There Goes The Neighborhood

Midsummer, and leaves are wilting...despite plentiful rain, and moderate temperatures.  Some are singed on the edges; others are speckled with necrotic spots, many are turning limp and yellow and falling off. Stories of trees toppling are appearing with monotonous regularity in the news, including the derailment of the "Ninja" ride at Magic Mountain in California where riders had to fbe rescued by helicopter due to branches falling on the track.  Wit's End readers know I love the poetic justice in photos like this one from July 9 in Hersey, PA, that show trees smashing cars - especially when the tree exhibits symptoms of decline from absorbing pollution, like in this instance, where the bark is covered in a suffocating layer of moss and lichen.

But it is hard to describe with any flair the dull ache that resignation has become.  And it isn't the least funny anymore when deaths occur, an outcome that is becoming horrifically commonplace.  What a sudden, unexpected and cruel way to lose a loved one.  Probably many people saw the dramatic footage of a hailstorm in Russia, but not so many when it was later reported that two children died.  It wasn't from the hail itself:

"The two girls who were killed, aged 3 and 4-years-old, were taking shelter with their family in a tent when a tree fell on top of them. They suffered traumatic brain injuries that proved fatal."

Tragedy struck in the US as well, at a camp in Maryland.  This photo was taken after the storm.  Notice, that the stump in the foreground was recently cut, and was hollow inside.

"One child was killed and several others [8] were injured Tuesday as a severe storm hit at River Valley Ranch in Carroll County, officials say."  In another view, it is even more obvious that the tree that fell was also thoroughly rotted inside...and the branch lying across the table is plastered with lichen, a sign of decay.

In another photograph of the scene, there can be seen not one, not two, but three stumps of recently cut trees. And yet none of the reports of the incident think to ask what is wrong with all the trees that they have been removed.

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Just for reference, here are examples from Maryland of the size trees should get to be before they die of old age:  This is a famous White Oak in the center of the town where the camp is located.

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These are historical photos of "Big Champion Trees" in Maryland, click here for history.

The most famous tree was the Wye Oak Tree:

"The Wye Oak was the State Tree of Maryland. It was the largest white oak in the state and sprang from an acorn in the early 1500s. The state bought it from its private own in 1939.  The Maryland Department of Natural Resources website gave this account of the final days of the great tree:

'As it was a gift of nature, nature determined the big tree’s course. On June 6, 2002 the mighty Wye Oak succumbed to time and the elements as its massive trunk collapsed during a severe thunderstorm, ending the life of Maryland’s oldest citizen. At its end, the tree measured 31 feet 8 inches in circumference, was 96 feet tall and had an average crown spread of 119 feet. The main bole of the tree weighed over 61,000 pounds.'” 

What is amazing is even THAT was a premature death, according to a professional assessment:

"In 1977, a group of tree care professionals were asked to conduct an appraisal of the then 400-year-old Wye Oak, located in Wye Mills, Maryland. The tree was well known and documented as one of the largest and perhaps the oldest living white oak in the country. The tree was described as a “magnificent giant” of “spectacular proportions.”

The report concluded by stating, “this species of tree is capable of living to a thousand years and that the Wye Oak, with an established maintenance program, can probably be preserved for another 200 years."

So instead of living another two centuries as anticipated in 1977 (which would have still been 3 hundred years shy of its natural lifespan) it only lasted another quarter of a century.  

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Meanwhile, residents continue to be so surprised and appalled at the extent of damaged trees after storms that they insist there must be a tornado, somewhere, to blame...as they did in Voorhees, NJ on July 15 in an article despite a headline blaring NO tornado!

Somehow they never notice the obvious reason the trees are falling, which is that they are dying, as the screenshots from this news clip reveal, despite this:  "The NWS determined that straight-line winds, not a tornado brought severe damage in Burlington County."

But we live in a time of cognitive dissonance - look at this reporter discussing the cold snap in Minneapolis, in front of painfully thin trees that are screaming like a Greek chorus behind him, "LOOK at us for Chrissake we are dying back here!!":

Here's a random fun example of what healthy trees used to look like, at the 1930 Grand Prix in Dublin...Do you see the difference in the density of the leafy crowns, Ozonists and Ozonistas?

Is it any wonder that forests are burning like they never have before?  They are burning right across the boreal forest - the very place where the tree rings mysteriously stopped increasing in the mid-1960s even as the warming continued, leading to the infamously misattributed data jettison to "hide the decline"?

The Colorado Public Radio station ran a story, The Plants in this Garden Tell You When the Air is Dirty, about the newly planted Ozone Garden at NCAR - National Center for Atmospheric Research - in Boulder, with this photo of injured tulip tree leaves.  It reads, in part:

There are four types of plants in the ozone garden, each selected for their sensitivity to ozone. In the garden, green shoots of milkweed, snap bean, potato and cutleaf coneflower spring from the ground. The coneflower was collected with a special permit from Rocky Mountain National Park, which has experienced ozone levels above national standards, and seen plant damage as a result. 

"Some plants are going to be more sensitive than other plants," said Lombardozzi, adding that she chose these four because of their sensitivity. 

What happens when ozone levels are high? The plants breathe in the ozone just like people, and reacts in a way that causes some of the chlorophyll cells in the plant's leaves to die, turning portions of the leaves black. The plants do not typically die, but the damaged leaves fall off and new ones eventually grow back 

"It's kind of like the canary in the coal mine," Lombardozzi said.

The effect isn't instant, though – the leaf blackening depends on how long the ozone is in the air and how long the plants are exposed. At the NCAR ozone garden, the plants still look healthy, but the worst ozone pollution usually comes in later July and August.

So I took some photos around Wit's End of my own "canaries"...which is why each time I venture out and look at them lately I think, "There goes the neighborhood".  The magnolia is once again trying to reproduce out of season, while the leaves turn bronze.

Above is a tulip tree I planted about 10 years ago, with speckled leaves just like those in the article, and below is Virginia Creeper turning red well before October when it should (premature senescence).

The same is happening to the inner leaves of the katsura tree; soon it will be a shell.

After putting on a brave show this spring when, perhaps, the cold winter killed off the early anthracnose that usually shrivels the leaves of sycamore, it is setting in.  In the background are the dying ash trees, about 85 years old, and 70 feet tall at least.

 This volunteer walnut has yellowing inner leaves - they are the first to fail.

 Whole sections of the Japanese maple turn chlorotic and then swiftly shrivel up completely.

 Following is the comment I left at that news story.

Given that the damage ozone does to plants is one of the most under-reported environmental disasters in the world, this story is an excellent start towards informing people of a sleeping disaster in the making. Several crucial points were not addressed however. First, damage occurs to plants BEFORE it is visible on leaves, particularly as they allocate more energy to repair injured foliage and shortchange roots. Shrunken root systems leave plants more vulnerable to drought and wind. Second, after much study of the extant scientific research, including controlled fumigation experiments the EPA has concluded quite rightly that ozone damage is CUMULATIVE.

This means that in addition to the approximately one-quarter of net primary productivity lost annually - to both cultivated agricultural crops and wild vegetation - long lived species of trees, shrubs and perennials suffer increasing loss season after season. Third, and most importantly, stress from ozone reduces natural defense mechanisms in numerous ways rendering plants more susceptible to biotic attacks from insects, disease and fungus - all of which are, not coincidentally, major epidemics all over the world on every species and crop you can conceivably google. From coffee to citrus to coconuts to ash, elm, oak, maple, aspen and every sort of conifer, trees and other plants are falling victim to what one researcher called "the sharks that smell blood in the water".

So, far from amounting to a minor and temporary eyesore on leaves, the inexorably rising level of persistent, background ozone is causing the premature mortality of trees of all ages, in all locations. Not one single climate model factors in the loss of this critical CO2 sink, and so global warming (and wildfires, and landslides) is going to accelerate at a speed far beyond any current predictions, even though the EPA warns of this eventuality, has attempted to enact stricter standards based on this existential threat, and been rebuffed in their attempts for three years by the Obama administration.

It appears all of England may be experiencing premature senescence as this article was published 17 July:  "Nature hurtling 'helter-skelter' through seasons with signs of autumn on show."  Even I was surprised by this photo captioned "signs of autumn are beginning to be seen across Britain- view across the River Thames towards Richmond-on-Thames on June 28th" but I tracked down the agency that provided it, and it's actually from autumn 2010.  But I like it so I post it anyway.  

The rest of the pictures are from an old barn I passed by in south Jersey.

Someone was kind enough to link to my last essay A Fine Frenzy at an open thread over on RealClimate which, predictably, didn't sit well - and so in response to the criticism of my "nihilism" I left a comment that refers to the next exciting and important resource I just learned of: 

I recently bought “Global Alert” by Jack Fishman, published in 1990. Here is an excerpt I transcribed (and keep in mind that the background level of ozone is inexorably increasing):

“Not just smoke [referring to annual crop burning] but many other gases are being released into the atmosphere at an alarming rate. The earth is an enclosed system, with a wonderful proclivity to cleanse itself, but it is being taxed to the limit by the sheer number of humans and their waste products in the form of gases and manufactured chemicals. This is not speculation; it is already happening. These are the signs: In the autumn of 1988 the NYTimes published a story about the Jamaican palm trees in the southeastern United States being decimated by a disease known as yellowleaf fungus. The species may disappear from America by the turn of the century. Although the cause of the disease is a known fungus, the underlying cause is the increased ozone levels in the air, which, by placing the trees under stress, pave the way for the attacking fungus…Forest in parts of Germany are suffering from “early autumn” syndrome: they lose their leaves by late August and early September. The cause? Increased ozone levels in the air…During the sumer of 1988 American farmers lost between $1 billion and $2 billion in crops. The drought was a factor, but a sizable fraction of the losses from lower crop yields can be attributed to increased ozone in the atmosphere.

Dr. Fishman is not jumping up and down with his hair on fire. He can’t do that, because he is a scientist. But I think reasonable thinking people can take what he wrote almost 25 years ago, put it together with what he says in a talk he presented at Max Planck last December where he discusses his work in atmospheric chemistry with Susan Solomon and Paul Crutzen, on the occasion of Dr. Crutzen’s 80th birthday, and get that unmistakably acrid whiff of singed hair: 

I do not think he chooses titles with terms like: “Global Alert” and “Toxic Atmosphere” lightly.

Lastly, as far as the beetles go, keep in mind that it is abundantly documented that the most pernicious effect of ozone is the opportunistic attacks from insects, disease and fungus, which are now epidemics on every species of tree and agricultural crop around the world. People are more comfortable blaming a changing climate or invasive species, even though neither of those fully explain the onslaught of biotic pathogens, even in areas like the southeast US that has become cooler over time, where various beetles are running amuck just like in the west. There has been tremendous global trade in lumber and live nursery stock for centuries, not to mention a vast array of other goods packed in wooden crates and sawdust. If invasive species were capable of multiplying and decimating entire continents in a matter of a few years, why did they wait until the persistent background level of air pollution reached the critical threshold of 40 ppb to do so.

I highly recommend Dr. Fishman’s talk, because he traces ozone plumes back to widespread biomass burning as well as fossil fuels. And as for alarm, scientists should more than anyone be aware that it is the trend that matters, and the trend is ominous. Ominous for fruit, for nuts, for lumber, for shade, for rain, for all the animals that depend on the terrestrial biosphere. All of them, in other words, including us.

I was glad Gavin let it through moderation after the last time I was permabanned from comments!

Following are some more sections from the book which, (you are welcome!), I have transcribed, these first, from pp.  ix to xi

"Back in the 1950s, life seemed so much less complicated because we knew so much less.  We knew that fresh air was good, for example. Our parents would often tell us as they tucked us into bed at night that a day spent outdoors, playing hard, would bring a 'good night's sleep.."  And we would still like to believe that now, with our own kids, but the truth is, things have changed.  When we were kids, the air away from our large cities was good for us, it was cleaner that the air in the cities.  But today, as we approach the 21st century,the composition of the air all over has changed.  The change is subtle, hardly noticeable.  Since the early 1970s the concentration of ozone in the lower atmosphere has increased at an average rate of between 1 and 2 percent per year.  That is three to five times faster than the well-publicized increase of carbon dioxide...why is this increase in ozone so important?  Because ozone is a poison...At current concentrations, the forests in Germany are beginning to die, and our own forests in the northeast and throughout the United States are showing signs of damage at higher elevations.  

...At one time we erroneously believed that ozone pollution was actually going down during he 1970s.  We believed that catalytic converters and the use of nonleaded gasoline would solve the problem for us since the converter promised to reduce hydrocarbon emissions...virtually no progress has been made on a national level to abate widespread ozone pollution...

The atmospheric chemistry that we thought satisfactorily explained the formation of ozone pollution turned out to be more complicated than scientists in the 1960s thought.  Also, we now know that ozone pollution is not a phenomenon confined exclusively to industrialized countries.  The farmer in South America who burns his fields every year after the harvest is contributing to the ozone pollution problem just as much as the city commuter driving to work." 

p. 18  "Increased ozone levels are destroying our forests, diminishing our crops, and adding to the global warming trend."

That's as fas as I have got so far (there is much chemistry and scientific squabbling to wade through)...except I confess I did cheat and skipped to the 2004 Epilogue which, to my horror, declared the entire problem of ozone is now under control.  Naturally I wrote to Professor Fishman and asked him whether he had lost his mind if perhaps, now that it is 2014 and after the explosion of development in Asia, he might want to reconsider that judgment as premature.

No doubt resisting a temptation to laugh at me outright he replied that at the time the Epilogue was written it was still 1990, and it was presented at the time as fiction.  Unfortunately, he added, it still is.

Having seen the "Ozone-induced Foliar Injury Field Guide" last year, I already knew that Dr. Fishman and his colleagues at NASA and elsewhere have been promoting the installation of "ozone gardens" in museums and botanical gardens, to educate the public about the issue of ozone using the classic symptoms of damage on foliage as tools to enlighten the otherwise oblivious.  

So it's well and good that he is working on gardens to educate children about ozone, but since we are no longer merely "destroying" mere forests but I should say demolishing the entire ecosystem, I can't help feel but that it is an inadequate strategy to address the problem.  Probably Dr. Fishman does too, but I can't speak for him obviously.

I did ask him whether he didn't think it odd that, considering milkweed is one of the three primary plants used in the ozone gardens he designs, being known as a particularly sensitive indicator plant, nobody studying the precipitous decline of monarch butterflies has taken note...since milkweed is the only plant monarch caterpillars eat, and the only plant they lay eggs on.  So far, I haven't heard back.  Much as I admire James Hansen for taking a strong stance about policy, it grieves me that he uses the disappearing monarch as a poster-butterfly for climate change and refuses to see what the proximate issue most likely is - pesticides and pollution.  His strategy to address global warming is to plant more trees to draw down the level of CO2 - which is kinda doomed to fail if we keep emitting ozone precursors.  He reiterated this monarch theme just yesterday in his posting, and in this speech.  

Milkweed leaves - "Season long increasing exposures to ozone likewise increases in symptom development with this leaf showing ozone-induced foliar injury of 7 to 25 percent (Class 3).

The final phase of the ozone-induced injured leaf is senescence and death of the leaf. The leaf to the left is showing very severe ozone-induced injury in the 76- to 100-percent (Class 6) range.

[update:  no wonder Dr. Fishman didn't bother to answer about the monarchs, it's right here in a presentation he gave about ozone in March 2013!]

[I guess he can't make it much clearer than:  decreasing the amount of healthy milkweed will affect monarch butterfly populations unless perhaps he had said it "IS" affecting populations.]

A friend forwarded a most excellent paper which I had never seen before, much to my regret because I feel like I could have dispatched several disputes rather efficiently with it.  The title is "Tree mortality in the eastern and central United States: patterns and drivers" - naturally, I wrote to the authors (and have yet to receive a reply:

Dear Dr. Dietze and Dr. Moorcroft,

I was very sorry to see that I have only just found your research as referenced in the subject, since I have been searching for such excellent information as you studied and reported on, for several years.  Your paper is probably the best, most convincing and comprehensive account of the damage being done to forests from air pollution I have come across.

I wonder if you have been able to notice or record, or continue to study, that the decline and premature mortality from air pollution that you documented using the Forest Service data through 2005, has been rapidly accelerating since that time. I am not a scientist myself, but as a life-long gardener in New Jersey I noticed that by 2008, every single tree began exhibiting evidence of decline, and not healthy growth - and that includes all species, in all habitat circumstances, of all ages...which, I subsequently discovered, is mirrored in many places around the world.

Even more importantly, and increasingly, by the end of the growing season, it is difficult to impossible to find a leaf on any plant that does not have symptoms of ozone exposure, whether it is an aquatic plant in a pond, or a tropical decorative ornamental in a pot, or tree being watered and fed in a commercial nursery.  The only common denominator shared by this diverse vegetation is the atmosphere - not precipitation, or temperature increase, or acid soils.

Another interesting question, is about nitrogen deposition which you note leads initially to faster growth, but ultimately is harmful.  I wonder if we have crossed a point where that is damaging forests around the world, particularly because there are some lichens that appear to thrive in high nitrogen environments, that are by all indications, spreading at a truly astonishing rate in many diverse locations.

I was particularly intrigued by one passage in your paper, as follows:

"Our estimates of ozone impacts are likely underestimated for three reasons. First, ozone concentrations were only observed in about half the counties and thus had to be inferred in the remaining areas. This is problematic because ozone is relatively short lived in the atmosphere, showing a finer scale spatial pattern than NO3- or SO42-, and thus interpolation errors are likely to be higher.  Second, our interpolation scheme that sought to account for production, via population density, did not account for the dominant wind directions of transport nor differences in ozone destruction due to reactions with hydrocarbon compounds.  Third, we used the peak 8-hr ozone concentrations as our ozone estimate as this is the basis of current health standards and regulation. This is potentially problematic because plants, unlike animals, are more sensitive to cumulative exposure rather than peak exposure. Still, peak and cumulative concentrations are highly correlated (figure not shown), and we expect our conclusions regarding the effects of ozone to be qualitatively robust." 

It seems to be well-accepted in the scientific community that net primary production of biomass is reduced by ozone by approximately 20 - 25%, and that 40 ppb is the threshold at which plants are damaged - a background level that now essentially prevails everywhere in the world.  So I believe your conclusion is vitally important - it is the cumulative damage of persistent low-level exposure that is most significant - and over time far surpasses the reduction in growth for annual plants.

Add to that increased vulnerability to biotic attacks from insects, disease and fungus - which have become epidemics everywhere you care to look - and it would seem that we are on the verge of a world without trees.

My question to both of you after this rather long explanation is, at what point will the scientific community, those who KNOW about this existential threat to humanity and the rest of the biosphere, feel that the evidence is compelling enough to step forward and say so?  Do they plan on waiting until there is nothing but dead dry sticks consumed by wildfires?

I mean these questions most sincerely...and I thank you for your attention.  Any reply will be greatly appreciated.  In fact, I would be delighted to talk to either of you, if you care to call, 908-xxx-xxxx.  I don't think there is any way to exaggerate how important this is.  Many species, if not all, are going to go extinct from climate change.  But the loss of forests will accelerate the process in ways that aren't even being calculated in climate modeling.

Regards,

Gail Zawacki

The New York Times ran an elegy for the ash tree which finally allowed some recognition that the emerald ash borer is nothing new, and has only recently become an epidemic - but still not a hint of curiosity as to why that should be:

"Back in 2002, when the borers were first discovered in North America — in Windsor, Ontario — experts thought it might be possible to eradicate them. But after about six months, researchers realized that the insects had been here for years, probably decades, and had already started spreading across the upper Midwest....“Ninety-nine percent of the ashes in North America are probably going to die,” said Andrew M. Liebhold, a research entomologist with the United States Forest Service."

The cold winter did nothing to slow them down.  It doesn't explain why the ash are dying around my house and all over New Jersey, where the beetle has yet to be found despite extensive efforts to find them.

And let's not forget the beetle in California that is spreading a fungus which is killing hundreds of different species:

"If we can't control them," Eskalen said, "they are going to wipe out all our trees."

Such pests typically feast on a small group of plants. But this one doesn't seem to discriminate. 

When Eskalen and his colleagues surveyed the 335 species at the Huntington and the Arboretum, in Arcadia, they found the beetle had attacked 207 of them and 54% of these victims were infected with fungus. Nearly two dozen of the trees were being used as reproductive hosts — places where the beetles can raise their brood. 

The consequences of a wide-ranging infestation could be enormous. Common city trees, such as American sweetgum and maple, would become public branch-dropping hazards. Native trees such as the California sycamore and the coast live oak have started to succumb, creating a fire risk in the form of dead, dry tinder. Avocados and other crops could face huge financial losses.

Oh gee really?  All species at risk - up to 286 now?  Branch-dropping hazards?  Wildfire risk? Crop losses?  Duh?

Wouldn't you think these "experts" would add things up and realize that we are in a new world shaped by an unprecedented force?  I expect the researchers who have discovered that plants can detect the chewing of insects will not have enough time to figure out whether ozone impairs their innate defenses.

Meanwhile, in a move that can only be described as insane, Worcester is chopping down trees to deter the Asian longhorn beetle.  The video in this story is mind-boggling.

Meanwhile, humans continue to maul the remnants of other species remaining on earth.  The pesticides killing bees, it turns out, are working up the food chain and killing birds, and extinctions are proceeding faster than ever before.  Fungus is killing not only trees and bats, but now snakes as well, and jellyfish will soon rule the oceans.  Quelle surprise!

Oh but WAIT!  If only we hadn't, oh, started agriculture or...become capitalists or...been more conscious and spiritual, and peaceful and egalitarian - like indigenous people! - we could have averted this mass extinction event...right?  Wrong.  We.  Could.  NOT.