Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Dr. Willie Soon – a study into why alpine tree lines haven’t kept pace with adjusted global warming measurements has concluded that the trees are being prevented from colonising higher slopes by unspecified soil chemistry issues.
Climate change-induced march of treelines halted by unsuitable soils
New University of Guelph research dispells the myth that climate change is enabling treelines to move farther uphill and northward
Date:July 12, 2018
Source: University of GuelphSummary:
Researchers have discovered unsuitable soil at higher altitudes may be halting the advancement of treelines. This finding dispels the commonly held assumption that climate change is enabling trees to move farther uphill and northward. The researchers looked at plant growth at higher altitudes in the Canadian Rockies, grew spruce and fir seedlings at varying elevations and collected soil samples from the same areas to grow spruce seeds in growth chambers.New research from the University of Guelph is dispelling a commonly held assumption about climate change and its impact on forests in Canada and abroad.
It’s long been thought that climate change is enabling treelines to march farther uphill and northward. But it turns out that climate warming-induced advances may be halted by unsuitable soils.
It is an important finding for resource managers looking to preserve individual species or entire ecosystems.
“There’s a common belief about the impacts of climate change,” said U of G researcher Emma Davis. “It’s actually a more complicated story than people believe.”
…
Read more: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180712132420.htm
The abstract of the study;
Limited prospects for future alpine treeline advance in the Canadian Rocky Mountains
Emma L. Davis Ze’ev Gedalof
First published: 01 June 2018Treeline advance has occurred throughout the twentieth century in mountainous regions around the world; however, local variation and temporal lags in responses to climate warming indicate that the upper limits of some treelines are not necessarily in climatic equilibrium. These observations suggest that factors other than climate are constraining tree establishment beyond existing treelines. Using a seed addition experiment, we tested the effects of seed availability, predation and microsite limitation on the establishment of two subalpine tree species (Picea engelmannii and Abies lasiocarpa) across four treelines in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. The effect of vegetation removal on seedling growth was also determined, and microclimate conditions were monitored. Establishment limitations observed in the field were placed in context with the effects of soil properties observed in a parallel experiment. The seed addition experiment revealed reduced establishment with increasing elevation, suggesting that although establishment within the treeline ecotone is at least partially seed limited, other constraints are more important beyond the current treeline. The effects of herbivory and microsite availability significantly reduced seedling establishment but were less influential beyond the treeline. Microclimate monitoring revealed that establishment was negatively related to growing season temperatures and positively related to the duration of winter snow cover, counter to the conventional expectation that establishment is limited by low temperatures. Overall, it appears that seedling establishment beyond treeline is predominantly constrained by a combination of high soil surface temperatures during the growing season, reduced winter snowpack and unfavourable soil properties. Our study supports the assertion that seedling establishment in alpine treeline ecotones is simultaneously limited by various climatic and nonclimatic drivers. Together, these factors may limit future treeline advance in the Canadian Rocky Mountains and should be considered when assessing the potential for treeline advance in alpine systems elsewhere
Read more: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/gcb.14338
The tree line issue has been a thorn in the side of the climate alarmists since Russian Scientist Rashit Hantemirov tried to explain Arctic Dendrochronology to the Climategate scientists.
…
According to reconsructions most favorable conditions for tree growth have been marked during 5000-1700 BC. At that time position of tree line was far northward of recent one.
[Unfortunately, region of our research don’t include the whole area where trees grew during the Holocene. We can maintain that before 1700 BC tree line was northward of our research area. We have only 3 dated remnants of trees from Yuribey River sampled by our colleagues (70 km to the north from recent polar tree line) that grew during 4200-4016 and 3330-2986 BC.]
This period is pointed out by low interannual variability of tree growth and high trees abundance discontinued, however, by several short (50-100 years) unfavorable periods, most significant of them dated about 4060-3990 BC. Since about 2800 BC gradual worsening of tree growth condition has begun. Significant shift of the polar tree line to the south have been fixed between 1700 and 1600 BC. At the same time interannual tree growth variability increased appreciably.
During last 3600 years most of reconstructed indices have been varying not so very significant. Tree line has been shifting within 3-5 km
near recent one. Low abundance of trees has been fixed during 1410-1250 BC and 500-350 BC. Relatively high number of trees has been
noted during 750-1450 AD.There are no evidences of moving polar timberline to the north during last century.
…
Climategate Email 09079795032.txt (Source Wikileaks)
I can understand dumping a tree straight into poor quality soil is bad for the tree. But history suggests colonisation occurs rapidly in a natural setting when local temperature changes make a location more suitable for plant growth. Excusing the lack of colonisation of higher slopes on a large scale as being due to “unsuitable soil chemistry” seems pretty flimsy.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
“. Excusing the lack of colonisation of higher slopes on a large scale as being due to “unsuitable soil chemistry” seems pretty flimsy.”
EXCEPT they didnt do that or claim that. FFS
They did an experiment.
The experiment suggests that treeline may be influenced by more than climate.
Duh.
That’s why proxies are noisy indicators of climate.
It doesnt mean we cannot learn ANYTHING from proxies, but rather it means our understanding will be conditioned by our assumptions. Nothing new here either.
So the HS accounts for this how?
Not at all.
who said anything about the HS
I will quote another commenter
““Excusing the lack of colonisation of higher slopes on a large scale as being due to “unsuitable soil chemistry” seems pretty flimsy.”
To be fair, the Canadian Rocky studiers blamed three things: “… a combination of high soil surface temperatures during the growing season, reduced winter snowpack and unfavourable soil properties.”
Now, Hunter, You and I BOTH KNOW that the paper did NOT, as the post claims,
SIMPLY “excuse” the lack of colonization on soil.
You know that. I know that. Roger Knights points it out. Roger has the stones
to point it out.
So the post is wrong, wrong as in wrong.
It would be rational for you to admit the fact the poster got it wrong, AND THEN move on to whatever argument you want to make about the HS.
But here is the thing. If you cant admit that the Poster got it wrong, if you cant admit the little mistakes, then why would I think you can have an good faith discussion about the HS
or anything else. You would be exactly like the warmists who could not admit that manns
PCA was fucked up. So defensive of their own team that they cant admit to any mistake.
Simple debate:
Did the poster get it right or wrong? wanna debate science? cool, go!
explain how roger knight and I are wrong and how the poster is correct?
You wont because you know the poster got it wrong.
wrong as in wrong.
So you’re saying that the study is even worse than the poster makes it out to be. I agree that the poster didn’t quite get it right, they should have lambasted the study even more than they did.
The most absurd claim the study makes is
Why the poster didn’t point out the ludicrous conclusion, that the advance of the subalpine trees is limited by HIGHER SOIL SURFACE TEMPERATURES in the alpine biome, is curious indeed. I would have also criticized the “experiment” methodology itself. One growing season of data? Comparing scarified plots (test plots) to plots that have already been vegetated by trees and calling them the control plots? Planting seeds from where? and pretending they are genetically the same as trees that have developed in that exact environment? But perhaps most curious of all is why most of their results are model based, indicated by the supplementary information, and hinted at in the abstract with
So they placed observations in context with a “parallel” experiment, aka, a statistical model they pulled out of their arse — climate science!
Didn’t read the entire article.
Thank you for pointing out the conflict.
The poster framed the critique incorrectly.
The HS relevance is that an important proxy for Mann and the derivative cluster of HS’s is tree growth.
Now it turns out that tree growth is more complex than temperatures.
As skeptics have pointed out for a long time.
Steven Mosher ==>
It’s harder for me to believe that your reading comprehension is poor, than to accept that you are simply trolling!
You said:
“To be fair, the Canadian Rocky studiers blamed three things: “… a combination of high soil surface temperatures during the growing season, reduced winter snowpack and unfavourable soil properties.”
Yeah but Steven, two of the things are climate constraints!
1. High soil surface temperatures during the growing season and
2. Reduced winter snowpack!
The third “thing” is “unfavourable soil properties”
So, to paraphrase:
The poster got it right and you got it wrong…wrong as in wrong!
Wanna debate science?
Sure do!
SWB
Even for you, that is a double weasel reverse ferret, Steven
Mosher writes
Conditioned by our assumptions? Wrong. It means we learn NOTHING from proxies except as determined by the assumptions underlying those proxies and their analysis. This is made worse by post hoc selection. Assume warming, get warming.
Coming from a guy that probably believes the hockey stick reconstruction, I found that claim quite ironic.
First they had to get rid of the Medieval warm period, now the instructions have gone out. Get rid of the proxies. Anything that contradicts the narrative of CO2 controlling climate must be eliminated.
Welcome to the Adjustocene.
All the pal review papers that money can buy.
In Finland you can use tree seeds +/-100km North/South from the place seed has originated. And you need to check Degree Days (d.d.) of seeds, it should be near +/- 100 d.d. compared to the origin of seeds. And for seeds 100m higher in a hill is same that planting 100km Northwards (and 100m down in a hill is same than planting 100km Southwards). This 100km/100m/100d.d. is called local of seeds. From 1 kg of seeds you may grow 100 000 pcs of seedlings (plants). In Finland annually 150 million seedlings is planted to renew cut Forests. See e.g. https://www.evira.fi/en/plants/cultivation-and-production/forestry/basic-material/deployment-area-maps-of-pineseed-orchards/
Just one of the possible major errors they made in this “experiment”. It’s too bad that good comments like this are buried by junk comments.
There are countless possible major errors. That doesn’t mean they made any of them.
Leaving out of consideration (of course) trees which thrive in nearly un-adulterated rock.
One simple question. Did trees grow in these “unsuitable” areas in the past?
If so this paper is BS.
Yes
Two papers, one from the dry east side and one from the very wet Haida Gwaii
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/41107882_Holocene_treeline_dynamics_in_the_mountains_of_northeastern_British_Columbia_Canada_inferred_from_fossil_pollen_and_stomata
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0033589497919037
Thanks tty for confirming my BS detector is working correctly.
Bitter&twisted, you completely disregard the possibility of change in conditions over time, such as those produced by glacial scouring.
Actually the tree line has moved up in e. g. Scandinavia in the last half-century or so, but it is not yet up to MWP level, much less to where it was in the Early Holocene:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324991910_Further_Details_on_Holocene_Treeline_GlacierIce_Patch_and_Climate_History_in_Swedish_Lapland
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324984727_RECENT_TREELINE_SHIFT_IN_THE_KEBNEKAISE_MOUNTAINS_NORTHERN_SWEDEN
If the treeline hasn’t shifted in the Canadian Rockies the explanation is almost certainly that climate hasn’t warmed there.
And this is one of the most idiotic sentences I’ve ever read in an abstract:
“suggesting that although establishment within the treeline ecotone is at least partially seed limited, other constraints are more important beyond the current treeline”
Of course there are. Otherwise there wouldn´t be a treeline there!
This is however (trivially) true:
“the upper limits of some treelines are not necessarily in climatic equilibrium”
They never are. Forest development always lags climate change.
Their supplemental information suggests that the field experiment portion of this paper is based on a single growing season of data. This is junk science on steroids.
If that is true it is most definitely junk science. At the treeline it takes several years in a row with unusually good conditions for a new seedling to establish. This is easy to see by studying the age of trees at the treeline, they all belong to a few age cohorts, that got started when there was a series of good years.
tty, why is that idiotic? It’s saying that establishment at the ecotone is partly due to seed limitation, while establishment beyond the ecotone is due to something else. There is no “of course there are” other constraints, since seed availability could be the single limiting factor.
If climate were the only limitation on forest development, you would expect to see signs of range expansion (seedling growth in new areas) pretty much in lock-step with climate change. But there are so many other potential limiting factors that it would be very surprising indeed if this were seen in all or even most cases.
It is idiotic because seeding trees are present at the treeline, so seed availability couldn’t be the only factor since seed are in fact available.
Not if seed predation is a factor. Herbivory apparently was higher at the ecotone than above it, so why not seed predation? Besides, they didn’t say seed availability was the only factor, they said it was at least partially limited. And how do you know the trees are setting seed at normal rates? Perhaps the conditions are just a wee bit too stressful (unlikely hypothesis, I know).
I don’t object to your objection so much as I object to the “idiotic” part. None of us, as far as I can tell, has actually read the paper. Maybe the sentence is elaborated in the text, and makes sense. There’s too much bashing here of research that no one has read, IMO. For all I know the paper is junk, but I’m not going to assume so based on a PR and abstract and being told it’s junk.
Perhaps more apropos would be ignorant than idiotic.
https://www.google.at/search?q=ecotones&client=ms-android-samsung&prmd=isvn&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjwvPr3nZ7cAhWBF5oKHQgbDWkQ_AUIESgB&biw=360&bih=560
It is not so simple. Trees are complicated creatures.
We must ask the Ents…
🙂
Fallacious argument.
Botanists have found early medieval trees stumps under LIA’s moraines in high altitude mountains of French and Austrian Alps. Some of these stumps have been dated before year 1000 AC.
In these times, all the glaciers of medium altitude still currently existing had disappeared.
Yet tree growth is being effective in arid regions do to increase CO2. Funny how trees growth can increase in bad soil conditions in some places but not others. Just another BS excuse.
I do like the craic on this one (126 comments so far) – folks getting their hands dirty.
Dirt and soil.
With temperature, what actually *is* going on?
Look into your home refrigerator and it will (should) be running at a temp of 4 degC
(It will stink to high heaven at anything higher than that, boys’ fridges do that and is why girlz get headaches)
Reason being that 5 degC is the temperature at which most bacterial activity ceases.
Isn’t that a crazy coincidence, that is the temperature most plants become dormant, typically for over-wintering.
What Is Happening There?
Could there some sort of symbiosis going on.? Plants & soil bacteria?
High mountain ‘soil’ will be made of fresh rock – it will have a full complement of all that plants need. Its composition will vary certainly but Ma Nature has an epic selection of plants to suit every occasion, a lot of them are trees.
Maybe these researchers should have tried a different variety of tree.
Did they take any measurements of soil temperature at 1, 2 or 3 feet depths?
Did they account for Ma Nature has ways & means of spreading goodness around. This is what dust storms are all about. It is true that 40 millions tonnes of Saharan dust land on Amazonia every year and without it, would probably just a big a desert as the Sahara itself.
Other things, forest fires, spread huge amounts of goodness for vast distance.
Soot is a very good soil conditioner, especially for heavy clay soils. If soot can make it to the Arctic and melt the place, getting some black up onto an Alpine hill is an exercise in triviality.
And anytime you/me or Ma Nature burns anything in an oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere, we make water soluble nitrogen compounds.
Ambrosia for plants and bacteria alike.
Just like us, with our hi-carb diet, they are constantly starved of protein. Nitrogen helps with that.
(We do need critters like cows/sheep/Bambi to process it a little first though)
Ever been to The Canary Islands?
A volcanic island chain puffing up off the floor of the Atlantic.
The newly emerged rock there is the stuff of nightmares.
Black. Shiny. Glassy. Hard as Hell.
Initially forms itself into a landscape of broken glass shards going from inches tall to dozens of feet high. Impassable even for Sherman Tanks, let alone ‘things that bleed’ like us.
Yet The Canaries are a fantastic place to grow tomatoes – generally regarded as The Humvee of the fruit/vegetable world
Epically hungry plants, not unlike tobacco. They are *so demanding* of the nutritional status of their soil yet they grow like triffids on the Canary Isles.
What gives?
One final thing.
There is a place somewhere, an evergreen forest where many of the trees are standing on sizeable archways – of their own roots. The base of the tree might be 4,5 or 6 feet above the ground.
Reason being that seed, falling from living trees will land (subsequently germinate) on the trunks of their fallen forebears. They throw roots down to reach the soil.
The forbear subsequently decomposes and the new baby tree is left ‘standing’ on thin air, supported by the arch of roots it put down either side of the old tree.
Where is that place. Anyone?
They sometimes don’t even need soil. Ain’t that neat.
Ever been to The Canary Islands?
Yes I have, I even visited some vineyards there, they dig down through the detritus from the volcanic eruption until they reach the previous soil and then plant at the bottom of the pit (see below)
It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.
Richard P. Feynman
Tree lines not moving like the AGW models predict? Why? Maybe it is not really warming as much as the heavily adjusted temperature records of the alarmists would like to indicate.
Similar to the dendrochronologist tree ring divergence problem, maybe the recent tree rings don’t show much warming, because there isn’t much warming.
We must always consider simple explanations.
True. Good comment.
nahh…
they got that wrong.
Looking at minimum temperatures, it already started cooling, globally.
Trees don’t like lower minimum temps….
http://breadonthewater.co.za/2018/05/04/which-way-will-the-wind-be-blowing-genesis-41-vs-27/
And more trees higher on mountain slopes is a problem, why? Grant money, that’s why.
They might be looking for the completely wrong organism that would indicate biome shift, the trailblazer that creates the soil conditions and nutrient pathways in the first place, mycelium and their cohort of bacteria.
It amazes me how much we’ve learned about mycelium and mycorrhizal symbiosis being the architects of ecosystems, yet most biologists still have their heads in the trees.
https://academic.oup.com/jxb/article/59/5/1115/541125
https://www.elynsgroup.com/journal/article/impact-of-altitude-on-the-colonization-frequency-of-endophytic-fungi-isolated-from-rhododendron-campanulatum-d-don-of-sagarmatha-national-park-nepal
A mycelium is a structure, not an organism.
Any half-decent plant ecologist/biologist knows about mycorrhizae. If the trees up there are already associated with mycorrhizae, the colonization beyond the tree line would not be limited by their absence unless something about the environment deterred their growth or function.
Why is it that you are so sure the researchers are looking at the wrong things? Why are you compelled to think of potential faults with the paper? This is a serious question that goes beyond this one article. It seems to be a pervasive habit for WUWT readers to try to think of reasons to reject research, rather than actually assessing it or simply saying “I don’ know – this could be good research or it could be bad, it’s impossible for me to tell because 1) I haven’t read the paper, and 2) I’m not an expert in the field.
As most people know, tree types move up and downslope as the climate changes. As does agriculture.
Also, North and South. The sudden turn to severe cooling in the early 1300s did in a lot of people in Northern Europe. Loosing two crop years in 1315 to 1317 caused a die-off of 10 percent. Then it got worse later in the century.
However, I recently became interested in original settlements along the West Coast. Particularly BC to Alaska. The Native culture was based upon the large ocean-going canoes. Made out of Cedar, they could carry up to 4 tons of people and gear.
No cedar trees–no big canoes.
At the max of the last ice advance, cedar trees had retreated to Southern California. And it wasn’t until some 5,000 years ago that they returned to BC.
That certain plants are not moving upslope with the supposed warming is probably because it has not been warming for some 20 years.
Inventing problems with soil conditions is likely an out for an impractical theory.
Bob Hoye
True. Global Minimum T has in fact been dropping since the new millennium.
Source: University of Guelph
Such silliness.
Of course it is highly likely that there will be unsuitable soil just above the current treeline ……. because iffen it was suitable then the trees would be growing there.
As the older treeline descended “downslope” during periods of average temperature decreases, the rain, wind and melting snow flushed, eroded or leached the nutrients, humus and part or all of the topsoil “downslope” over the course of 100/1000+ years.
And when average temperatures start increasing in an “upslope” direction, it will take several years before Mother Nature can replenish the aforesaid nutrients, humus and topsoil in its slow, methodical “upslope” progression proceeds.
Maybe the particular species of trees involved are incapable of sensing the global average temperature and for some unknown reason, can only sense the specific local temperatures?
Oh global warming/climate change, is there anything you can’t do?
So forests were able to colonise northern Siberia during the Holocene maximum, some 9,000 years ago, but are unable to now. Hmm, sounds like boIIo to me…
Image below: Note that the northern treeline has receded by up to 4 degrees of lattitude over the last 10,000 years, depending upon species.
And note that during the previous (Eemian) interglacial forest grew even further north. There was larch forest on Ostrov Lyakhova (the southernmost New Siberian Island).
One lie is as good as the next, if the soil doesn’t pan out they’ll think of something else.
Seems like we’re looking for a horse and finding a zebra. Noooooo… the tree line didn’t move because GW is all hype!
So the tree line isn’t changing much.
We know that snow cover trend has been roughly static the last 25 years.
Yet GISStemp is skyrocketing after adjustments.
I wonder what the trees and snow know that climate scientists don’t?
It’s a mystery.
The speed at which a population can move up a mountain slope does not necessarily depend on fast genetic changes. In large enough populations there is enough genetic variation to ensure that the genes required to survive the challenge have been there for some time, often as recessives. The changed environment provides the opportunity for the “dormant” gene to increase its frequency. The species still survives, in altered form. ref. ” The Beak of the Finch”.