rodents, such as squirrels and packrats, which cannot disperse seeds as far as large mammals. The limited ability of rodents to disperse Joshua tree seeds in combination with other factors would likely slow migration to only about 6 feet per year, not enough to keep pace with the warming climate, Cole and his colleagues concluded.
The Joshua tree, a giant North American yucca, occupies desert grasslands and shrublands of the Mojave Desert of California, Nevada, Arizona, and Utah; Joshua Tree National Park in California is named after this iconic species. The Joshua tree is known for its distinctive shape and height of up to 50 feet.
Results of the study, “Past and ongoing shifts in Joshua tree distribution support future modeled range contraction,” appear in a current edition of “Ecological Applications.” The research team included Kenneth L. Cole, U.S. Geological Survey; Kirsten Ironside, Northern Arizona University; Jon Eischeid, NOAA Earth Systems Research Laboratory; Gregg Garfin, University of Arizona; Phillip B. Duffy, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and University of California; and Chris Toney, USDA Forest Service.
I am confused.
At about 1:40 in the alarming second video in pwl’s earlier post, the narrator discusses tree rings.
According to the narrator, a “good” year is warm and wet causing broader growth rings. A “bad” year is cool and dry causing narrower growth rings.
This good/bad comparison is contradicted at the end of the same film, where warming is discussed in dire tones, as though it will harm the trees.
So is warming good or bad for the trees?
Guess I’m just too old fashioned for this post-normal science.
Who said, “You can’t shine s##t”?
Willis & Anthony – March 25, 2011 @ur momisugly 3:38 pm
The maths is crook, but did you two pick this bit up:
“………. – scientists were able to reconstruct how Joshua trees responded to a sudden climate warming around 12,000 years ago that was similar to warming projections for this century.”
So what does one call that ?? An ‘Oxymoron’ hardly seems appropriate !!!!!
DirkH says:
March 25, 2011 at 8:30 pm
“Gaiahova.”
Gesundheit. :^)
The abstract for this study can be read at:
http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/09-1800.1
Apparently all six of the authors are employed at government institutions. So why is this study hidden behind a paywall? Our tax money is obviously paying for it.
I’m not going to cough up $20 to get a copy, but I would like to see it. For one thing I would like to know if they have made any attempt to assess the effects of prehistoric Lake Cahuilla, which lay immediately to the west of what is now the national park. For non-Californians, Lake Cahuilla was formed periodically by a high-level filling of the Salton Sink when the Colorado River would change course. Archeological evidence indicates repeated fillings over time including during the period of 1000-1500 AD. Lake Cahuilla was much larger than today’s Salton Sea. I suspect it would significantly affect downwind precipitation and temperature, but I have not been able to find anyone who has studied the question.
Dave Worley says:
March 25, 2011 at 9:36 pm
“I am confused.
……………….
So is warming good or bad for the trees?
Guess I’m just too old fashioned for this post-normal science.”
=============================================
I’d try to explain, but I find I can do no better than E. A. Blair. I’ll try to update it with some more recent technical climatology terms….
“The keyword here is
blackwhitewarmcold. Like so manyNewspeakclimatological words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied toan opponenta skeptic, it means the habit of impudently claiming thatblackwarm iswhitecold, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied toa Party memberan alarmist, it means a loyal willingness to say thatblackwarm iswhitecold whenPartythe warmist discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to believe thatblackwarm iswhitecold, and more, to know thatblackwarm iswhitecold, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. This demands a continuous alteration of the past, made possible by the system of thought which really embraces all the rest, and which is known inNewspeakclimatology asdoublethinkAnthropological climate change .DoublethinkAnthropological climate change is basically the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.– Part II, Chapter IX — The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism
If I can say “fossil sloth dung” three times very quickly and click my heels together, will this kind of stupidity go away?
The truly horrifying part of this is that we putting this, and additional billions of dollars worth of similar nonsense on the National credit for our children to repay.
DIDO = Dung In, Dung Out
If sucking all the ground water out of the earth and pumping it into alfalfa fields is climate change then then, I’d agree. It didn’t help that Los Angeles stole the Owens river so long ago that nobody remembers, but there was a time when there was plentiful water in the Mojave desert and the Joshuas were doing just fine.
Actually, there was a time when that desert was under hundreds of feet of lake water when Searles Lake was 600′ deep. There is ample evidence of this in the pinnacles left behind from hot seeps around which life clung against the cold of the glacial lake and a very evident bathtub ring that lake left behind in the surrounding hills.
The problem there isn’t CO2 – it’s lack of water which has been scarce since the current temporary interglacial period started. Here’s your problem:
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&q=aerial+view+of+mojave+desert&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Mojave+Desert&gl=us&t=h&ll=34.652132,-118.12603&spn=0.166347,0.370789&z=12
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&hs=VJj&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&q=aerial+view+of+mojave+desert&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=Mojave+Desert&gl=us&t=h&ei=TZSNTeDJI5L0tgOJp5GOCQ&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=image&resnum=1&ved=0CBwQ8gEwAA
Look at all that development. Zoom in and count the swimming pools and acres of irrigation. Look at those alluvial fans coming out of the southern mountains. What happened to that water? SLURP!
BTW, can you spot the fault line running across those images? Hey – while I have your attention: http://www.lucernevalley.net/history/blackhawk.htm
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=lucern&aq=&sll=34.572168,-117.715759&sspn=0.333015,0.479965&gl=us&ie=UTF8&hq=lucern&hnear=&ll=34.396145,-116.77969&spn=0.079889,0.185394&t=h&z=13
This is worth a field trip.
Anyway – Joshua trees need water – not a lot, but there’s not a lot to go around, and what there is is going into farms and coffee pots.
Joshua trees look to me, from the picture, like arid climate plants. Evergreen with few thick leaves to limit water loss and thick trunks to store water. Am I right?
So these trees which have survived millions of years of climate change are about to die out because the temperature could rise by some unspecified amount. All based on animal s**t.
Where do these USGS people come from? Perhaps they should get back to geology which they seem to be quite good at!
Lapping up some of those $30 billion tax payer provided climate research dollars over the last 20 years studying … sh*t. Well isn’t that special?
I am the ghost of Gram Parsons. [Cue ghostly noises] Oo-wee-oo. I overdosed on Joshua Trees back in the olden days, when Keef and I … no, no, I told you, I never touched Anita. Anyways, here in the spirit world, Joshua Trees are … [Scuffling sounds offstage] Yes, I realise that I’m not Buck Owens, but why does …
“Sloth dung” in, sloth dung out! That’s how the models work these days.
James Sexton says:
March 25, 2011 at 3:56 pm
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/regional.html
Excellent website, appreciate the link.
Turn out in my 58 years so far the temperture has gone up only 1 degree F.
That could easily be accounted for by urban sprawl and population density changes.
….not to worry, as the world continues to bake, their range will extend all the way north to Saskatchewan. The Canadians will appreciate the change of shrubbery, I’m sure.
Willis Says;
You know those geologists, what’s a thousand years difference here or there.
I realize the Joshua tree takes very specific conditions to grow…
and will only grow at certain elevations and very limited desert conditions
…that’s why you can buy them from plant nurseries in Georgia, Florida, Alabama, etc
and it’s why people use them to landscape their yards all over the country!
I’ve made many camping trips and even more day trips into Joshua Tree National Park and elsewhere in and around the Mojave. Temperatures range from 0F in winter to 120F in summer with a common 40-50F change from day to night. Rainfall is extremely scarce and Joshua trees grow only above 2000′ and below 6000′ in well drained soil. Little else grows except a bit of sage brush where Joshua Trees thrive. Except when the rare rain does fall then the place blooms with lots of small colorful plants for a short time especially along the washes.
http://bss.sfsu.edu/holzman/courses/Fall99Projects/yucca.htm
The range of the Joshua Tree seems to be established more by lack of competition because of conditions too extreme for much else to grow.
Does anyone have access to the actual paper? I’d like to read it. A link to the paper or a link to a copy of the .pdf?
Willis Eschenbach says:
March 25, 2011 at 3:38 pm
Call me a crazed mathematician, but isn’t there something wrong with this statement?
By using fossil sloth dung found in desert caves and packrat middens — basically, the garbage piles of aptly named packrats — scientists were able to reconstruct how Joshua trees responded to a sudden climate warming around 12,000 years ago that was similar to warming projections for this century. Prior to its extinction around 13,000 years ago, the Shasta ground sloth favored Joshua trees as food, and its fossilized dung contained abundant remains of Joshua trees, including whole seeds and fruits. These fossil deposits, along with fossil leaves collected and stored by packrats, allowed scientists to determine the tree’s formerly broad range before the warming event.
I mean, if ground sloths went extinct 13,000 years ago, how much can they tell us about climate warming 12,000 years ago?
Shows the dangers of “science by press release”, I guess. Anyone have a copy of the actual paper?
w.
REPLY: I wondered how long it would be before somebody noticed that, good for you Willis. – A
I think that by finding the range of the sloth tree poo 13,000 years ago, and comparing it to the existing range now, indicated that the current range following the 12,000 event is less (sloth poo showed a greater range).
Of course, maybe the extinction of the sloth caused the reduced range?
But more importantly, there is robust data showing that increased reliance on model fantasy studies rather than actual experimentation suggests sloths are not extinct……………
And joshua survived from the last ice age through multi warm periods some 2-3C above today’s but are going down in a few decades. Where can I get some of this guy’s money.
Dave Springer says:
March 26, 2011 at 11:04 am
The range of the Joshua Tree seems to be established more by lack of competition because of conditions too extreme for much else to grow.
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That’s all there is to it Dave.
They would be used more in landscaping if they weren’t so nasty and butt ugly…
“…will likely eliminate Joshua trees from 90 percent of their current range in 60 to 90 years”
It’s always a good idea to make predictions that won’t be proved until after you are dead. You know, so you don’t have to admit that you were wrong. I predict that if man-made global warming remains unchecked, dogs will be forced to mate with cats, producing hybridized animals, called ‘dats’, Also, the moon will fall into the sun, and corpses will be re-animated by all of the heat, only to feast on the brains of the living.
Of course, this will all occur 60 to 90 years in the future, so you’ll never be able to prove me wrong!
A little late, but I notice that NPR covered essentially the same story 3 years ago (4 Feb 2008): http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17628032
They did interview a researcher with a differing point of view (look for ‘Jim Cornett’)