Dr. Michael Mann used tree ring core samples from Bristlecone pines in the Western United states as one of the most heavily weighted proxies used to make his infamous “hockey stick” Now it seems that even though temperature in these areas has been rising, the Bristlecones aren’t responding to it by increasing their range, and other tree species are jumping ahead in the same area.
I pointed out some years ago that Mann didn’t seem to be aware of Liebigs Law of the Minimum which regulates plant growth. See also Bristlecone Pines: Treemometers or rain gauges ?
Earth’s oldest trees in climate-induced race up the tree line
Bristlecone pine trees in great basin are losing game of leapfrog with limber pine
From the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA – DAVIS
Bristlecone pine and limber pine trees in the Great Basin region are like two very gnarled, old men in a slow-motion race up the mountaintop, and climate change is the starting gun, according to a study from the University of California, Davis.
The study, published in the journal Global Change Biology, shows that the tree line has been steadily moving upslope over the past 50 years in the Great Basin. The region extends from California’s Sierra Nevada, across Nevada to Utah’s Uinta Mountains. Its north and south are framed by the Columbia and Colorado rivers’ watersheds.
The study also found that limber pine is successfully ? “leapfrogging” over bristlecone pine. They are growing in soils once almost completely dominated by bristlecone pine, and they are moving upslope at a faster rate than the bristlecone pine.
CHARGING UPSLOPE
“We are seeing very little regeneration anywhere in bristlecone ranges except in the tree line and, there, limber pine is taking all the good spots,” said the study’s corresponding author Brian Smithers, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Plant Sciences at UC Davis. “It’s jarring because limber pine is a species you normally see further downslope, not at tree line. So it’s very odd to see it charging upslope and not see bristlecone charging upslope ahead of limber pine, or at least with it.”
The study concludes that if bristlecone pine trees are unable to advance upslope because they are blocked by limber pine, bristlecones could face a reduction of their range and possibly local extinctions.
EARTH’S OLDEST LIVING TREES
Bristlecone pine trees are Earth’s oldest individual trees and can live for more than 5,000 years. No spring chicken, limber pine trees can live 2,000 years or more.
Both tree species have seen many climate changes during their time on Earth — from extremely warm periods to ice ages — and have slowly advanced across the landscape. Over millennia, bristlecone pine trees have moved from the lowlands of the Great Basin up to the current tree line. But, the study notes, neither bristlecone nor limber pine have ever experienced climate change and temperature increases as rapidly as what has been occurring in recent decades.
LEGACY EFFECTS
Smithers said he doesn’t expect bristlecone pine adult trees to be impacted much by current climatic shifts, as those trees are well-established. But how, if and where new bristlecone pine trees will regenerate is less certain, particularly as other species like limber pine take up valuable space for them to germinate.
“The things we’re doing today have legacy effects for thousands of years in the Great Basin,” Smithers said. “When those trees do start to die, they won’t likely be replaced because it’s just too hot and dry.”
The study suggests that land managers identify the specific bottlenecks for a species to live long enough to reproduce, and focus on that stage. For long-lived trees like bristlecone and limber pines, the bottleneck is at the time of their initial establishment, not hundreds and thousands of years into their adulthoods.
###
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
So Mann picked the wrong trees for his samples . I wonder if he thought they
would make better hockey sticks .
Watch the Mann in disguise:
Love L&H
It’s interesting how movies capture history. I know two things were present in the 1930s. Credit cards (His Girl Friday) and general knowledge of reincarnation (L&H’s Flying Dueces).
Hardy: What would you like to be when you come back?
Laurel: Myself. I really like who I am.
Hardy: You can’t come back as yourself!
There are living baobab trees older than the bristlecones. They should grab a core sample or two.
You can’t use tree rings to age old baobabs. They are multistemmed, and don’t always produce annual rings.
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0117193
Don’t always produce annual rings means sometimes they do. Dead bristlecones don’t produce anything. Nobody said this stuff is going to be easy. If nothing else they can be examined as ice cores are examined for tell-tale chemical compounds that vary over the life of the tree. A cross section of a 6,000yo tree is a trip back in time even as it incorporated older individual growths into the expanding mass of the present trunk.
Driftwood would have given better results than Bristlecones, I suppose.
This one used a cunning ploy to become the worlds oldest tree. It’s interesting that longevity and a harsh environment go together.
The world’s oldest recorded tree is a 9,550 year old spruce in the Dalarna province of Sweden. The spruce tree has shown to be a tenacious survivor that has endured by growing between erect trees and smaller bushes in pace with the dramatic climate changes over time.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080416104320.htm
The coming study may contain …
For hundreds of year these two old Bristlecones were kept alive by the symbiotic relationships by which the trees would provided shelter and food for many squirrels and rodents, this in turn attracted great packs of prairie dogs that would periodically visit to feast on the wildlife and mark the territory in great volumes.
This symbiosis lasted until man arrived and killed off most of the dogs, rodent population, and all the squirrels. When that happened the Bristlecones were only left with a pot to pi$$ in.
There are mature Limber and Bristlecone “sky islands” all over the Great Basin and down into the Mojave and Angeles mountains. Usually on the NE facing slopes and cols. Usually with few if any juvenile trees.