MelindaTuhus.net
Connect with me on Social Media
  • Home
  • Body of Work
  • Blog
  • Contact

Climate Change Comes to My Front Yard

10/1/2012

0 Comments

 
Picture
We have a sugar maple tree in our front yard. It's not the most gorgeous specimen in the world (not like the century-old giant that sprawled over the entire big yard behind our previous home when it was brought down by a tornado in 1989), but it turns uniformly gold in the fall and is quite lovely.

One evening while having dinner on our deck, I happened to look up over the roof of the house at the maple, and noticed all the leaves had fallen from the middle of its crown, while all the rest of the leaves are still green. We called our tree guy, whose verdict after inspection was -- climate change.

I've heard for a long time that one of the expected impacts of climate change in New England is that the maple sugar industry will be decimated as the sunny days and cold nights of late winter/early spring will no longer be predictable. I've heard that the trees will migrate north. I always had a picture in my mind of the trees pulling up their roots and marching north, but the way it really happens is that trees in the southern range will just die.

Once I started really looking at the tree, I noticed that it looks sickly overall, not just at the bare spot on top. The tree guy recommended a few hundred dollars worth of treatment, which will at best just delay its demise. Then I looked down the street and saw two more maples that seem to have the same bare-on-top problem as ours. (The photo at top is of our neighbor's tree, since I couldn't shoot our own tree from a good angle.)

Several studies point to Connecticut having a climate more like North Carolina's in the next several decades, and given that climate change is happening much faster than scientists predicted less than a decade ago, I fear we'll be at that warmer place even sooner. I sure as hell will miss my maple trees.

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Melinda Tuhus

    Welcome to my blog, Leaves and Fishes. It connotes that I'll  often be blogging about environmental issues, though certainly not exclusively. It also references the idea that when people pool their resources -- even if meager --  generous and equitable outcomes can result. Finally, since  "leaves" and "fishes" are both nouns and verbs, I hope to have fun with the words I write. 

    Archives

    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.