And if my aunt had…..~ctm
Public Release: 1-Dec-2018
New study findings also suggest a variety of industries in the Northeast could be negatively affected by warming trends, including maple syrup, timber and snow sports
Advanced Science Research Center, GC/CUNY
NEW YORK, December 1, 2018 – Researchers conducting a 5-year-long study examining snow cover in a northern hardwood forest region found that projected changes in climate could lead to a 95 percent reduction of deep-insulating snowpack in forest areas across the northeastern United States by the end of the 21st century. The loss of snowpack would likely result in a steep reduction of forests’ ability to store climate-changing carbon dioxide and filter pollutants from the air and water.
The new findings, out today in Global Change Biology, highlight a growing understanding of the broad impact of climate change across seasons on forest ecosystems, according to scientists who leveraged six decades of data showing declining winter snowpack at Hubbard Brook’s forest. The 7,800-acre research forest in New Hampshire is heavily populated by sugar maple and yellow birch trees, and has been used for over 60 years to study changes in northern hardwood forests–an ecosystem covering over 54 million acres and stretching from Minnesota to southeastern Canada.
“We know global warming is causing the winter snowpack to develop later and melt earlier,” said the paper’s first author Andrew Reinmann, an assistant professor and researcher with the Environmental Science Initiative at the Advanced Science Research Center (ASRC) at The Graduate Center, CUNY, and with Hunter College’s Department of Geography. “Our study advances our understanding of the long-term effects of this trend on northern hardwood forests–which are critical to North America’s environmental health and several industries. The experiments we conducted suggest snowpack declines result in more severe soil freezing that damages and kills tree roots, increases losses of nutrients from the forest and significantly reduces growth of the iconic sugar maple trees.”
The researchers’ 5-year-long experiment consisted of removing snowpack from designated plots during the first 4-6 weeks of winter each year between 2008 and 2012, and then comparing the resulting condition of the soil and trees (all sugar maples) in those plots to the soil and trees in adjacent plots with natural snowpack. Their analysis found that soil frost depth reached over 30 centimeters in areas where snow cover had been removed compared to roughly 5 centimeters at control plots. The severe frost caused damage to tree roots that triggered a cascade of responses, including reduced nutrient uptake by trees, shorter branch growth, loss of nitrogen from soils into nearby waterways, and decreases in soil insect diversity and abundance. Scientists collected sample cores from sugar maple trees on their research plots and measured the width of the cores’ rings to reconstruct growth rates. They found that growth declined by more than 40 percent in response to snow removal and increased soil freezing. The trees also were unable to rebound even after snowpack removal ceased.
“These experiments demonstrate the significant impact that changes in winter climate have on a variety of environmental factors, including forest growth, carbon sequestration, soil nutrients and air and water quality,” Reinmann said. “Left unabated, these changes in climate could have a detrimental impact on the forests of the region and the livelihoods of the people who rely on them for recreation and industries such as tourism, skiing, snowmobiling, timber and maple syrup production.”
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“projected changes in climate could lead to a 95 percent REDUCTION of deep-insulating snowpack in forest areas across the northeastern United States by the end of the 21st century. ”
This means there is only 5% left, almost no snow at all. You certainly have our attention now.
“We know global WARMING is causing the winter snowpack to develop later and melt earlier,”
“The experiments we conducted suggest snowpack declines result in more severe soil FREEZING ?? that damages and kills tree roots, increases losses of nutrients from the forest and significantly reduces growth of the iconic sugar maple trees.”
Its warming outside. OK. Snowpack is gone, no snow mobiles and cross country skiing. The DEEP FREEZING without snowpack means there is a drought then, right ?
Lots of degrees of freedom not explained or put into context.
Just great. Dingbats regularly disturbing and tromping all over a twenty foot by twenty foot plot in the woods.
Looks like they scraped the leaves off of the snow and evenly spread them back on the soil…
Ah yes, start off the research, basing the research on biases and gross assumptions.
Lovely word, “suggests” that originates from biases and assumptions towards preferred results, not proven replicable definitive observations.
Ignored are errors introduced by:
A) Miniscule 20 foot by 20 foot plots.
B) Artificially removing snowpack, instead of measuring soils during years without snowpack.
C) Students and researchers disturbing the soils they are allegedly sampling for minute chemical and biological differences.
D) Research that artificially provides a sunken spot where colder air pools.
N.B. the reference to “natural snowpack”, after the unnaturally remove snowpack from their abused forest plots.
And exactly which sampled trees were 100% dependent upon the soil in those 20 foot by 20 foot forest plots?
Mature tree have root systems roughly equivalent to their forest canopy. These alleged researchers assume that their chosen forest plots are the sole sources for which their trees draw resources.
Of course, after these dingalings dug up all of the snow, repeatedly, they assume that wildlife isn’t bright enough to find better winter quarters just a feet away.
A nice grade school research project and confirmation bias assumptions. Maybe.
I remember when acid rain was going to kill all the forests in northeastern USA.
Not impressed or convinced, obviously. Even if what they report is both accurate (which I doubt) and representative (in the sense of it not just being a local effect), what I don’t see is any kind of an appropriate control.
Thus they claim that less snow in the forest is harmful somehow, but it doesn’t say anything about the effects of less snow outside the forest, where it may be beneficial. It is not difficult to imagine that more things will actually grow under these conditions of a longer growing season. That’s why we don’t grow many crops in icefields within the Arctic Circle. Duhh….
Probably another desperate funding ploy based on global-warming alarmism, which seems to account for about 97% of it.
I have concluded that their is a “thou doth protest too much” effect in organisation names, i.e.:
Any country with “democratic” in its name is a dictatorship.
Any country with “workers” in its name oppresses the workers.
Any university department with “advanced” or “centre of excellence” produces fake research.
Wait a second…I am pretty sure the latest spin from the always wrong climate mafia is that warming leads to MORE snow.
One might think they need to get their story straight, but they never have done so yet, and continue on as if they have had remarkable success.
BTW…can we please stop buying into their misdirection by accepting their butt-covering buzz phrase “climate change”?
Their theory calls for global warming.
We need to keep their feet to the fire.
Letting them constantly change the narrative and even the language used, is not helping in this regard.
Question: Did they replace the removed snow with plain water to correct for the fact that warmer temps would have meant the snow was instead liguid precip?
If not, then what they did was simulate a drought in Fall and early Winter.
Droughts in this part of the year are very rare in these areas.
So, they expect less snow due to warmer temperatures. But they remove snowpack at today’s temperatures without controlling for the warmer winter (by their estimation) that would cause that and are surprised the trees don’t do well without the snowpack. They didn’t control enough of the variables for this “experiment” to be valid. As usual junk science trying to find a point.
As to the origins of the study
ADVANCED SCIENCE RESEARCH CENTER, GC/CUNYADVANCED SCIENCE RESEARCH CENTER, GC/CUNY
now what was that old salsa commercial – made in New York city!!!
michael
NEW YORK CITY!?
This study represents progress!
The press release uses only rcp8.5: “projected changes in climate could lead to 95 reduction” of snowpack.” Typical going for the big headline. Clickbait.
But the paper looks at RCP4.5 and RCP8.5. That is progress from what was typical even three years ago, when papers usually would use only RCP8.5 – mischaracterizing it as “business as usual.”
Baby steps.
I actually own a northern hardwood forest in northern WI (45º N). It is not uncommon for the frost to be 2-3 feet deep here on any given winter. One low snow El Nino winter people were freezing up septic tanks and well pipes, suggesting that it got 5-6 feet deep. The trees are fine.