Green Power; AbitibiBowater

Green Power
Canoe News reported the following: Ontario's energy minister pledged yesterday to do what he can to solve the issues that led an Alberta company to shelve a $300-million Huron County wind turbine project. "We were obviously disappointed to hear it is being shelved," said Energy Minister Dwight Duncan....But Huron-Bruce MPP Carol Mitchell said she spoke to a senior vice-president of the company last Friday. "I think there is a very good chance of the project going forward," Mitchell said. "This is an excellent site for wind. They are committed to moving this project forward and the McGuinty government is committed to moving (renewable energy projects) forward." In a related article, Canoe News reported that Deputy Reeve Neil Rintoul placed blame for the delay on the Chippewas of Saugee native community in Southampton. "One of the bigger factors was the native community. They challenged it is their wind that turns the turbines and (they) want some of the proceeds." Wanda/Bonnie, we will need to update this note by 10:30 am today.

Forestry
The proposed merger of Bowater Inc. and Abitibi-Consolidated Inc. will make the new company one of the largest employers in Northwestern Ontario, with more than 2,000 employees on the payroll between Thunder Bay and Fort Frances. The combined firm, to be known as AbitibiBowater Inc., will be the third-largest publicly traded paper and forest products company in North America, and the eighth-largest in the world, with annual revenues of $9.3 billion.

Forestry sector faces another rocky year

Worst over, but turmoil expected. Job losses, closings will produce smaller, more efficient industry: ex-Tembec CEO
PHOTO CREDIT: CP

SOURCE: LUANN LASALLE | Canadian Press

Thursday, December 28, 2006

Tough times are expected to continue shaking the Eastern Canadian forestry sector in 2007 after a year when thousands of jobs were lost.

Turmoil is expected to continue shaking the Eastern Canadian forestry sector in 2007 after a year that saw thousands of job losses and the closing or idling of dozens of mills and woodcutting operations.

The strong Canadian dollar, higher electricity and fuel costs, falling lumber prices, a soft U.S. housing market and a dwindling supply of wood to harvest have all taken their toll on the industry and remain its biggest challenges.

Forestry industry experts say the job losses and closings will probably continue in '07, though at a slower rate as many high-cost mills are no longer operating. They're also predicting a leaner industry.

Frank Dottori, former CEO of forestry giant Tembec Inc., said the coming year will be difficult, but the industry has already hit bottom in its worst crisis since the 1930s.

"Almost 40 per cent of Quebec's industry is already shut down," Dottori said. "What's camouflaging all of this is the tremendous surge in mining. People who are getting laid off are going into the mining business."

"It's going to get sunny again, but there are casualties when you have these storms," said Dottori, who retired last January after running the company he helped found in 1973 for about 30 years.

"People are going to get put out of business. There's going to be a smaller, more efficient industry when we're finished."

Since January 2003, there have been more than 10,000 layoffs in Ontario and Quebec, and almost 2,000 in Atlantic Canada. Mills in Western Canada, generally larger and more profitable, have been spared widespread closings although some marginal operations have been shut down.

However, lumber producers in all parts of Canada are facing reduced demand for their wood and related building products because of the slump in the U.S. housing market - a development that has already led to a curb in production and could mean more job cuts in the future.

Dottori said the main problem in Eastern Canada is that the cost of wood per cubic metre delivered to sawmills is the highest in the world.

"I think the governments are going to have to address the cost-of-wood issue and take a good, hard look at stumpage and all of the regulations."

He noted Ontario has taken positive steps to address red tape, the cost of road building and rationalization in the industry, while Quebec lags behind.

The cost difference between Ontario and Quebec is close to $10 a cubic metre, Dottori said.

In Quebec, the industry pays high stumpage fees for the quality of the wood and the province has only had sustainable forestry practices in effect for the last 20 years, he said, although it has placed some restrictions on the amount of wood that can be cut.

Analyst Don Roberts agreed there are more mill closings and job losses to come in 2007.

"The industry will just keep getting smaller until what is left will be economic," said Roberts of CIBC World Markets.

"In the short term, what most of them have to pray for is a weak Canadian dollar," he said, while noting he expects the loonie to stay at around 89 cents U.S. in '07.

And unless the U.S. housing market somehow revives, Eastern Canadian forestry firms will continue to grapple with a low-price environment, Roberts said.

"That's why the prices of lumber have dropped so precipitously over the last while," he said.

"The real problem that we have to work out, and we won't be able to work it out until mid or late '08, is that we've got inventory of unsold new homes in the United States. That has to be worked off and that will keep demand low."

There won't be any immediate relief from the pain, but the industry is "beginning to make contact with the light at the end of the tunnel," said Avrim Lazar, president of the Forest Products Association of Canada.

"It's hard to say where the worst is, but the process of restructuring and rationalization isn't going to end," Lazar said.

"It's likely more in the context of getting ready and strengthening rather than in the context of falling apart."

Lazar said restructuring in the Eastern Canadian industry was partly delayed by the long wait for a resolution to the softwood lumber dispute with the United States, which was settled only last summer.

"It put a chill on progress," he said. "It's a world in which you've got to move. The softwood agreement kind of slowed us down in terms of making investment decisions, new mergers, new rationalizations."

The complex, seven-year deal replaces U.S. lumber duties with a Canadian export tax that kicks in when lumber prices fall below certain levels, a move aimed at protecting U.S. producers that allege Canadian softwood is subsidized.

Canadian exporters are also getting back about 80 per cent of the lumber duties already paid, while the U.S. government and producers split about $1 billion U.S. of that money.

Roberts said the softwood lumber deal is a bit "moot" to some extent going forward, because it won't have a big impact on the Eastern Canadian industry because of the relatively low duty rate it faces.

The net effect is "a brave new world" for the industry in Ontario and Quebec, Roberts said.

The Gazette (Montreal) 2006

Tembec shuts down permanently its Smooth Rock Falls pulp mill

TEMISCAMING, QC, Dec. 5 /CNW Telbec/

Tembec today announced the permanent closure of its market pulp mill located in Smooth Rock Falls, Ontario. The mill had been indefinitely idled at the end of July 2006. After a thorough analysis of the current situation, the Company has concluded that a sustainable and secure long-term operation at this site is not possible. A total of 185 unionized employees and 44 staff will be affected.

"The vintage and scale of this mill and its manufacturing costs relative to global competition, including the availability of affordable fibre, were all key factors in this decision," said Yvon Pelletier, Tembec Executive Vice President and President of the Pulp Group. "After thoroughly reviewing current and future economic conditions, we have made the difficult decision to permanently close the mill."

"Decisions of this nature are never easy to make, and Tembec regrets the impact of today's announcement on all employees, their families and the Smooth Rock Falls community," said Mr. Pelletier. "Tembec will proceed with the mill's closure according to applicable laws, regulations and the collective agreement."

"The Company intends to act in a manner that will ensure that employees receive their severance pay in the next few weeks.," said Mr. Pelletier. "The Company will also take appropriate measures, including the provision of counselling and support services for affected employees."

As a result of this announcement, an unusual charge of $31 million relating to pension, severance and other items will be recorded in the quarter ending December 30, 2006.

Tembec is a large, diversified and integrated forest products company. With operations principally located in North America and in France, the Company employs approximately 9,000 people. Tembec's common shares are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol TBC. Additional information on Tembec is available on its website at www.tembec.com (+)

Galls are ugly growths, but they don't kill your tree

Sault Star (ON)|Wed 28 Jun 2006
Byline: Katherine Nystrom

You may have noticed wart- and/or pile-like growths mostly on the upper surface of your maple leaves, especially on silver and red maple.

These growths are actually galls and are caused by the presence of tiny mites, called eriophyed mites, feeding on the surface of the affected leaf. The galls, which provide food and shelter to the developing stages of the mites, are green when newly formed but gradually turn red and finally blacken over time. If these galls are numerous they can deform a leaf and mar the overall appearance of the tree. These galls, even when numerous, will not kill a tree. However, when they are plentiful on a young tree growth development can be slowed.

Several species of eriophyid mites cause galls on maple leaves. The maple bladdergall mite, Vasates quadripedes, can be found on silver and red maples. Finger-like galls seen on sugar maple are the maple spindlegall mite, Vasates aceriscrumena. The red pile mite gall, caused by the mite Aceria elongatus, can be found on either side of the leaves of various maples and is felt-like in appearance.

The microscopic adults overwinter, or spend the winter, in niches on the trunk and branches of maple trees. When the leaf buds begin to expand the adult mites move to the leaves and feed there. Abnormal cell development is initiated and as a result the female becomes enclosed in a characteristic structure or gall. Eggs are laid in the galls; they hatch, feed through several larval stages, and become adults in a matter of weeks. These adults leave the gall and may initiate other galls if suitable developing leaf tissue is present.

The number of galls fluctuates widely from year to year. Except in young or newly planted trees, the loss of leaf surface is insignificant and control is unnecessary. If need be the early handpicking of damaged leaves, which are frequently most common on the lower branches, will help to keep populations down. If it is desirable to prevent damage on young or newly transplanted maple trees, dormant oil can be used before bud-break in the early spring. Dormant oil should not be used on Japanese or sugar maple to avoid injury.

REMEMBER: Insecticides, by their very nature, are designed to control insects. Because of this, persons using insecticides must ensure they use them correctly. Always read the product label prior to using the product. Ensure that the product is registered for the target insect and follow label specifications for mixing, application rates, and disposal and safety precautions.

The preceding information is provided by the Sault Ste. Marie laboratory of the Canadian Forest Service of Natural Resources Canada, where Kathryn Nystrom is employed as an insect identification officer. While we cannot guarantee a response to each inquiry, we will make every effort to respond to readers= questions, either through this column or individually. Direct inquiries to: Tree Talk, c/o Communications Officer, Great Lakes Forestry Centre, P.O. Box 490, Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario P6A 5M7. Visit our Web Site at http://www.glfc.cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/

The Future of Tropical Forests

Source: Biological Conservation Newsletter

Tropical rainforests are among the most species rich regions of the world. If current deforestation and habitat loss continues, a mass extinction of forest species is predicted in these areas. Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute scientist S. Joseph Wright and Helene Muller-Landau from the University of Minnesota have recently conducted a survey of human population trends and forest cover.

Wright and Muller-Landau use present-day relationships between forest cover and population density and United Nations population projections to predict future forest cover for tropical African, American and Asian countries. United Nations population projections generally predict that human population growth rates will decline and that urbanization will intensify. Wright and Muller-Landau predict future forest cover using both an optimistic scenario based on rural populations alone and a pessimistic scenario based on total (rural plus urban) populations.

Continental trends suggest that deforestation will decrease and a larger area will remain forested in the Americas where population growth is slowing most rapidly and urbanization continues to increase. The outlook is not as optimistic in Asia and Africa. Asian forests are already quite diminished and populations are growing at a higher rate. In Africa, however, population growth overall and particularly in rural areas continues to increase, and net deforestation is expected to continue.

This research suggests that global deforestation will decrease, regeneration of forested areas will increase and a mass extinction of rainforest species can be avoided. Wright and Muller-Landau hope their research will stimulate more sophisticated predictions of future forest cover. In the meantime, further research is needed to establish the threat to individual species and determine which global, regional or local factors may influence these threats. This research will improve the ability to evaluate and manage human influences on forest species.(+)

Mountain Pine Beetel: 'Natural disaster in slow motion'

B.C.'s pine beetles could infest forests all across Canada, MLA warns

DAWN WALTON | GLOBE AND MAIL

WILLIAMS LAKE, B.C. -- John Rustad said he didn't want to sound "all doom and gloom," but as he preached in an airplane hangar filled with officials from Alberta, the British Columbia MLA warned of an apocalypse.

An unusual blip showed up on provincial radar systems a few years ago, he said. It was a cloud of mountain pine beetles -- pests that have chewed through much of his province's interior forests and lopped at least $6-billion from the economy.

"If this wall gets to Alberta, this thing can go right across the country. You won't be able to stop it," said Mr. Rustad, who worked in the forest industry for 20 years around Prince George, the area he now represents in the legislature.

"It's not every day you get to see a natural disaster in slow motion. That's what we have here," he told the group.

British Columbia's beetle problem became an epidemic in short order.

In 1999, almost 165,000 hectares of forest were infested. By 2005, the number jumped to 8.7 million hectares.

Alberta is hoping to avoid a similar fate in its battle against the beetle. The bug has flown across the Rocky Mountains and has popped up along the eastern slopes from the southwest corner of Alberta all the way to an area north of Jasper National Park.

Industry and government officials, who met in Calgary over the weekend to find ways to protect 2 million hectares of Alberta's forests from the blight, had flown to Williams Lake, which is at the heart of B.C.'s pine beetle outbreak, to see the devastation first-hand.

From the air, forests of trees were a sea of red, orange and grey. The palette was broken by the occasional green tree and swaths of stumps where stands had been cut in a bid to prevent the spread of beetles to other timber stands.

Pine beetles, which are about half a centimetre long and feed largely on mature lodgepole and limber pines, had burrowed under the bark to build tunnel-like egg galleries. When the larvae hatched, they bored holes out through the bark and, in the summer, went on to attack other trees. Lethal is the blue-stain fungus that the beetle carried; it disrupted the water flow within the trees and eventually turned them blood-red. As the trees die, their colour fades to orange, then grey.

The infestation in B.C. is unprecedented and the beetles are moving to Alberta and the United States, said Allan Carroll, a scientist with the federal Pacific Forestry Centre in Victoria.

Although the pine beetle is indigenous to the area, a perfect storm of factors set the stage for the catastrophe.

"We've inadvertently grown a mountain pine beetle smorgasbord," Dr. Carroll said.

Officials have been successful at forest-fire suppression, he said. The forestry industry in B.C. had bypassed lodgepole pine stands, allowing more trees to become the mature, preferred hosts for the beetles.

Since 1910, the total area of mature pine has tripled in the province.

And in the last century, the B.C. Interior has experienced an average minimum winter temperature jump of between 2.2 C and 2.6 C. Cold snaps are the best natural enemy of the pine beetle.

Now, global warming seems to be making the beetle a permanent fixture in places the pest was never previously seen, Dr. Carroll said.

Pine beetles tend to swarm Alberta in 20-year cycles. Traditionally, during those times, the few affected trees have been cut and burned.

But the threat is more ominous now.

In 1998, 10 infested lodgepole pine trees were found in Banff National Park. Two years later, 25 infested trees were spotted north of Jasper National Park. Two years after that, the pests were detected in 25 trees in Canmore, east of Banff.

In the past year, about 19,000 trees have been attacked across Alberta.

The province is cutting and burning every infected tree and those that could be susceptible to the pest.

"We have taken the most aggressive approach we can to limit the mountain pine beetle in our province and beyond," David Coutts, Alberta's Minister of Sustainable Resource Development, told reporters over the weekend.

Some researchers warn that the pine beetle could jump to jack pines and spread through Canada's boreal forest and into the northern territories and through to the Maritimes.

That's why Alberta and British Columbia have just jointly announced $17-million in funding to tackle the scourge along their shared boundary before the beetle spreads farther.

Alberta will also set up a new advisory committee. The announcements come on the heels of the federal budget, which pledged $400-million in funding related to the pine beetle.

Back in Williams Lake, Mr. Rustad said the funding will be a big help, but he added that the magnitude of the crisis could have been avoided if aggressive action was taken sooner. Instead, environmentalists criticized the notion of cutting and burning forests while government officials kept waiting for cold weather that would kill the bugs, he said.

Nate Bello, who is the mayor of Quesnel just to the north, said he remembers seeing little pockets of red trees to the west of his community 10 or 15 years ago.

Now, the forestry sector in his area is looking at losing about half its allowable cut because of the pine beetle.

"I'm glad people from Alberta are getting a head start. It's something we didn't have," he said. "The signs were there. People said we should have moved quicker."(+)

Province has new tool against invasive plants

May 08 2006
Clearwater Times (http://www.clearwatertimes.com)

The Province has launched Canada's first web-based tool in the battle against invasive alien plants, Forests and Range Minister Rich Coleman and Agriculture and Lands Minister Pat Bell announced last week.

Left unchecked, invasive plants can cause crop and livestock losses, destroy wildlife habitat, crowd out endangered plant species and lower property values.

"Invasive alien plants threaten both our biodiversity and our economy," Coleman said. "Our timber and ranching industries depend on native species. Their loss due to the spread of non-native plants that are less valuable or even toxic puts these industries at risk. At the same time, alien plants push out native plants that sustain our wildlife and ecosystems."

The Invasive Alien Plants Program is a web-based data entry system and mapping tool. It will allow about 200 people working in government, industry and local weed committees to quickly and efficiently share information about where invasive plants are located, and what weed control treatments have been used. By sharing data, the agencies involved in invasive plant management will be able to prioritize work across B.C., prevent duplicated efforts and measure progress.

"This government is committed to working effectively and collaboratively on the problems of invasive plants," said Bell. "In 2004, we announced the Province would boost spending on invasive plants by over $3 million, to a total of $8 million over two years."

Agencies involved in the management of approximately 140 species of invasive plants in B.C. include the Ministries of Agriculture and Lands, Environment, Forests and Range, and Transportation as well as the Invasive Plant Council.

The government agencies form the Inter Ministry Invasive Plant Committee that manages invasive plants on Crown lands.

"This new web tool is a very positive development for all those involved in invasive plant issues," said Juliet Craig, co-ordinator of the Central Kootenay Invasive Plant Committee. "It gives all of us the ability to pull maps and find information whenever we need it, whether it's for conducting inventories, treatments or monitoring."

The public may access the application to produce maps showing the location of various weed species in B.C. The Invasive Alien Plant Program Application is available online at www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfp/invasive/

Watch out for ash borer beetle

BY MICK ZAWISLAK | Daily Herald Staff Writer | Posted Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Travelers are asked to avoid bringing home more than fond memories as the camping season gears up.

A consortium of agencies led by the Morton Arboretum for a third year is on alert for the emerald ash borer, a stealthy yet lethal pest that may lurk in piles of firewood.

Responsible for killing or sickening more than 15 million ash trees in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio and Ontario, Canada, land managers throughout northern Illinois want to tighten the net before the exotic, metallic green beetle can establish itself here.

"Right now, one of the biggest issues out there is firewood transportation," said Al Zelaya, forestry crew chief for the Lake County forest preserves. "It's an unregulated industry."

Those hoping to thwart the beetle fear campers who buy firewood at stands in neighboring states may unwittingly introduce the ash borer to Illinois.

"There is a lot of vigilance and concern because these things seem to be all around us," said Gina Tedesco, spokeswoman for the Morton Arboretum in Lisle.

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, who secured $11 million in federal funds to combat the Asian longhorn beetle, was briefed last month on what could become the latest natural threat.

Durbin will discuss the ash borer on his local access cable show and plans discussions with Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar.

"It's not a problem yet in Illinois, but we know it will be," said Durbin spokeswoman Christina Angarola.

Meanwhile, forest preserve, park district, municipal and other officials continue the search.

For example, about $29,000 has been requested in the proposed Lake County forest preserve budget for tree maintenance. A public information program on the ash borer also is planned, and district leaders will hear more Friday regarding the potential regional impact.

"We probably will be doing more things in terms of (tree) inventory, trying to get a handle on our resources and the risk," Zayala said.

Last year, 160 "trap trees" were set at about 100 sites in DuPage, Will, Kendall, Kane, Lake, McHenry, Winnebago, Boone and parts of Cook counties. No borers were found, but that hasn't lessened the anxiety.

Ash trees are popular in residential settings because they grow quickly and are durable. Morton estimates 20 percent of all trees in the Chicago area's urban landscape are ash.

Developers turned to ash as a replacement for Dutch Elms, Zayala said, and new areas would be especially susceptible to the ash borer, he added.

"That's where it's going to be a big problem," he said.

The borer is small and hard to see. Larvae destroy trees from the inside out and the damage can take years to show.

The borer was first identified in the U.S. in 2002 in southeastern Michigan. Experts say it may have been in the Detroit area 10 to 15 years before then.

"That's the scary thing about this pest," Zayala said. It was found in Ohio in 2003 and northern Indiana in 2004.

It is believed to have arrived on wood packing material carried in cargo ships or airplanes originating in Asia.

Zayala urged Illinois residents to buy firewood locally or use up their supply on site if purchased elsewhere.

Trees dying from the top down, or D-shaped exit holes in the trunk or branches are indicators that should be reported to authorities.

mzawislak@dailyherald.com

Garlic Mustard Casts a Pall on the Forest

May 2, 2006 | Observatory | The New York Times
By HENRY FOUNTAIN

In drama, the uninvited visitor is a common plot device. Everyone is getting along swimmingly until a new character arrives and upsets the apple cart. Things quickly fall apart.

Garlic mustard, a tall weed native to Europe that was introduced to the United States in the late 1800's, is a bit like that uninvited visitor. Researchers have found that it disrupts a healthy relationship between hardwood tree seedlings and soil fungi, with results that can be disastrous for a forest.

Like other scientists, Kristina A. Stinson, who studies invasive plants as a research associate at the Harvard Forest, Harvard's ecology and conservation research center in Petersham, Mass., had noticed that native trees suffered in the presence of garlic mustard. "We thought their dependence on native fungi might play a role," Dr. Stinson said.

Many plants make use of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, which form an elaborate network of filaments throughout the soil. These fungi are a diverse group, but they all have one thing in common: they help plants take up nutrients from the soil, getting carbon in return.

Garlic mustard is a member of the mustard family, "one of the very few families that do not need to associate with mycorrhizal fungi at all," Dr. Stinson said. These species produce chemicals that have antifungal properties. Native mustards have been around long enough, she suggested, that the mycorrhizal fungi have learned to live with them. But the fungi haven't had time to adapt to garlic mustard. "It basically is killing off the fungi," she said.

In a study using soils from a forest in Ontario, Dr. Stinson and colleagues found that sugar maple and other hardwood seedlings grew much slower when the soil came from an area infested with garlic mustard than from a mustard-free area. The findings are published in the journal Public Library of Science Biology.

In studying invasive species, scientists often see a direct effect. Invasive cane toads in Australia, for example, wipe out snakes and other predators that try to eat them. But garlic mustard displays a mechanism that, so far at least, appears to be unique. "It's really a demonstration of how 'the enemy of my friend is also my enemy,' " Dr. Stinson said. By killing fungi, "it's disrupting this longstanding native mutualism."

Garlic mustard has now spread through 30 states, from Maine to Oregon, and into Canada. "When this plant shows up in a forest, the tree species themselves that become the canopy are most at risk," Dr. Stinson said. "That could have tremendous impact by changing the composition of the forest."

While the effect might not be immediate, it will occur nonetheless. "Our experiment was on seedlings," Dr. Stinson said. "But those are the future generations of forests."

Salty Logs

Modern humans may consume too much sodium, but modern gorillas often find it hard to get enough. Tropical soils tend to be deficient in the mineral and, as a result, these and other forest-dwelling primates don't get much in the plants they eat.

So they supplement their diet in different ways. Lowland gorillas, for instance, are known to hang out in swampy areas in forest clearings where there are more sodium-rich plants. But mountain gorillas have been found to have a stranger source of sodium: rotting wood.

In addition to their regular diet of leaves, stems, bark and fruits, mountain gorillas for years have been observed to eat decayed stumps and logs. Other primates, including chimpanzees and mountain monkeys, are known to eat them, too.

Rotting wood doesn't have much protein or sugar, so the behavior puzzled. Jessica M. Rothman and her colleagues at Cornell University set out to see if there was a nutritional reason for it. They studied mountain gorillas in the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda.

As reported last week in the journal Biology Letters, the researchers found that the gorillas ate decayed wood at least once a month. The pieces eaten contained much higher amounts of sodium than the usual components of their diet, and logs and parts of stumps that the gorillas avoided had far less sodium than those that were consumed.

Bad for the Birds?

Most of the debate over genetically modified crops focuses on concerns about food safety and the potential effect of transgenic material on the environment.

But researchers in Britain have looked at a much narrower issue regarding the growing of herbicide-tolerant G.M. crops: their effect on partridges, sparrows, finches and other seed-eating birds that make their homes on farmlands.

The researchers report in Proceedings of the Royal Society B that the use of broader-spectrum herbicides (chemicals that can kill just about everything except the food plant) on these crops can sharply reduce the amount of weed seeds, an important food source for the birds.

The researchers, from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and other groups, used data from studies that compared transgenic and conventional crops and analyzed the results for the diets of 17 bird species. They found that with transgenic beets and oilseed rape (canola is a variant of it), there was significantly less weed seed available to most of the species.

Perhaps surprisingly, though, with transgenic corn there was more seed available, though the amount was significant for only seven of the bird species. While the broad-spectrum herbicide used for corn kills more types of weeds, it doesn't do as good a job of killing them as the herbicides used with conventional corn. (+)

The hots, for you-Climate change comes to town

From the City Newspaper website: rochester.gyrosite.com
POSTED ON MAY 3, 2006:
By Krestia DeGeorge

The planet is warming up. What does that mean for Rochester?

The short answer is that nobody really knows.

A climate is a complex thing. Change one little part of it and you may change the whole thing --- and in unpredictable ways. Still, that doesn't mean scientists can't make some sound educated guesses about what could happen. And if any of those guesses prove accurate, the Rochester of tomorrow could be a very different place from the one we know today.

Despite the complexity of all the systems involved, there are a few easy places to begin to understand the effects of climate change in Rochester.

When it comes to deducing what the weather of tomorrow might be like, it's helpful to start with the weather of today. That's where Dr. Jose Maliekal comes in. A professor at Brockport for the past 15 years, Maliekal has a PhD in meteorology, and focuses many of his classes on climatology and climate change. He's careful to point out the inherent uncertainty in making predictions based on current predictions.

Throughout the course of an interview with City Newspaper, he kept adding qualifiers like "You never know these things for sure" and "No one can say for sure." Part of that uncertainty comes from the fact that changing a single variable has the potential to result in multiple outcomes, some of them radically different from one another. Maliekal illustrates what he means with an example:

Say you have a temperature increase. Warming increases evaporation, pumping more moisture into the atmosphere. One of two things could happen to that water vapor. First, it could form low-lying clouds. Those clouds, in turn, would have a cooling effect, blocking radiation from the sun that would otherwise heat things up. In that case, such a change would be self-correcting.

But let's say that instead of forming low clouds, the extra water in the atmosphere forms high clouds. "High clouds tend to have a warming effect," says Maliekal, since they trap existing warmth and let more of the sun's rays in. That "could accelerate the warming trend we have in place," says Maliekal. Instead of self-correcting, the system would be self-reinforcing.

(A process similar to the latter scenario has contributed to the global warming now taking place, Maliekal says. Typically, the earth reflects about 30 percent of the sun's radiation into space. Some of that is reflected off the icy surface of glaciers. With glaciers around the planet receding as temperatures rise, there's less ice to reflect radiation, and more gets absorbed by the planet, further raising surface temperatures.)

It's complex possibilities like this that lead Maliekal to say that "no one can say for sure what is going to happen," before quickly adding "We do, however, have some reasonable hypotheses about what could happen."

So what are those hypotheses? Here's one of the more surprising ones: "Should the climate change, there is the possibility that lake effect would increase," says Maliekal.

Lake-effect snow is produced when there are extreme disparities in temperature between the lake water and the atmosphere above it, he explains. If the LakeOntario is storing more heat from the atmosphere during the spring and summer and losing less during the fall and winter, its overall temperature will be warmer.

That means that, assuming we still get periods of cold arctic air, there's a higher likelihood that the area will experience the temperature disparities that create lake effect snow. (Not everyone agrees with Maliekal on this point. In 2000 the University of Michigan's Peter Sousounis authored a paper suggesting that the temperature could rise high enough that even our cold spells might no longer be cold enough to trigger the lake effect.)

But there are plenty of other changes that are likely to be less pronounced, or less surprising.

Ice cover on the Great Lakes and smaller bodies of water is dwindling, for example. (With the exception of the shallow Erie, the Great Lakes rarely freeze over completely, but cover around the shorelines has been shrinking.) What does that mean? "No one can say for sure," says Maliekal.

The same is true for the yearly hydrological cycles the Great Lakes go through. The lakes tend to swell in the spring, with rains and snowmelt runoff, then ebb to seasonal lows in the autumn months.

"Studies have shown that in recent years there has been a shift in that pattern," says Maliekal. Both the spring rise and the fall drop are happening earlier in the year. And no one's sure what that trend might mean if it continues.

Other likely changes to the local environment come with more obvious consequences. For instance, Maliekal says that Rochester, like the rest of the Great LakesBasin, will become a drier place overall. That will lead to higher extremes, he says. We'll experience both "slightly prolonged droughts and increased flooding."

The higher temperatures and relatively scarcer availability of water will affect agriculture, but it will also affect water levels in the Great Lakes. They could drop by as much as 3 feet in the next 50 years.

That change may, in fact, be the one that has the biggest impact on daily human activity in the Great Lakes basin. Ironically, while ocean shorelines around the world will be encroaching on human settlements as sea levels rise, here in the Great Lakes water levels will likely fall. In fact, Environment Canada, the branch of the Canadian government that tracks these things, estimates that the outflow of the St. Lawrence River, which drains all of the Great Lakes basin, could diminish by as much 20 percent.

The reason for the divergent fate of coastlines between oceans and inland bodies of fresh water like the Great Lakes is that the lakes are well above sea level (LakeOntario's elevation is 243 feet). And they won't receive any outflow from the melting glaciers and polar ice caps that will swell the world's oceans. None of those are in the Great Lakes' watershed.

And while droughts and lower water levels will become the norm, some of the water we still get could become more of a problem, since it will come more often in the form of extreme events, like thunderstorms. That, combined with a drier landscape, will mean more frequent and destructive flooding. With more floods and storms, erosion will become a larger problem than it is today, threatening things like agriculture and the value of waterfront homes.

Lower levels on the Great Lakes could also have an impact on commercial navigation. That in itself won't mean much to Rochester, which hasn't relied on commercial shipping as an important part of our economy in a long time. But the pressures on shipping could have some indirect impacts on this region. Environment Canada warns that dredging channels to keep commercial shipping moving apace might stir up dangerous toxic chemicals. Since plenty of the Great Lakes navigational infrastructure is upstream from Rochester, our community's LakeOntario public water intakes would be at risk.

Lower lake levels in the Great Lakes could also hit one other sector pretty hard: hydroelectric power generation. If water outflows decrease, massive projects like those along the Niagara River and Gorge near Buffalo and along the St. Lawrence in Massena could see their ability to generate power diminished, even while energy demands, if they follow today's trends, continue to spiral upward.

Besides the change in lake levels, there's one other area that stands to see a dramatic impact: the region's flora. In fact, plants are already starting to undergo changes as a result of warming that's already occurred.

Grapes are blooming an average of 6 days earlier than they did in the 1960s, while the average bloom dates for apples has shifted 8 days earlier over the same period. For lilacs, it's four days earlier. (At that rate, we'll be looking at an April Lilac Festival in the not-too-distant future.)

Plant ecologist David Wolfe has witnessed, and in some cases documented, these changes. Wolfe is a professor at Cornell's School of Agriculture, and it shouldn't come as a surprise that farmers are among the most concerned about these trends.

"Agriculture is very dependent on the weather," says Wolfe. "This might be a harmless thing," he adds, but his list of concerns seems to undermines that.

For starters, believe it or not, there's the problem of frost.

"One concern is that if the weather's getting better earlier, you could actually have increased frost damage," says Wolfe. Sound counterintuitive? It's not. While average temperatures are getting warmer, coaxing flowers to bloom earlier, that doesn't mean that extreme temperatures will become any less extreme. (Last week's temperatures that flirted with the freezing mark illustrate his point.)

That means that plants germinating and flowering ever earlier run an increasingly higher risk of being killed or damaged by late spring frosts.

The changing temperatures also hold the potential to play havoc on traditionally cold-weather crops in another way. It's a process called "vernalization." That's a fancy scientific term for something akin to hibernation in some plants.

"They need a certain number of days during the winter where the temperature remains low," says Wolfe. And those days have to be consecutive, not spread out over the course of a winter, Wolfe says. Exactly how many days, and what the threshold temperature is, varies from plant to plant, but the basics remain the same. The plant requires those conditions to produce the hormones it needs. If that doesn't happen, the plant's growth --- and the crop it yields --- can suffer. Apples are one prominent local crop that is subject to this biological requirement.

Blueberries and winter wheat are two other examples. And like the ever-earlier bloom dates, this effect is already happening now.

"For years with warmer winters we get lower apple yields," says Wolfe. "I think this past winter was [mild] enough to have that kind of effect."

The way in which global warming is occurring specifically in Western New York exacerbates this problem. While average temperatures have increased about 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit globally in the past century, they're up by 1.8 degrees here. Look just at winter temperatures, though, and the increase in average temperatures jumps to 2.8 degrees, says Wolfe.

Of course, all that warming isn't all bad. There are a few positive outcomes to be had, like extended growing seasons, which may eventually allow crops historically grown further south to thrive here. And one industry in particular stands poised to reap a good deal of benefits:

"There's anecdotal evidence that this is actually good for grapes," says Wolfe.

While North America has a few native varieties of grape, he notes, these are too sweet to be favored by serious winemakers for anything more than a few novelty wines. Instead, the wine industry favors the traditional European strain of the fruit, vitus vinifera. In the past, that might have been a problem.

"They have a little trouble with our historical winter climate," Wolfe says of the vitus vinifera grape. Temperatures of 12 degrees below Fahrenheit or lower damage the vines of the imported variety, he explains.

"We've had very, very few winters where it got that cold" since the 1970s, says Wolfe. That's about the same time wine production really took off in the Finger Lakes, he says.

Still, the downsides for agriculture probably outweigh the benefits. One reason: in addition to the challenges to plants that are built into their own biology, warming will bring a whole host of changes that they may be ill-equipped to deal with.

One of the gravest potential threats along these lines is invasive species. Insects and plant diseases, which can wipe out species of plants, and other plants species, which can out-compete them, may be able to move into a territory as climatic conditions change.

"Insects, diseases, and weeds that are currently south of us will be with us," says Wolfe.

That's a potential threat to all plant species, but typical agricultural crops may be among the most vulnerable, since "a lot of crop species have been genetically programmed to remain a certain size," explains Wolfe. That genetic programming puts crop plants at a disadvantage when competing with wild plants, which can rapidly adapt to changing conditions.

To make matters worse, "weeds will benefit a lot from warming temperatures" and higher levels of carbon dioxide, says Wolfe. "People would have to use more herbicide, since weeds would be healthier," he adds, a practice that has its own environmental effects.

Another possible problem for plants is the change in precipitation patterns.

"It's more difficult to predict precipitation than temperature," says Wolfe. Like Maliekal, he expects to see a general decrease in store for this region, with the exception of extreme events during the summer months.

"Although you might get the same amount of water as in the past, if you get it all in a few chunks you could see some short-term droughts," he says. And in areas that are outside the lake-effect belt, a decrease in snow cover could deprive the soil of insulation. That's means more freezing and thawing through out the course of the winter. While that's not good for plants, it could be even more disruptive for microbes that live in the soil. Their complex relationship with plants who share their soil is still a mystery.

"We don't really know what it does, but it has an impact," he says.

Yet another potential problem for plants is the increased heat itself. Plants, especially cold-weather crops, can suffer from something called "heat stress," which as the name implies, weakens the plant and can potentially reduce crop yields. It also means the plants will require more water, hence more irrigation, even while supplies of the precious resource will be dwindling.

(Although not as well versed on the animal side of farming, Wolfe says that the dairy industry will face similar problems, since cattle like a cool climate and are also vulnerable to heat stress. Temperatures between 45 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit are optimal for milk production. "Farmers can probably adapt," he says, "but it becomes expensive.")

All this potential for change is troubling, since all of us depend on agriculture for our food.

Food costs may go up a bit, but Wolfe says he doesn't foresee huge price spikes. And some food production may actually come back to the area for a variety of reasons. In addition to higher fuel costs, which may make shipping fruit from California (not to mention New Zealand) less profitable, our area will have relatively more water than many other breadbasket regions.

And as the temperature continues to inch upward, crops' ranges will swing northward. (How does a nice crate of Finger Lakes oranges sound?) While many of us will not see such changes in our lifetimes, that doesn't mean farmers can ignore them for now.

"Farmers are going to have to adapt," which may include making expensive investments in new equipment, says Wolfe. "Farmers who are growing cabbage today might be growing something else."

That sounds fine in theory, but at some point farmers are going to have to make the leap from one crop to another, and the process could be messy. Farmers will essentially have to make guesses about whether to change crops and when.

"Some will guess right and some would guess wrong," he says. Those decisions may await farmers in the not-to-distant future, perhaps in as little as 10 to 20 years, Wolfe says.

Yet despite that assessment, he's still relatively upbeat about the future of agriculture here.

"I don't think it's totally doom and gloom for agriculture," says Wolfe. "It'd be a little more doom and gloom" for the southeastern United States, he says, but farmers here will be able to adapt for the most part.

"The agricultural community is poised to take advantage of this opportunity," he says.

If all this still sounds remote and abstract, consider the parallel effects that changes in vegetation will have on the average homeowner. Grass and other ornamental plants will be subject to the same problems of heat stress and its attendant demand for more watering. And they'll all face the same onslaught of healthier weeds and invasive plants, insects, and diseases. (More pesticide, anyone?)

Another nasty surprise that a warming trend has in store for us: "Almost certainly the allergy season will be coming earlier," says Wolfe, since major culprits like ragweed do quite well in heat.

It's less clear how natural ecosystems will handle the shift in climate.

"The fabric of our forests and natural ecosystems is going to change," says Wolfe. But it's difficult to predict exactly how.

"It'll happen slowly, I think," says Wolfe. "Over 10 to 50 years, we're likely to see a big change." That's the time period it takes for a new generation of trees to grow up.

Some of those changes may be subtle, but others probably will not. Maples, for instance, which are responsible for almost all the brilliant colors we witness here each fall, could be out-competed here. (Imagine a fall of dull brown and wan yellow.)

Like the farm, lawn, and garden ecosystems tended to by humans, natural areas face a host of new pest and competitors.

"They could become more and more dominated by invasive species," says Wolfe.

And like the climate itself, ecosystems are complex, which means small shifts can leave them vulnerable to big changes.

"One of the complicating factors is that every species is different" in its sensitivity to climatic changes, says Wolfe. "That creates the problem of synchrony." Wolfe is talking about the timing of the finely-tuned mechanisms that ecosystems evolved over time to sustain themselves. For example, if flowering plants continue to bloom earlier each year, but the bees they rely on to pollinate them don't adjust as quickly, those plants might not be able to reproduce.

"That would be devastating to a plant," Wolfe says. Such looming possibilities mean that ecosystems "could be pretty badly disrupted."
Hot flashes

What to expect --- when you're expecting climate change:

• More (or less) lake effect snow

• Uglier fall foliage

• Fewer (and less healthy) apples and apple orchards

• Better wine and more varieties of it

• A bigger, badder allergy season

• More expensive food

• More local food

• More floods

• More droughts

• More bugs

• Fewer (and more scraggly) lawns

• Scarcer water

• Less hydroelectric power