Canopy Roads of South Georgia

Pine pollen early this year?

Does it seem early to you to see this slash pine pollen cone on ground, and the thin film of yellow pine pollen on everything outside?

Picture by John S. Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 30 January 2013.

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Tame fire

Tame fire and tamed ashes:

Pictures by John S. Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 1 and 2 February 2013.

See nosy neighbors and county fire dept? There was no wildfire. It was merely a tame fire.

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Roots and vines

Twisty roots and vines about the same shape, and Gretchen:

Pictures by John S. Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 2013-01-17.

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Native plants in your yard for native wildlife

Nature is not something out there, apart from people. It never was, and nowadays people have built and farmed and clearcut so much that wildlife species from insects to birds are in trouble. In south Georgia people may think that our trees make a lot of wildlife habitat. Actually, most of those trees are planted pine plantations with very limited undergrowth, and in town many yards are deserts of grass plus exotic species that don't support native birds. Douglas Tallamy offers one solution: turn yards into wildlife habitat by growing native species. Since we are as always remodeling nature, we might as well do it so as to feed the rest of nature and ourselves, and by the way get flood prevention and possibly cleaner water as well, oh, and fewer pesticides to poison ourselves.

Douglas Tallamy makes a clear and compelling case in Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants

...it is not yet too late to save most of the plants and animals that sustain the ecosystems on which we ourselves depend. Second, restoring native plants to most human-dominated landscapes is relatively easy to do.

Some of you may wonder why native species are so important? Don't we have more deer than we can shoot? Maybe so, but we have far fewer birds of almost every species than we did decades and only a few years ago.

Some may wonder: aren't exotic species just as good as native ones, if deer and birds can eat them? Actually, no, because many exotic species are poisonous to native wildlife, and because invasive exotics crowd out natives and reduce species diversity. From kudzu to Japanese climbing fern, exotic invasives are bad for wildlife and may also promote erosion and flooding by strangling native vegetation.

All plants are not created equal, particularly in their ability to support wildlife. Most of our native plant-eaters are not able to eat alien plants, and we are replacing native plants with alien species at an alarming rate, especially in the suburban gardens on which our wildlife increasingly depends. My central message is that unless we restore native plants to our suburban ecosystems, the future of biodiversity in the United States is dim.

Tallamy had an epiphany when he and his wife moved to 10 acres in Pennsylvania in 2000:

Japanese climbing fern, Lygodium japonicum

Japanese climbing fern on native Smilax, and what we do about that:

Gretchen with uprooted Japanese climbing fern
Pictures by John S. Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 20 December 2012.

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Higher climate temperatures mean more and faster tree deaths

Higher average temperatures mean much more frequent droughts and trees dying faster in droughts because of the temperatures. That plus pine beetles, according to research from 2009. Forestry is Georgia's second largest industry in terms of employment and wages and salaries, more than $28 billion a year according to the Georgia Forestry Commission, plus an estimated $36 billion a year in ecosystem services such as water filtration, carbon storage, wildlife habitat, and aesthetics, not to mention hunting and fishing. Climate change matters to Georgia's forests and to Georgia.

The paper appeared 13 April 2009 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences, Temperature sensitivity of drought-induced tree mortality portends increased regional die-off under global-change-type drought, by Henry D. Adams, Maite Guardiola-Claramonte, Greg A. Barron-Gafford, Juan Camilo Villegas, David D. Breshears, Chris B. Zou, Peter A. Troch, and Travis E. Huxman, 106(17) 7063-7066, doi: 10.1073/pnas.0901438106.

All drought trees in the warmer treatment died before any of the drought trees in the ambient treatment (on average 18.0 vs. 25.1 weeks, P <0.01; Fig. 1A).

They say warmer trees dying faster in drought wasn't due to a difference in amount of water. Instead, they infer the warmer trees couldn't breathe.

Combined, our results provide experimental evidence that piñon pines attempted to avoid drought-induced mortality by regulating stomata and foregoing further photosynthesis but subsequently succumbed to drought due to carbon starvation, not sudden hydraulic failure. Importantly, we isolate the effect of temperature from other climate variables and biotic agents and show that the effect of warmer temperature in conjunction with drought can be substantial.

Our results imply that future warmer temperatures will not only increase background rates of tree mortality (13, 16), but also result in more frequent widespread vegetation die-off events (3, 35) through an exacerbation of metabolic stress associated with drought. With warmer temperatures, droughts of shorter duration—which occur more frequently—would be sufficient to cause widespread die-off.

How much more frequently? They calculated an estimate for that, too: five times more frequently. Of course, that's for the specific kinds of forests they were studying, and the exact number may vary, but the general trend is clear: higher temperatures mean more frequent droughts, like the year-long drought we just experienced in south Georgia.

This projection is conservative because it is based on the historical drought record and therefore does not include changes in drought frequency, which is predicted to increase concurrently with warming (2, 37—39). In addition, populations of tree pests, such as bark beetles, which are often the proximal cause of mortality in this species and others, are also expected to increase with future warming (7, 9, 38).

Bark beetles, such as the ones that bored into this 19 inch slash pine and spread from there to twenty others I had to cut down to prevent further spread of the pine beetles. What happens when pine beetles spread is what you see in the first picture in this post: acres and acres of dead red pine trees. Monoculture slash pine plantations may show this effect most clearly, but look around here, and you'll see red dead loblolly and longleaf pines, too.

The article is saying that if the beetles don't get the trees weakened by droughts that will be much more frequent, the trees will die more quickly of suffocation, because the temperature is higher. Higher temperatures is something that should concern every Georgian in our state where forestry is the second largest industry and our forests protect our wildlife and the air that we breathe and the water that we drink.

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Dogs in pine straw

Smile, dogs:

Picture by John S. Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 19 October 2012.

The tree behind the dogs on their right is a longleaf four years old; the rest are loblolly five years old.

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Double rainbow in the okra field

Movie: Here we are in the okra field, the rainbow (40M):

Movie: Second rainbow is bright and getting brighter (42M):

Rayonier, Altamaha, Georgia, 2012-09-08

It smelled as bad as it looked:

Picture by John S. Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 7 September 2012.

This is the notorious Rayonier paper mill near Jesup, Georgia, that Georgia Water Coalition ranked on its Dirty Dozen, 2011's worst offenses against Georgia's Water, as #2, Altamaha River: Rayonier Pulp Mill Discharge Destroys Fisheries. That report got a reaction from Rayonier, according to Mike Morrison in Jacksonville.com 8 November 2011, Rayonier acknowledges waste issues,

The head of Rayonier acknowledged Monday that there are problems with the water it discharges into the Altamaha River at its paper mill near Jesup but said the company is ahead of schedule on cleaning it up.

The Georgia Water Coalition on Saturday ranked a stretch of river in the vicinity of the mill second on its “Dirty Dozen,” a list of the state's most polluted or otherwise damaged rivers, streams, wetlands and marshes.

“We are very committed to the water quality of the Altamaha River,” Rayonier Chairman and CEO Lee Thomas said. “It's important to us, just as it is important to the people of southeast Georgia. We're working hard to improve the discharge.”

Rayonier's pollution remains famous in song and story, such as in this YouTube video.

Yellow jessamine root

A couple of French botanists came by to catalog our yellow jessamine. They want some for medicinal purposes. Up in North Carolina they heard it grew hereabouts and drove down. Contacting the Chamber, they were told Gretchen had some. She was in Valdosta and sent them out. I gave them a tour, including use of digging implements.

Pictures by John S. Quarterman for Okra Paradise Farms, Lowndes County, Georgia, 22 August 2012.

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