We can fix this with a tax and taking away your freedom and life choices, you know
Maple syrup season came weeks early in the Midwest. Producers are doing their best to adapt
Jeremy Solin doesn’t need a jacket right now on his family farm in northern Wisconsin. There’s no snow blanketing the dead leaves in the grove of sugar maples. There, pails already hang beneath spiles in the trunks that have started dripping sap. And the ground is muddy — a sign of the spring thaw.
But the timing is all off. “It’s just very disorienting,” he said.
He isn’t the only maple syrup producer feeling this way. In many parts of Wisconsin and the Midwest this year, the warmest winter on record drove farmers and hobbyists alike to start collecting tree sap for maple syrup a month or more earlier than they normally would.
Experts say that the shift in maple syrup season could be one clear indicator of the ways climate change is affecting trees, but they also think the practice serves as an important motivation to preserve forests. Producers have deeply personal ties to their land, whether they are Indigenous producers serving their community or have family-run operations and want to leave a legacy for the next generation. That relationship between people and their maple trees may ultimately make people more willing to adapt and be resilient in the face of seasonal changes.
Funny how they never mention that we’re experiencing an El Nino. Oh, and that warm periods happen. Na, they have to blame this on you, because, otherwise, how do they take your money and freedom?
With drier summers and less snowfall contributing to groundwater, Solin, who also works for the University of Wisconsin’s division of extension, says the unpredictability is the biggest challenge for sustaining maple syrup operations like his. And the lengthening of the trees’ growing season, with an earlier start and later end to warmer weather, could affect the sap too. So Solin is concerned about water, about the increasingly dry summers in his area and what that could mean for continuing to make quality syrup.
“You can be doom and gloom, but you’ve also got to think about solutions,” Suzukovich III said. He pointed out that Indigenous people have been coming up with those kinds of solutions for thousands of years, giving maples a break when they needed it and diversifying the kinds of trees that they tap besides maple.
Oh, wait, the Native Americans have noticed this happening for thousands of years? So, it’s not unusual? It’s just part of the natural order? Huh. Doom cancelled.
How aobut just describe how they make the maple syrup. That would be sweet.
Global warming is changing the distribution of plants and animals as well as their temporal responses! Big deal. Few plants migrate although as it warms some that grow best in a specific temperature range will change their distribution. For example, we’ll see sugar maple forests advancing northward. Unlike the manatee, man will adapt to global warming.
Collecting maple sap earlier is not THAT big a deal. My dear friend, a farmer in SE MO, taps his maples each year and boils/evaporates the sap to maple syrup. It takes 40-60 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of maple syrup.
But the timing is all off. “It’s just very disorienting,” he said
Stupid is as stupid does.
Climate change is one of the environmental stresses that requires evolutionary responses. To stop climate change is to deny all species their chance to evolve and becomr fitter.
Good point, Jan. Same with global thermonuclear war! Although the soot, dust and ash is unlikely to be as great as from the Chicxulub asteroid crater some 66 million years ago, it’s likely the stresses from resulting nuclear winters, radioactive fallout and severe infrastructure disruptions will force many species to adapt or die. This leaves ecological niches for other species to expand. So Mr Putin may be doing all of biology a favor by starting a nuclear holocaust!
Don’t ignore that global warming, while occurring over a very brief period in geological terms, it still occurs more slowly than thermonuclear war. As you well know, macroevolution is a slow process, and evolutionary fitness is a relative, not necessarily an absolute function. The genetic makeup that leads to greatest next gen offspring is said to be more fit.