Merry Christmas!

The brats are celebrating on the other side of the world! Love you!! Don't those two brothers look just like peas in a pod!?

A couple of days ago I went back to the Dillon Library for pictures of their pine trees.

They look so thin, yellowed and even brown, I can't understand how people can ignore them. A few years ago, I knew a little girl who loved to play hide and seek in a grouping of evergreens. There was enough space in between to weave around them, running at top speed, invisibly.

I indulged her in this game because she enjoyed it so much, even though it made me anxious because I was afraid that, should she decide to run off, I wouldn't realize until she could be already at quite a distance away.

This is because each tree was so dense, I couldn't see even a bit of color from her clothing when we were on opposite sides of a tree. Now, I challenge anyone to find a single evergreen in New Jersey that is that dense. Every one I can find, without exception, is so thin (if not bare) that it is easy to distinguish a person on the other side.

Naturally, there is an abnormal production of cones, and the lichen is colonizing the inner branches.

They started to decline noticeably a little over a year ago, and now it is so rapid that they surely can't be viable much past this season. This is a good venue to demonstrate how they are deteriorating because they are planted widely apart, enabling a good view of their condition.

Not a very cheerful holiday message, I'm afraid.

But if they're happy I'm happy!

HoHoHo!

A humor break in honor of the holiday!

Calling all URWANS

Several years ago I put up a fence to prevent the deer from eating everything in my garden. This baby slipped in somehow last summer and has been hanging around ever since. Yesterday she stood still and stared at me, waiting, as though she is hungry. I used to think of the deer as vermin, because their population was out of control. But now I grieve for them. I took a picture, and then left out food near the barn, before I even read this.

When I looked above her - dang, there was yet another tree with its bark hanging off. If you're new to this blog and have no idea what I'm talking about, click here first.

After that I took a little detour from my usual route, down a quiet dirt road, one of the few unpaved remaining in this area.

The snow and sky were a rare and stunning sight, but the pine trees...not so much, they are all in various stages of thinning.

This is another location, like along Black River Road, where it is plain to see that palatial homes which were once discretely sequestered behind healthy stands of trees and underbrush are now visible from the public byways.

The pine in the center has no needles left at all.

The owner of this formerly invisible home is on the Forbes list of billionaires.

But the trees in his hedgerow are falling like dominoes, I suppose high walls will be the next recourse.

Here's another beautiful, formerly private home. Many of these trees are actually pines - but without their needles, and teeming crowded understory, the house is visible. Soon the handsome large conservatory on the right will be clearer to view.

Many pines like the one on the right are well beyond thin.

Here's the approach to yet another magnificent home. This enchanting estate belongs to the heirs to the oldest tobacco company fortune in the United States.

Shortly beyond it, I came upon the former dairy farm which is now the headquarters of the Upper Raritan Watershed Association. Their mission, according to their website, is "...to ensure the protection of the natural resources of the Upper Raritan Watershed through education, advocacy, land preservation and stewardship."
In light of that, particularly the "advocacy" part, I wrote some time ago first to staff, and then to members of the Board of Directors, asking them what URWA is prepared to do about the fact that the vegetation in the watershed they are pledged to protect is dying off with mind-numbing rapidity. Well, I got no answer from any of them and so I figured, things must be just dandy over there. But oops I discovered, not exactly.

It looks more like they are guardians of a tree cemetery than a nature preserve.

You have to wonder what they are thinking when they look at their own headquarters, never mind the rest of the watershed.

Their trees are festering with lichens just like everywhere else.

And where the coverage is heaviest, the bark is splitting and branches are broken.

In front of their office building a magnolia has only half its crown left.

And what is still there, is rotting.

The tree next to it is breaking apart also.

At the side of the parking lot, this pine tree is on its way to oblivion.

And the cedars adjacent to it are thinning and turning yellow.

Here's one of the larger trees that remain, a maple with it's bark turning black, and peeling away from the limbs.

Here are views of the crown, note the dry rot on the right, the fresh splits on the closest branch,

and of course our spectacular lichen.

All through the woods are sights like this.

I have been writing to many people - scientists, government agencies, publications, and environmental groups. I wrote to members of my own township government to ask what we as a community should do to save our ecosystem, and not one of them answered either.

Sights like this white pine trunk in the center, which hasn't got a single needle on its branches, are making me feel fierce and furious about our so-called leaders. I'm referring to people who have declared their commitment to serve their community, either as paid staff or volunteers or elected officials, and yet the most important challenge we face to the very existence of our civilized society, they prefer to ignore. Instead of protecting our precious habitat they instead are presiding over its destruction.

This tree looks like the apple tree in the Wizard of Oz, the angry one that talks and started throwing fruit. If this one could talk, it would say in very rude language that the directors and staff of URWA, and the Tewksbury Township committee members, and the entire US and state level Environmental Prostitution Agencies and the Department of Environmental Prostitution and the liars at the Department of Agriculture should either start doing their jobs or resign in disgrace.

Oh but what will they do? Why, they'll plant baby trees like this maple. Notice it still has leaves clinging to the branches. That's because in the autumn, leaves don't simply fall off. There is a process where the tree actually pushes them off, and that takes energy. This sapling didn't have the energy, and it's not going to leaf out next spring.

And this baby pine is a perfect example of what conifers do when they sense their own demise - they put all their energy into producing cones. Tragic, isn't it? Like a teenager becoming pregnant because she sees no other future for herself.

Hunger

I found this story reproduced at the always intriguing blog, Market Skeptics. Wasn't I just saying...? "From my window this morning I am watching a deer wander slowly through the woods on the hill above Wit's End and I think, soon, the creatures outside - the deer, the bears, the squirrels and opossums and raccoons, will all go mad, because they won't be able to find food." 12/12

West Virginia's wildlife faces winter of food shortages

By John McCoy

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Wildlife officials say there's a good reason motorists are seeing more road-killed animals this fall.

"There isn't much out there for them to eat," said Randy Tucker, a biologist for the state Division of Natural Resources. "When animals have to travel to find food, they sometimes cross roads. When they cross roads, they sometimes get hit."

A serious shortage of mast -- nuts, fruits and other wildlife foods -- promises to make the road-kill situation worse than it otherwise might be. DNR biologists recently completed their Mast Index Survey, an annual assessment of the state's wild food production. Tucker said this year's mast crop is the worst in the survey's 40-year history.

"There's always some mast out there, and there are always some areas of relative mast abundance," he explained. "But what is out there this year is really spotty. Overall, the food situation is dismal."

In a normal year, shortages in one type of mast would be compensated for by abundances in another. Last year, for example, acorns were relatively scarce but hickory nuts and beechnuts were plentiful. Sassafras and greenbrier were hard to find, but crabapples and hawthorn were present in abundance.

This year, every wildlife food item except dogwood is running below the Mast Survey's long-term average. Beechnuts, for example, are running 46 percent under their long-term average; walnuts, 23 percent; hickory nuts, 22 percent; white oak acorns, 48 percent; chestnut oak acorns, 64 percent; black and red oak acorns, 42 percent; scarlet oak acorns, 32 percent; black cherry, 30 percent; apples, 66 percent; and crabapples, 39 percent.

"Ordinarily, you don't get shortages of hard mast items and soft mast items in the same year," Tucker said. "This year we did. It's kind of a double whammy."

Not even dogwood, the lone mast item that exceeded its long-term average, can be considered abundant. It's up exactly 1 percent from normal.

"The problem with dogwood, too, is that there isn't nearly as much of it as there used to be," Tucker said. "A disease, dogwood anthracnose, has killed off a lot of trees. So even a relative abundance of dogwood isn't exactly good news."

Biologists expect the shortage to have short-term and long-term effects on Mountain State wildlife. Squirrels and other small mammals will suffer on the highways. So, to a lesser extent, should deer and bears. But wildlife officials' main concerns are for what might happen during the upcoming winter and the following spring.

"Wildlife use mast to store up energy reserves for the winter," Tucker explained. "With food so scarce this fall, animals will enter the winter on a lower nutritional plane. First of all, they'll have to expend more energy simply to find the little bit of food that's available. And even when they find it, they won't have as much to eat as they usually do.

"If we have a really hard winter, some animals won't have the energy reserves they need to survive harsh weather conditions. If we get a late freeze or a big snowstorm in March or April, there's a good chance we might get some winterkill, especially among deer."

Tucker also expects the mast shortage to reduce animals' breeding success.

"Ultimately, the condition in which animals come through the winter affects breeding," he said. "Animals that enter the winter on a low nutritional plane are going to have very low reserves when the breeding season comes along the following spring."

Female bears and deer, which become pregnant in the fall and deliver their young in the spring, also stand to suffer from the current food shortage. Malnourished sow bears sometimes reabsorb their fetuses while in hibernation rather than give birth. Doe deer might bear one fawn instead of two.

"A lot of the outlook for deer will depend on how early the trees 'green up' next spring," Tucker said. "Those fawns are getting ready to drop by mid-May. If we don't get an early green-up, it will affect the does' carrying of fawns."

DNR officials generally avoid using the term "mast failure," but Tucker said there's no other way to describe the current situation.

"The grocery store [for wildlife] is pretty empty right now," he said. "It's hard to look at the situation and not call this a mast failure. A winter with really bad weather will only elevate the seriousness of what we're starting to see now."

Leave it to the Swedes

The Swedes are on top of this issue (and you can order the full movie here), but according to the US EPA, emissions that are precursors to acid rain and ozone in our country are way, way down. Do I believe this? I'm struggling...

Flabbergasted

Thanks to a labyrinth of links and correspondence from the kindness of strangers, I have finally arrived here.

This is the most astounding discovery I have made on this long and rather agonizing journey to discover the truth as to why the lovely majestic trees I have admired all my life are dying.

Notice that almost all of these research projects are long defunct and there is very little going on recently. And ask yourself WHY have inquiries come to a virtual halt, and WHO is intimidating scientists and foresters from reporting the truth.

Hey, if I die suddenly, call the US Dept of Agriculture or the Department of Environmental Prostitution or Exxon Mobile or anyone involved in the obscene profits to be had from biofuel production, and ask them, why?

Snowbound Reading

Ozone Damage on Morning Glory Plant (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Massachusetts Amherst)

RPauli, researcher extraordinaire, has sent me this link to a lecture about CO2. In it, the good professor states that one of many methods scientists employ to deduce how high the levels of CO2 were in the atmosphere at different prehistorical times is by studying fossil leaves. Leaves from plants that existed during times with high levels have fewer stomata to soak up CO2, whereas in times of lower CO2 they have more stomata to increase the uptake. Having too many stoma in times of high CO2 would be a bad thing, I surmise, because he also states that the leaves simultaneously lose water molecules through those same stoma when they are absorbing CO2.

Which gives me a clue about understanding this article that I have been puzzling over for a week or so, which says the following:

Plants take in the carbon dioxide they need for photosynthesis through microscopic breathing pores in the surface of leaves. But for each molecule of the gas gained, they lose hundreds of water molecules through these same openings. The pores can tighten to save water when CO₂ is abundant, but scientists didn't know how that worked until now.

A team led by Julian Schroeder, professor of biology at the University of California, San Diego, has identified the protein sensors that control the response. Enzymes that react with CO₂ cause cells surrounding the opening of the pores to close down they report in the journal Nature Cell Biology online December 13.

The research isn't really about whether high levels of CO2 might damage plants, but rather about how to harness this mechanism to genetically modify crops - so that's why it has been suggestive but not definitive for my purpose of trying to understand what is killing trees. However having listened to RPauli's lecture, I am wondering if CO2 levels are actually the root cause because they are rising at much higher rates than plants can adapt to by limiting the number of stomata in their leaves. So perhaps trees are dying because their leaves are losing water because they have too many stomata for the current level of CO2 in the atmosphere! That is certainly how they have looked the last two summers - wilted.

Here's another provocative study, which has this to say:

“As human activity continues to raise atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, a better understanding of how plants respond to carbon dioxide is becoming imperative,” said Julian Schroeder, a professor of biology at UCSD who directed the project. “Our results provide new insights into how an increased concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide leads to changes within a plant cell that trigger the closing of the stomata—the breathing or gas exchange pores in the leaf surface.”

And, as usual, concludes we just don't know much:

“These molecular mechanisms are like fundamental parts of machinery,” explained Young. “It's hard to predict what an instrument will do, if you don't even know anything about the parts that it is made from.

Similarly, this tantalizing report also examines, tangentially, the relationship between CO2 and the behavior of stomata, as it affects the nitrogen and water cycles, where a co-author concludes:

"Our environment and quality of life depend on less uncertainty on this front."

On the other hand:

This Science Daily article says:

“When ozone enters the leaf through the stomatal pores, it damages the plants photosynthetic machinery and basically causes green leaves to lose their color, a process called chlorosis,” said Julian Schroeder, a professor of biological sciences at UC San Diego and one of the principal authors of the recent study. “Plants have a way to protect themselves and they do that by closing the stomatal pores when concentrations of ozone increase.”

While this protective mechanism minimizes the damage to plants, he adds, it also minimizes their ability to photosynthesize when ozone levels are high, because the stomatal pores are also the breathing holes in leaves through which carbon dioxide enters leaves. The result is diminished plant growth or at least less than one might expect given the rising levels of carbon dioxide.

Some scientists assessing the impacts of rising greenhouse gases had initially estimated that increased plant growth generated from extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could sequester much of the excess atmospheric carbon in plant material. But in a paper published last July in Nature, researchers from Britain’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research concluded that the damage done to plants by increasing ozone pollution would actually reduce the ability of plants to soak up carbon from the atmosphere by 15 percent which corresponds to about 30 billion tons of carbon per year on a global scale---a dire prediction given that humans are already putting more carbon into the atmosphere than plants can soak up.

And here is a strong statement about the deleterious effects of ozone:

"Heat waves, droughts and fuel prices are just a few reasons for the current global food crisis that is making headlines around the world. Research by William Manning of the University of Massachusetts Amherst indicates that rising background levels of ozone in the atmosphere are a likely contributor to the problem, lowering the yield of important food crops, such as wheat and soybeans.

'Plants are much more sensitive to ozone than people, and a slight increase in exposure can have a large impact on their productivity,' says Manning, a professor of plant, soil and insect sciences. 'The new ozone standard set by the U.S. EPA in March 2008 is based on protecting human health, and may not be strict enough to protect plants.'"

So, maybe it's some diabolical combination of rising CO2 and ozone (and ethanol emissions). I wish somebody would figure it out before we don't even have any viable seeds left.

Formerly Private Parts

Two lovely daughters will be away over Christmas so I actually got to have all three together to celebrate early!

We had puppy visitors, and of course I had to make a buche de noel, replete with meringue mushrooms, for dessert.

It was a small but splendid feast.

The next day (yesterday), was clear and sunny, so I seized the opportunity to take some pictures ahead of the impending blizzard.

One of the best indicators that trees are in wholesale decline is the number of houses that can now be seen from the road, which were formerly completely masked by vegetation. So many trees have died and been removed that this originally private place is now wide open to public view. Not only can you see the once-shrouded house, you can see all the way to the cottage in back.

The trees that do remain along this road are obviously severely compromised.

Most have been colonized by the lichen.

Almost all of them look stunted and malformed.

And others are completely dead.

This property has a large house, a caretaker's cottage, and barn. None were visible from this bridge over the Black River until recently.

Black River Road parallels the river but it used to be you would never have known it, because you couldn't see the water...until the trees started collapsing.

This enormous mansion isn't so private anymore.

And neither is this one.

But no wonder, the native trees along the road are clearly decayed. A zoom into the crown shows what is going on up there.

Desiccated branches like this are ubiquitous. In fact it was impossible to find a tree along this route that didn't have some percentage of rotting limbs.

Fallen trees are everywhere to be found.

And what you don't see are those that have fallen and been removed.

Pretty fungus find a home on a felled specimen.

The owners of this formerly private place spent in the six figures to landscape.

But no amount of money is sufficient to preserve their privacy against a toxic atmosphere.

Not when the indigenous trees have open wounds like this.

This is a much more modest home that was tucked away behind conifers. Even though it's fairly close to the road, the screen was impenetrable until the needles started rapidly shedding over a year ago.

This was a solid barrier for the almost 30 years I have lived here.

But clearly they are not going to recover from this degree of needle loss.

Many of the branches are completely bare.

Looking across the river, the Pottersville Deli is now visible.

And no wonder. Those pines that stand between the Deli and the river that aren't already completely bare soon will be.

The important thing to note is the trend. I am not certain of what chemical reactions are occurring to kill vegetation, but I am certain that this trajectory is only going one way.

In front of the Deli, this maple has the usual black bark, which has recently started falling off in chunks.

In addition to turning black, the bark is host to a couple of kinds of lichen.

This sort of raw exposure is becoming familiar of late, perhaps the cold weather is making the bark pop off. It's easy to find pieces at the base of trees now.

Now lets take a gander at the trees around the Pottersville branch of the Peapack-Gladstone Bank.

There are a few trees around the little parking lot, and every single one could be a poster case for tree decline.

An examination of the first reveals a seriously split trunk and another unsettling trend, patches of bare earth. The branches on high are losing bark.

This tree appears to be crumbling.

We are expecting quite a winter storm and I wouldn't be at all surprised to see many broken branches from the weight of the snow.

Here is yet another seriously damaged tree, in front of the Purnell School.

The campus used to be obscured but now you can see the buildings.

And how are the shrubs faring? This yew looks horrid.

And this one is worse.

The remaining needles are scorched, and the lichen is spreading.

These pines that once concealed a backyard and the firehouse beyond are dying.

All this surrounding one little bank!

Heading east from the village is one of my favorite rows of lichen-encrusted trees.

One after the other, they are each solidly in its grip.

Now you know the lichen likes dead things, because it grows on rocks, and here makes interesting patterns on the rails of the fence.

Quite pretty, really!

But their presence seems to go in lockstep with decaying branches.

This line at the top of Pottersville Road is one of the most explicit examples - although there are so many others, I could spend all day every day taking pictures of this phenomena.

I quite like this one. By the time I got here, the light was fading, but it's got particularly brightly colored versions.

And with the red vines of a climbing hydrangea, it's almost Christmasy!

Of course, it's quite peculiar that the hydrangea is budding out, and even more peculiar that the daffodils I first noticed over a week ago are continuing to grow.

If they bloom I will be thrilled.

Was Copenhagen a failure? This blogger has a negative opinion of the outcome, and I mostly concur. I didn't for a minute expect a legally binding agreement, especially not one that genuinely takes into account the science. Perhaps it is okay as a first step - at least, every one of the participants acknowledged to the world that climate change is being caused by human activity and must be stopped.

However the lack of any concrete action makes me feel it is even more important to get people to realize they are being impacted in their own backyards. That's why I write this blog. We are destroying not just remote rainforest habitats and exotic expendable animals.

We are destroying our own trees, the foundation of our ecosystem, right now. If we don't stop, we will have famine everywhere in the US. Rich and poor will suffer with ultimately very little to distinguish their agony.

George Monbiot had a good column in the Guardian about an even larger issue than climate change - changing human nature.

RPauli sent me this link about tree aspiration, which more or less boils down to the fact that nobody, not even scientists, know what mysterious processes will be affected as we tinker with the composition of the atmosphere. Which is disturbing.

And here is yet another story about ocean acidification, the "evil twin" of climate change.

I am looking forward to taking pictures of snow, for fun!