A good chunk of our reading about acid rain talked about how it was bringing about the end of the sugar maple. Especially in the Southwestern Adirondacks acid rain has been killing off the seedlings that carpet the floor around sugar maples, allowing beech trees to take over the forest. Not only would this hurt the maple syrup industry, but it would also change the fall colors as beech turn yellow, not the myriad shades of red and orange of the sugar maple. The foliage forecast for global warming is even more drab: as New York's climate becomes more and more temperate, trees like the oak will move into the Adirondacks. Oak leaves turn brown in the fall (not very exiting). We will probably end up with something looking like this:
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| View of the hills along Route 8 between Deposit and Utica. While many of the trees are missing their leaves, the effect is approximately the same a week or two earlier. While not all brown, it lacks the fair of the red and orange maple leaves. |
Or will we? There is another maple who also turns red in the fall. While the red maple's foliage is not as varied as the sugar maple (it's all red), this maple could help to add color to many forests around New York. The red maple is capable of living in environments from Florida to Quebec, and is thought to be more tolerant of acidic soil and low air quality. It also grows more quickly than other hardwoods, and it has been given a competitive edge by the clearing and fire fighting activities of humans. Red maple is a softer hardwood, making it less desirable for lumber, and trees rarely live to be 150 while sugar maples can live 300 years or more. The red maple can also be used for sap production: the technique for putting in taps is slightly different between the two species, and there is some controversy over whether the syrup from red maples is as good as that from sugar maples. Regardless, the fact that commercial syrup is being produced from red maples means that even after the sugar maples are driven out by acid rain and climate change, some fall color and syrup production will remain!
USDA Fact Sheet
UVM Article
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| Photo by Jeff Dean http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Redmaple2.jpg |
Interesting point--this really gets at the intricacies of the connection between climate change and biodiversity.
ReplyDeleteThis will make climate change especially visible, which may in turn help raise awareness and cause people to become more involved with climate change (although it may be too late).
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