Dire prediction for Minnesota forests
By Madeleine Baran, Minnesota Public Radio
September 15, 2009 St. Paul, Minn. — A new article by University of Minnesota ecologists says Minnesota’s forests could shrink more rapidly than expected, as droughts, fires, and growth of native and exotic species accelerate the changes caused by global warming. The authors argue that prairie lands could expand by as much as 300 miles in the next 50 to 100 years, pushing Minnesota’s forests further north. The changes would significantly alter the state’s landscape, and could impact industry and development. “We should be alarmed at the rate of change,” Lee Frelich, the director of the University’s Center for Hardwood Ecology and the article’s co-author, told Minnesota Public Radio News on Monday. Frelich said that although forest and prairie lands have shifted in the past, those changes occurred over a longer period of time. “We’re causing an extraordinarily rapid rate of climate change, maybe at a rate faster than that at which the forest can respond,” Frelich said. “And so maybe we’ll see large areas of forests just simply die because they won’t be able to move north that fast.” Droughts, fires, and windstorms caused by global warming could kill older trees, and contribute to what the article calls “a savannification” of the forest, the article argues. “Trees live a long time,” Frelich said. “They cannot change as fast as something like birds that can just fly a little further to the north in a few hours time. Trees can’t do that, and so they need a longer time to adapt.” …
New study makes dire prediction for Minnesota forests
Even this dismal accounting is basically maudlin sentimentality.
Birds can't just "fly north" and escape climate change either, any more than trees. Let's think…if the birds "fly north" will they find the same sorts of trees to host their nests, the same precipitation, the same precipitation, the same food?
Of course not!!
Once the trees are gone, and they ARE going, everything will go with them.
The ecosystems are interconnected. All species are on the same Titanic, and rearranging the deck chairs isn't going to save a single one.
But just think of all that boreal forest that's advancing into the Arctic, replacing tundra. Can you say, "albedo flip"? I knew you could!
Right well, I haven't had a chance to follow up on this comment but I will…
"Hi Gail…..Take a look at Professor Doug Tallamy. He is from a Newark, Delaware college. He is speaking here near Chicago at the Morton arboretum. He is quoted in the Chicago Tribune saying, "Portland is a beautiful city, but it is dead. There's nothing living in Portland because of the tremendous load of non-native plants. You go to see green, but it's a green that doesn't work. I saw no insects, and that's incredible. They've built a landscape that isn't supporting a food web."