It's earth day and this is part of the Earth Day @ DKos Blogothon, Check out the Mothership Diary for other environmental topics.
According to US Scientists the spring we know has been creeping up in the calendar every year averaging ten days earlier over the last two decades. It is becoming warmer sooner on average and this change is directly related to climate change.
Unfortunately this change may mean spring cleaning sooner and on the bright side, sunshine and warmer temperatures sooner than later, but it also does not bode well for our native plants and animals in our varied ecosystems throughout the Country such as the temperate or deciduous Forests in North East where the scientists focused their study on this phenomenon.
The phenomenon known as "spring creep" has put various species of U.S. wildlife out of balance with their traditional habitats, from the rabbit-like American pika in the West to the roses and lilies in New England, the environmental experts said in a telephone news briefing.
"The losers tend to be our native plant species," said Charles Davis of Harvard University, who studied plant changes in Concord, Massachusetts, where American conservationist and philosopher Henry David Thoreau lived a century and a half ago.
"Climate change is not affecting species uniformly," Davis said. "Certain groups are hit harder than others, and those species that are not able to respond to climate change ... are being hit the hardest."
Natives have evolved to fill niches of an ecosystem and they are endemic only to that specific area, meaning their particular species is not found anywhere else on earth.
So, there are a few issues here. Climate change is having an impact. We know that for a fact.
Why worry about natives? What does that mean to us? And then, what's the big picture?
First I want to talk about biomes and why they matter. A biome is a large area of land characterized by environmental conditions and the plants and animals that live there. Environmental conditions includes climate factors such as temperature and precipitation which will determine things such as abundance and diversity of life, quality of the soil, etc.
Topography and distance from the equator are small and large scale indicators for what kind of biome you will find in the area you are at. (I am leaving out a lot of detail such as soil, terrestrial vs. water, etc.). Generally there are 8 to 9 major biomes with smaller ones grouped in between. They can also include biomes broken down by terrestrial, fresh water and ocean biomes.
The rain forest, which you will find right along the equator has the most abundance of plant and animal life you will find on earth because of the tilt of the earth's axis which allows for great deal of sunlight, constant and high quality sunlight throughout the year. Light means plants and with all the rain that gathers along the equator, it's the motherload of perfect conditions. It's why the rain forest is so important to slowing Climate Change because of it's ability to sequester so much carbon (it also has a ton of diversity which is important for many reasons as well).
So each biome is unique and determined by unique climate conditions. Here are stats on the other broad categories of biomes.
Temperate forests
Temperate forests occur in eastern North America, northeastern Asia, and western and central Europe. Well-defined seasons with a distinct winter characterize this forest biome. Moderate climate and a growing season of 140-200 days during 4-6 frost-free months distinguish temperate forests.
Temperature varies from -30° C to 30° C.
Precipitation (75-150 cm) is distributed evenly throughout the year.
Soil is fertile, enriched with decaying litter.
Canopy is moderately dense and allows light to penetrate, resulting in well-developed and richly diversified understory vegetation and stratification of animals.
Flora is characterized by 3-4 tree species per square kilometer. Trees are distinguished by broad leaves that are lost annually and include such species as oak, hickory, beech, hemlock, maple, basswood, cottonwood, elm, willow, and spring-flowering herbs.
Fauna is represented by squirrels, rabbits, skunks, birds, deer, mountain lion, bobcat, timber wolf, fox, and black bear.
Temperate forests are also known as deciduous because of how trees lose their leaves every "fall". The reason for this is that the leaves cells would burst when freezing (Frozen water expands). Temperate forests have great soil because of the warmer air, leaf litter on the ground and a good rate of decomposition.
Savanna
Savanna is grassland with scattered individual trees. Savannas of one sort or another cover almost half the surface of Africa (about five million square miles, generally central Africa) and large areas of Australia, South America, and India. Climate is the most important factor in creating a savanna. Savannas are always found in warm or hot climates where the annual rainfall is from about 50.8 to 127 cm (20-50 inches) per year. It is crucial that the rainfall is concentrated in six or eight months of the year, followed by a long period of drought when fires can occur. If the rain were well distributed throughout the year, many such areas would become tropical forest. Savannas which result from climatic conditions are called climatic savannas. Savannas that are caused by soil conditions and that are not entirely maintained by fire are called edaphic savannas. These can occur on hills or ridges where the soil is shallow, or in valleys where clay soils become waterlogged in wet weather. A third type of savanna, known as derived savanna, is the result of people clearing forest land for cultivation. Farmers fell a tract of forest, burn the dead trees, and plant crops in the ashes for as long as the soil remains fertile. Then, the field is abandoned and, although forest trees may recolonize, grass takes over on the bare ground (succession), becoming luxuriant enough to burn within a year or so. In Africa, a heavy concentration of elephants in protected parkland have created a savanna by eating leaves and twigs and breaking off the branches, smashing the trunks and stripping the bark of trees. Elephants can convert a dense woodland into an open grassland in a short period of time. Annual fires then maintain the area as a savanna.
The cheetah is one of just a few big cat species that is threatened by extinction. The top reasons is due to loss of prey, decline in habitat and poaching.
Arctic
Arctic tundra is located in the northern hemisphere, encircling the north pole and extending south to the coniferous forests of the taiga. The arctic is known for its cold, desert-like conditions. The growing season ranges from 50 to 60 days. The average winter temperature is 34° C (30° F), but the average summer temperature is 3-12° C (37-54° F) which enables this biome to sustain life. Rainfall may vary in different regions of the arctic. Yearly precipitation, including melting snow, is 15 to 25 cm (6 to 10 inches). Soil is formed slowly. A layer of permanently frozen subsoil called permafrost exists, consisting mostly of gravel and finer material. When water saturates the upper surface, bogs and ponds may form, providing moisture for plants. There are no deep root systems in the vegetation of the arctic tundra, however, there are still a wide variety of plants that are able to resist the cold climate. There are about 1,700 kinds of plants in the arctic and subarctic, and these include:
low shrubs, sedges, reindeer mosses, liverworts, and grasses
400 varieties of flowers
crustose and foliose lichen
Polar Bears have become one of those charismatic species that people fight about, are they endangered enough? But loss of habitat is an issue because of the ice melting sooner in this case and polar bears find it harder and harder to find food as the ice caps melt and they may actually drown before finding the next piece of ice to rest themselves on. This is serious and we have to recognize our responsibility to every species.
Deserts
Deserts cover about one fifth of the Earth’s surface and occur where rainfall is less than 50 cm/year. Although most deserts, such as the Sahara of North Africa and the deserts of the southwestern U.S., Mexico, and Australia, occur at low latitudes, another kind of desert, cold deserts, occur in the basin and range area of Utah and Nevada and in parts of western Asia. Most deserts have a considerable amount of specialized vegetation, as well as specialized vertebrate and invertebrate animals. Soils often have abundant nutrients because they need only water to become very productive and have little or no organic matter. Disturbances are common in the form of occasional fires or cold weather, and sudden, infrequent, but intense rains that cause flooding.
There are relatively few large mammals in deserts because most are not capable of storing sufficient water and withstanding the heat. Deserts often provide little shelter from the sun for large animals. The dominant animals of warm deserts are nonmammalian vertebrates, such as reptiles. Mammals are usually small, like the kangaroo mice of North American deserts.
Why are these areas so important? Well they determine a lot of things, they are why we have such a wide diversity of plant life and indicate where the best place to grow food is. They are exploited for resources differently which means we have to understand how to protect and preserve them using different strategies. And it also means that those shifts in climate change will mean those biomes will change.
It is in fact our lack of understanding of biomes that has led to some of our great environmental damages of the 21st century. You've heard of slash and burn haven't you? It's a process used in the rainforests to grow crops but it fails miserably because the soil in tropical rain forests despite all that organic matter is rather poor for growing food. Everything decomposes so rapidly and washes away so quickly that there is really nothing worth growing there except what has evolved to grow there over the years. The loss of biodiversity because of this practice and the greatest naturally occurring carbon sinks means we must find ways to preserve what's left. Good news though, Amazon Deforestation Down 51 Percent From This Time Last Year.
So, where am I going with this? Each biome and each ecosystem within that biome is unique and has native plants that have evolved to fill a niche and as climate change pushes those native plants to the brink, the more we lose in diversity.
Back to the conference call at the beginning of my piece.
Based on Thoreau's notes and research by botanists in the area, Davis and other scientists figure that about 30 percent of the plant species Thoreau saw are locally extinct and a further 30 percent are in scarce supply, crowded out by southern invaders that can now thrive in New England.
Native species just aren't able to adapt as quickly because they've become so specialized to their particular biome. They fill a niche, a particular job in the ecosystem that they've evolved do over time that if their environment changes fast enough, they might not be able to adapt quickly enough to survive.
Example, you have a humming bird that has adapted to feeding on only one particular kind of flower native only to a small area of North America (In fact, Hummingbirds are only found in the Americas, did you know that?). Because of Climate Change, it's food source becomes unable to compete with a more invasive and hardier plant, such as a reed. The poor little hummingbird is only adapted to feed to that particular flower, the relationship is so close that it is considered symbiotic and the hummingbird faces extinction due to this habitat loss.
This is why we hear talk about invasive species that crowd out the natives that may be in any particular area. These natives are unique and they are species to that particular area and may even contribute economically in some way to the local area.
General Grant, one of the world's largest living things!
Look at the Giant Sequoia's, they are only found in the Sierra Nevada's. It's the only place you will find the largest living tree in the world!
Ancestral forms of giant sequoia were a part of the western North American landscape for millions of years. Giant sequoias are the largest trees ever to have lived, and are among the world's longest-lived trees, reaching ages of more than 3,200 years or more. Because of this great longevity, giant sequoias hold within their tree rings multi-millennial records of past environmental changes such as climate, fire regimes, and consequent forest response. Only one other North American tree species, the high-elevation bristlecone pine of the desert mountain ranges east of the Sierra Nevada, holds such lengthy and detailed chronologies of past changes and events.
History in a tree. Who knows if the next native we lose could be the cure for cancer, the answer to our energy problems or the end of hunger as we know it, locked away in it's genetic make up. You may think I'm crazy, but I know I'm not the only one. Natives and biodiversity could hold for us many of the answers we are looking for and we must realize that what we do now is affecting our future, our biomes, and our climate.
On this earth day, I hope I gave a lesson on not just about spring coming early but how about how climate, weather and all those things in between makes up how the world works around you and that you just might want to learn more.
GreenRoots is a new environmental series created by Meteor Blades and Patriot Daily for Daily Kos. This series provides a forum for educating, brainstorming, discussing and taking action on various environmental topics.
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Patric Juillet will post another diary in his series "Tales from the Larder" later this evening.