THE last Ice Age killed off all of the coniferous trees in Finland. After the ice sheet retreated, trees from elsewhere – like the Scots Pine – gradually colonized the vacant niche. On a smaller scale, the same thing happened in many high mountains of the Earth’s temperate regions, including the Sierra Nevada Range of California. We can learn a thing or two about climate history from Alpine dendrology.
In the Sierra Nevada the White Bark Pine is typically the highest-elevation pine tree marking the tree line.
Round Top Lake, at 9,340 feet elevation in the Northern Sierras near Carson Pass is my favorite place for informal climate history research. Here White Bark Pine trees grow in tight clumps around half of the lake; as shown in this photograph from Kevin Gong’s website. http://kevingong.com/Photography/RoundTopTrees.html
Here the pines in any given group are nearly identical genetically; they reproduce asexually. A new tree trunk will grow outward from an existing root system, and then curve upward. Because the seeds that do sprout at this altitude can’t endure the harsh winters.
Walking along the trail, one can see a small gap between the pines near the lake and the ones farther down that have grown from seed.
Question: After the last Ice Age, how did the pines reach the lake in the first place?
Answer: At some time after the last Ice Age, the Northern Sierras were somewhat warmer than they are now. The pines sprouted from seeds at that time.
Several years ago, I was surprised to see a knee-high pine seedling a short distance outside the half-circle of pine clusters hugging the lake. However it did not survive.
If the Northern Sierra climate heats up in a big way, I’d expect individual seed-sprouted pines at Round Top Lake to eventually supplant the clumps of small trees.
Perhaps over the last thousand years, the clones have been gradually accumulating random mutations which would put them at a competitive disadvantage with their surviving seed-sprouted progeny?
When I see isolated pine seedlings that grow to 6 feet in height, then I’ll believe that the Northern Sierra climate is the warmest that it’s been since before the last Ice Age.
Naturalist Jeffrey P Schaffer devoted a couple of pages to Round Top Lake in his hiking guidebook, The Tahoe Sierra. http://www.amazon.com/Tahoe-Sierra-Natural-History-Northern/dp/0899972209
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More from Larry Fields here: http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/author/larry-fields/
The Whitebark Pine (Pinus albicaulis; family Pinaceae) occurs in the mountains of the Western United States and Canada, specifically the subalpine areas of the Sierra Nevada, the Cascade Range, the Pacific Coast Ranges, and the northern Rocky Mountains (including the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem). The Whitebark Pine is typically the highest-elevation pine tree of these mountains, marking the tree line. Thus, they are often found as krummholz, trees dwarfed by exposure and growing close to the ground. In more favourable conditions, trees may grow to 20 m in height, although some can reach up to 27 m… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitebark_Pine
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Ellegant – (is that the right spelling?)
Larry would you mind terribly if I forwarded this to Tom Knudsen, the Sacramento Bee’s climate change guy?
He’s under the impression that bark beatles are proof of something or other.
Oh and as long as I have your attention, there’s a Tea Party protest against AB32 coming up on August 28th, at the Capitol building in Sacramento.
If your having any of it Larry you’d be a welcome addition.
James/Larry
Seems you in the US have one serious problem emerging – http://netrightnation.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1251790:the-rise-of-the-obama-police-statean-early-demonstration&catid=1:nrn-blog&Itemid=7.
Great to see empirical fact yet again countering pseudoscientific hyperbole.
Gosh,
This post makes Jennifer look like a denialist skeptic Exxon-hugging add-your-expletive.
It’s almost as if there’s solid, mounting evidence that a warmer past, back when there were no “dark, satanic mills”, Earth was a friendlier place to live than now.
This post even makes you wonder who the “denialists” are. Perhaps the denialists are those who deny that a warm, cozy planet is a good thing.
My personal preference, which I would not force on anyone, is not to live on an iceball.
Nice one Larry. We need all the perspectives we can get.
Louis, I’ve lived in a police state my whole life. Caleefornayiaeh!
Don’t believe the newsies telling you it’s all free love and pot farms.
It’s buckle up, keep two hands on the wheel, and don’t so much as touch the white line.
Don’t even dream about touching the whiteline or it’s sirens and lights in the rearview. Have you been drinking sonny? Not a drop officer. We’ll be needing you to step out of the vehicle and do some toe touches for us.
In front of the Capitol isn’t a problem.
It’s the trip home without getting a traffic ticket, that’s the trick.
Louis Hissink “Seems you in the US have one serious problem emerging…”
Just as bad in Canada, Louis. Unprecedented powers have so far been granted to the Vancouver Olympic Committee (VANOC) for the 2010 Winter Games. Sections of the city are being cordoned off as areas where people cannot display signs. Protesters are being directed to Bejing-styled ‘protest areas’. The homeless are being shunted off to areas where the world cannot see the way we treat them in good, old Vancouver. Also, all flights from small communities to Vancouver International have been canceled. The best part is that we taxpayers get to pick up the billion dollar tab for this two-week, capitalist party.
A few years ago, when Suharto came to town, people were forbidden to display anti-Suharta signs on their own property. Suharto had asked that his bodyguards be armed so they could shoot protesters. Protesters gathered on the other side of a restraining fence were tear-gassed by the RCMP. When our erstwhile prime minister, Jean Chretien (aka John Cretin) was apprised of the tear gassing (pepper spray), he quipped, “For me, pepper, I put it on my plate.” Besides having a complete lack of sensitivity to the rights of Canadians, his English was pretty bad.
Those are the same RCMP who recently killed the Polish guy at Vancouver International Airport with a taser, and who killed a prisoner by shooting him in the back of the head while detained. Of course, they investigated themselves and found nothing wrong. Fortunately we had an independent commission (the Braidwood Commission), lead by an ex-judge, who ruled that tasers do indeed kill, recommending that taser use be severely limited. The RCMP officer in charge of the taser slaying of the Polish guy killed a motorcyclist while the cop was driving drunk. He had his children in the car and fled the scene, claiming later than he went home and had a drink.
Louis,
That’s what too much democracy does for ya!
Jen,
I think this story PROVES AGW. Where have all the glaciers gone?
Larry,
There are some nice trees near me that are sort of like that. Antarctic Beech [Nothofagus moorei]. They are thousands of years old that have slowly expanded from the original tree only by suckering because of the similar situation you mention.
The story goes that the originals date back to Gondwanaland when Australia, Antarctica South America et al were all conjoined which is going back a bit but it is probably just a good story. They are, however, closely related to the SA version, Nothofagus antarctica.
As their world has warmed and moved closer to the equator, they have adapted quite well and survive as close to the equator AFAIK as around 28 Lat. and 3,000 feet alt.
I think they provide very good evidence of the adaptability of species to CC.
It was also thought until recently that these Nothofagus could only reproduce by suckering but I understand that they will grow from seed but do not, naturally.
We always called them niggerhead beech but can’t anymore.
Larry and Spangles
The Casuarinas have also developed this adaption. The trees are either male or female. I have a large clump of C cristata (male) trees north of my house, about 1 ha in area, and obviously suckering from roots. Judging by the slow progress of the outlying suckers, that clump must be thousands of years old. There are a few female trees scattered in the vicinity, the nearest about 1 km away.
This suggests the seedlings germinate only in good years, and may need several good rainfall seasons to establish. Your white bark pines apparently need an extended period of warm seasons to establish from seed. Interesting stuff.
Helen,
I’m always a sucker for a Casuarina. The Australian Oak. I think the C. cristata is what we call the Belah which grows out west.
I have C. torulosa, littoralis, equisetifolia and cunninghamia and what I like most about them is they are the food source for the Glossy Black Cockatoo which I still have [but not often, being rare and endangered].
In my search today I found Glossy Black chewings of the C. torulosa fruit for my birdo meeting.
Do you get black cockatoos feeding in your Casuarinas?
I suppose I should more correctly refer to them as Alocasuarinas these days.
The plaintive wails of yellow-tails
And wattle trees in ruins.
The secret tracks of glossy blacks
In torulosa chewin’s.
looking on the map at Round Top Lake I see it is within walking distance of Caples Lake, Carson Pass, and the Pacific Crest Trail.
Nessled in by Kirkwood Ski lodge and Silver lake along the Mormon Emigrant Trail.
This is a tourist trap of the High Sierra. The playground for San Franciscans and history buffs out to get a taste of the great outdoors.
There are a lot of people who walk by Larry’s subject matter on a daily basis, well at this time of year at least.
Most of the year it”s covered by 40 or more inches of snow, but it’s besides the point.
It’s not remote or desolate, like the White Mountains, where the hockeystick team drew their tree core samples from the bristle cone pines. That place has miserable access.
The thing is there are literally thousands of witness’ to this bit of empiracle evidence. You can go right up and look at it for the price of a tank of gas.
And the people who regularly do that sort of thing, day walkers and backpackers, they are the exact people we need to impress.
A camcorder film of the trees at Round Top Lake, with Larry giving a narrative of what we are looking at, and what it means in the scheme of global warming, presented in online format or even by local television, would rupture the climate change spell for millions of Californians.
My God the schools bus city kids up there for a week of camping every year. Well at least they use to – not really sure about that anymore.
This is golden. Imagine you are a kid from the big city, on your one trip to the mountains where you went with all your school chums, there is the evidence that global warming is false.
Imagine you see it on a filmstrip, your old familiar haunts, with the lake you skipped a rock in as the backdrop.
There’s no way the Al Gore movie will find traction with a kid after that.
And it’s just the sort of hands on info that will sway the liberal who heard the global warming speal, but still had a niggling doubt in the back of their mind. Something they never spoke of for fear of offending their compatriots. This would draw them out.
Gordon,
Don’t feel lonely. Australia is about to indulge itself with a similar human rights law so that we can enjoy all these new-found freedoms and equal oportunities, too.
[what the world needs now] [is gov, big gov.] [it’s the only thing that there’s just too little of]
Larry
Seems the last ice age happened alot quicker than previously accepted – http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/world/Last-Ice-Age-happened-in.4351045.jp/
Apparently it happened in one year – rather catastrophic I would aver.
Now to find the cause.
James Mayeau wrote:
“Larry would you mind terribly if I forwarded this to Tom Knudsen, the Sacramento Bee’s climate change guy?”
Thanks, I’d be honored.
James Mayeau also wrote:
“A camcorder film of the trees at Round Top Lake, with Larry giving a narrative of what we are looking at, and what it means in the scheme of global warming, presented in online format or even by local television, would rupture the climate change spell for millions of Californians.”
If you do the driving and camcordering, I volunteer. But in all fairness, I’m not at all photogenic, and may be the most boring speaker on the planet.
By the way, my academic background is in analytical chemistry, not biology.
Spangled,
I’ve seen some awesome online photos of an Antarctic Beech grove. (Lamington NP?) A part of me was mildly surprised not to see a dinosaur in at least one of the pictures. If I ever visit Australia, Antarctic Beeches would be a definite must-see.
Helen, Can you please send me some photographs of your casurianas with a short story for posting? (And I don’t necessarily need to disclose specific location.)
Larry, Can you please send me some photographs of that clump of white pine bark trees – after your next visit.
If you do the driving and camcordering, I volunteer. But in all fairness, I’m not at all photogenic, and may be the most boring speaker on the planet.
I don’t have a camcorder or a car,
but besides those two niggling little details I’m totally ready. Let’s shake up the world.
Blah.
Here’s my email anyhow, in case fortune shines from unexpected corners.
You look kind of like Maxwell Smart to me. Boring depends on subject matter, actually a boring speaking voice would work for this subject.
One man’s boring is the next guy’s sober, studied, and reflective.
Jennifer,
You betcha! But at the moment, I’m working through a health issue, and am not sure when the next hike will be.
Tried to html the email address through, but it doesn’t work that way for some reason.
Domaye77542-at-peoplepc – dot- com – that aught to do it.
Larry, I have a Cannon powershot, supposed to take 1200 pictures before it runs out of memory. That should be enough visuals, huh.
I’m thinking the pics can be stitched together like a slideshow. Then you can do a powerpoint presentation.
When you feel up to it.
The car thing is still a problem, but I’m working on it.
I hope those healths problems are on the mend Larry.
Louis wrote:
“Seems the last ice age happened alot quicker than previously accepted – http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/world/Last-Ice-Age-happened-in.4351045.jp/
Apparently it happened in one year – rather catastrophic I would aver.”
That link appears to be dead.
12900 years ago, the Younger Dryas stadial also came on fairly rapidly (from a geological perspective). Natural climate change can be much more rapid than our “unprecedented” albeit piddling round of global warming in the 1980s and 1990s. Here’s a link to the Wikipedia article. http://tinyurl.com/lu5xlm
Lets hope another super volcano doesnt erupt soon..when Toba erupted 70,000 years ago it brought on a mini ice age very quickly…potentially yellowstone could go any time now ( on a geological scale)
Speaking of super-volcanoes… In SE part of California, we have an almost-super volcano, the Long Valley Caldera.
http://tinyurl.com/ryj6ht
It’s biggest past explosion was supposed to be half as large as the biggest at Jellystone.
Larry
“Published Date: 02 August 2008
By angus howarth
THE last ice age 13,000 years ago took hold in just one year, more than ten times quicker than previously believed, scientists have warned.
Rather than a gradual cooling over a decade, the ice age plunged Europe into the deep freeze, German Research Centre for Geosciences at Potsdam said.
Cold, stormy conditions caused by an abrupt shift in atmospheric circulation froze the continent almost instantly during the Younger Dryas less than 13,000 years ago – a very recent period on a geological scale.
The new findings will add to fears of a serious risk of this happening again in the UK and western Europe – and soon.
Dr Achim Brauer, of the GFZ (GeoForschungs Zentrum) German Research Centre for Geosciences at Potsdam, and colleagues analysed annual layers of sediments, called “varves”, from a German crater lake.
Each varve records a single year, allowing annual climate records from the region to be reconstructed.
I did a search on “Bing” : Last-Ice-Age-happened-in and got the various references to the article.
Larry & Louis, try:
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/world/Last-Ice-Age-happened-in.4351045.jp
Spangles,
Thanks – And I wonder what happened to the earlier url…….
This will put a cat amongst the pigeons since Norse Legends also describe a Fimbul Winter that came suddenly, suggesting that some globally serious happened at the time.
I’ve posted an updated and expanded version of this posting at Anthony Watts’ blog.
http://tinyurl.com/y9jl8c6