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Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Invasive Species to Increase as the Result of Climate Change

I stumbled across an article from The Leader Herald, written by Greg Hitchcock, about the effects of climate change in the Adirondacks. Dr. Ezra Schwartzberg, an entomologist, has been working from his Lake Placid consulting firm on researching invasive species biology and also climate change research. Schwartzberg relates that climate change will inevitably lead to an increase in invasive species in the Park. 


Biologist Larry Master confirmed Schwartzberg's research by stating that specifically the pathogen, the woolly adelgid, will increase and move north as the result of climate change.  The hemlock woolly adelgid is known for killing Eastern hemlock trees. And are progressively moving north as the temperatures rise. Master stated that, “A lot of things are already moving north that weren’t here historically. We don’t know what the changes in forest composition will be because we cannot predict those very well. But there will certainly be changes."


Hemlock Woolly Adelgid




Read the full article here: http://www.leaderherald.com/page/blogs.detail/display/1052/Adirondacks-prepare-for-climate-change.html


2 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing this link. I think it's also interesting that so many invasive species are only there because we (humans) bring them there. Sometimes its by accident, and by the time we figure out that they are harmful its too late. When we realize what we have done, we start trying to undo it. In this case, since the culprit is climate change (an arguably human thing) we are going to have to make much larger attempts to go backwards.

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  2. I saw this same invasive, Hemlock Woolly Adelgid, down south in The Great Smoky Mountains National Park, TN. It's scary that it is so far reaching

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