Our climate's changing, and so are hardiness maps (Maine)

[jpak]

http://bangornews.com/news/t/lifestyle.aspx?articleid=156106&zoneid=14

For eight years during the 1850s, Thoreau observed the phenology of flowering plants growing in the fields and woods around Concord, Mass. He entered detailed observations into monthly charts, recording the first flowering dates of several hundred species. He was fanatic about this project, a trait that prompted his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson to suggest that he had wasted his life away in the woods. "I cannot help counting it a fault in him that he had no ambition," Emerson said. "Instead of engineering for all America, he was the captain of a huckleberry party."

Sixteen years after Thoreau’s death, a Concord shopkeeper, Alfred Hosmer, continued Thoreau’s work. From 1888 to 1902, Hosmer recorded the first flowering dates of more than 700 species. Like his predecessor, he created handwritten tables from his field notes. Hosmer died in 1903.

A century later, Boston University scientists Richard Primack and Abe Miller-Rushing initiated their own study of flowering dates, copies of both Thoreau’s and Hosmer’s records in hand. According to an article in the October 2007 issue of Smithsonian magazine, "Primack and Miller-Rushing compared three years of their results with those of Thoreau and Hosmer, focusing on the 43 plant species with the most complete records. They learned that some common plants, such as the highbush blueberry and a species of sorrel, were flowering at least three weeks earlier than in Thoreau’s time. On average, they found, spring flowers in Concord were blooming a full seven days earlier than in the 1850s — and their statistics clearly showed a close relationship between flowering times and rising winter and spring temperatures."

Like Thoreau and Hosmer, who observed plants in the wild, veteran gardeners have noticed that garden plants are blooming earlier. So have the creators of the National Arbor Day new 2006 arborday.org Hardiness Zone Map. Based on the most recent 15 years’ data available from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, this new map shows that many areas of the U.S. have become warmer since the 1990 USDA Hardiness Zone Map was published.

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[MADem]

1. It is November, and there are still tomatoes on the vine. Not many, but a few. NT

[jpak]

2. I bought fresh sweet corn and tomatoes in central Maine last week

The old timer who grew it said it was the latest he's ever had them...

[stuntcat]

7. I picked tomatoes and jalapenos yesterday

And my hardiness zone is also changing.
If I was a simpler person I'd think this was great- warmer weather, more time to grow and play with the flowers! If only.

[mitchtv]

3. Britain's first olive orchard has been planted

in the last year or so, I remember reading recently, that is significant.

[Bitwit1234]

4. I live on the Iron Range in Minnesota. Now this is about 100 miles

from the Canadian border near the tip of Lake Superior. We have lived here five years. In just the short time we lived her the winters have become milder. It is now November 3rd. And the landlord has a riding lawmower and he had to cut grass yesterday. The grass is as green as if it was the last of August. And I wonder what it is like in the Minneapolis area about 300 miles or so south. We have not even had 1/2 inch of snow. And mostly this time of year there is at least 2 feet and it stays there till April.

[NNadir]

5. Actually turkeys are blooming in Maine, more prolifically than ever.

I recently heard lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of stuff about blooming turkeys in Maine.

I believe it.

I've heard lots and lots and lots and lots of turkey talk about Maine, which is apparently a place where people can drive and drive and drive and drive around in big circles to feel real smug, in a consumerist brat kind of way.

[jpak]

6. Maine's turkey population actually has "bloomed" recently - they're everywhere (due to mild winters)

The state sanctioned a fall turkey season for the first time in its history this year.

[happyslug]

9. This is the result of HOW wild turkeys are manged.

My experience is with Pennsylvania NOT Maine, but the whole East Coast underwent a similar deforestation, and reforestation process. This is the key to understanding WHY Turkeys are becoming more and more common since about 1990 throughout the Eastern US. Turkey population has expanded in the Eastern US for two related reasons. First, the change of Rural America land area NOT held by larger farms. Many workers on farms in the 1800s lived on subsidence farms independent of the larger and more productive farms. As Agricultural mechanization these workers were NOT needed and could no longer find work on the larger farms. In Search for work many left the Rural areas and moved to the Cities. No one wanted their Subsistence Farms so they were just abandoned (many NOT even sold for taxes when the taxes came due in the 1920s and 1930s). This abandonment started early (about 1890s) but increased from 1900-1950 (much of it in the 1920s and 1930s). Most of these subsistence farms were NOT wanted by larger farms do to how small the subsidence farms were and hard to combined with other farms.

At the same time of this move by Rural Subsistence workers to the city, you had another set of deforestation occurring throughout the United States. This was logging. Logging had occurred since Colonial times but increased in the years after the Civil War and before 1900. This deforestation caused by the Logging added to the acreage being abandoned after 1900. The actions of these two groups, the abandonment of subsistence Farms AND the Deforestation of Forests on land NOT later used for Agriculture affected how forests changed over the last 100 years.

My father who came of age in the 1930s, hunted a lot of doves, bobwhites etc. When I hunted with him in the 1970s he noted how the population of these birds have DROPPED since his youth. The reason was simple. Bobwhites, doves etc love open abandoned open fields, like the fields abandoned by the subsistence farmers when they moved to the City (and the cut down trees by deforestation). By the 1960s these fields had turned from semi-open fields to second growth timber. Young short trees with plenty of cover. Deer thrived in this type of forest, while Bobwhites declined (and doves survived). Thus in the 1960s you read stories about how they was more deer in the US then had been in 1492. The country as a whole had become deer friendly.

By the 1970s the forest was changing once again, this time to full growth "Mature" Forests. Deer do NOT thrive is such forest, the trees are to tall for the Deer to eat and the trees block sunlight from hitting the forest grown so nothing grows under the trees. A lot of Deer hunters have complained about the drop in deers since the 1960s, and this is why. The forests are no longer as deer friendly as the forests of the 1950s. On the other hand Turkeys thrive, wild Turkeys car fly and eat the seeds the trees produce. Thus the country as a whole do to permitting the forest to mature have produce a much better environment for Turkeys then the country has had since the 1800s. Today you have deer hunters complaining about the lack of Deer to hunt in Pennsylvania. They blame the Game Commission for permitting to many does to be taken in Doe season, they do NOT want to hear it is do to the change in the forest, they notice the increase number of Turkeys and hunt Turkeys and think the Game Commission did a great job on Turkeys, but have a hard time understanding that what made the turkey population to boom also is causing the Deer Population to drop. Turkeys will continue to expand until you see a drop in the acreage kept in Mature Forests. They is talk about increasing logging in Pennsylvania but no one wants a return to what happened in this state in the late 1800s.

The second cause of the Increase in Wild Turkey Population is a change in HOW the State's Game Commission tried to increase turkey population in the wild. In the 1970s a movement among turkey hunting groups began to cut out farm raised wild Turkeys from being released into the wild to be hunted. Such Farm raised turkeys had been produced since 1900 as part of an effort to provide hunters with turkeys to hunt. The problem was being farm raised they were medically treated to make sure they did not die on the farm. When released into the wild they would mix with the actual wild turkeys and spread what ever diseases they had to the Actual Wild Turkeys. The net result was drop in wild turkey population. The Actual Wild Turkeys would get the whatever the farm raised turkeys had and be killed off by the Disease, and the Farm Raised Turkeys were NOT wild enough to survive the Winter. The end result was a drop in the number of Wild Turkeys.

It took over 20 years to get the various State Game Commission to STOP releasing Farm Raised Turkeys. This was done by the early 1980s and you then started to see a slow increase in actual wild turkey population. The Game Commission also adopted a policy of trapping existing wild Turkey in areas where they were plentiful and moving them to areas where Turkeys had existed in historical times, but did not exist in the 1970s. This help speed up the spread of Wild Turkeys.

The above two factors are the biggest reasons turkey population has expanded over the last 30 years. The maturing of the Forests AND the ending of releasing Farm Raised Turkeys. Together this has resulted in the spread of Turkeys to almost everywhere Turkeys were native to in 1492 (Including the City of Pittsburgh, so even urban areas have sizable turkey populations today, something unthinkable in the 1970s).

Side note: Releasing farm raised Turkeys sounded like a good idea in 1900, hatcheries had been growing fish for a while by 1900 and the fish survived much better in the hatcheries then in the wild. Fish commissions them would release the fish for fisherman to catch. No harm seems to occur to wild population of fish, so turkeys, pheasants and other birds were treated the same. It took over 50 years for people to realized it was NOT working and was in fact HURTING. Once that was discovered it took 20 years to get people to STOP demanding Game Commission raise and release Turkeys, and another 20 years for turkeys population to grow so large to prove the harm caused by Farm raised Turkeys. Now they are going into states that have not had a Turkey population to hunt in generations (Maine). Good intentions sometime lead to bad decisions, that is why we have to be careful to what we do. Artificially raising fresh water fish works, but when it came to turkeys such practices lead to DECLINE in the number of Turkeys. The same with other "improvements" once done, the results have to be check to make sure more good is occurring then harm, and important lesson from the above history of Turkeys in the 10th Century.

[MADem]

8. Maine is much more than that smug house. You might want to spend some time there, and then make up

your mind.

I realize that Mainers and Massachusettsians spend a lot of time exchanging the 'MAINIAC-MASSHOLE' insults, but I have to say, as a Massachusettsian, I just think Maine is the bee's knees! Especially the north, up round the Canadian border--that's a land unto itself. Great vistas, and fantastic folk.

And most Mainers I know feel the same way about parts (not all, mind you) of MA.

In both states, you have to seek out the crap. You can find, easily, the delights. If you know where to look.

[kestrel91316]

10. I know, I know. The world would be a MUCH better place if people

built homes without any consideration for their energy use, and then just powered them all with nukes.

Why bother caring about what people in the future will do with all the nuclear waste that sticks around for millennia? Let it be somebody else's problem!!!!1!!!!