VigourTimes – Latest News and Updates
(Newser)
–
White spruces are migrating north to places where trees haven’t grown for a thousand years. That’s not a good thing. As Quartz reports, the trees are normally found in the boreal forests that dominate central Alaska. Climate models have predicted such forests migrating northward as the planet warms, but nobody expected it to happen for at least another century. Biologist Roman Dial of Alaska Pacific University was the first to notice the shadows of the trees while browsing satellite imagery of Arctic tundra of northern Alaska. He had to hike five days to see them for himself. “It was shocking to see trees there. No one knew about them, but they were young and growing fast,” Dial recounted, per the Guardian.
Dial says the trees “basically hopped over the mountains into the tundra,” where they wouldn’t have stood a chance at taking root much less surviving until recent years. Per his study, which was published in Nature, the white spruce are moving north at a rate of about 2.5 miles per year. And while trees are generally considered beneficial for the environment, that’s not the case in the tundra, where the icy ground normally reflects heat from the sun. The trees will instead absorb heat and cause more warming. The Arctic already has plenty of that. Scientists have learned that the entire polar region is warming four times faster than the rest of the planet.
NPR reports the excess polar warming is driven by many factors, including looping behavior that scientists are only beginning to understand. For example, as permanent sea shrinks near the Arctic Circle, more open water is left exposed to absorb the sun’s heat, thus causing more ice to melt. Farther south in the boreal forests that ring the northern hemisphere, many tree species are struggling to cope with a warming climate. As white spruce and others gradually migrate northward, they leave behind an increasingly barren biome, where dead trees invite wildfire and release additional carbon into the atmosphere. (Read more global warming stories.)
FB.Event.subscribe('edge.create', function (response) { AnalyticsCustomEvent('Facebook', 'Like', 'P'); }); };
// Load the SDK asynchronously (function (d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));
FOLLOW US ON GOOGLE NEWS
Read original article here
Prev Post
Bad Bunny’s ‘Un Verano Sin Ti’ tops U.S. album chart
Next Post
Russia steps up campaign to seize key Ukraine city as war nears six-month mark
Latest Stories
Nick Cannon set to welcome his ninth child
Can you tell the apples from tomatoes?
Why monkeypox is making some college kids nervous right now
2 Women Say George Foreman Raped Them as Teens
Mortgage rates climb again, jump to 5.5% – Orange County…
Human remains found in receding Lake Mead identified as man…
Pickleball: Everything you wanted to know (and more!)
Flash Flooding Washes Out Portion of 10 Freeway near Blythe
Trending
Adorable moment a Louisiana man stops to help kitten in the…
Victorian Covid lockdowns by Dan Andrews caused loneliness…
Disgusting find inside washing machine
Is There Really a ‘Catastrophic’ National Teacher Shortage?
Home sellers in pandemic boom towns are slashing prices as…
About Author
