Maple Syrup and Climate Change

CURWOOD: Theres nothing like real maple syrup on a pancake or waffle, and these days technology has boosted the yields of sugar maples – as long as the weather cooperates. Sugar bush owners in the Northeast and Canada are finding the weather more and more erratic, with record cold followed by record heat, gyrations that that interrupt the flow of sap. And thanks to warming, the sugaring season is already about ten percent shorter than it was a few decades ago. Also, long-term federal climate predictions suggest rising temperatures could wipe out most northeastern maple groves by next century. But right now producers arent too worried as maple syrup prices are high and in many places the sap is flowing just fine. Julie Grant of the public radio program the Allegheny Front has our story. [OUTDOORS AT MAPLE FARM] GRANT: Jason Blochers livelihood each year largely depends on the weather in February and March. Hes the third generation in his family to run Milroy Maple Farms in Somerset County, on Pennsylvanias southern border, just a few miles from Maryland. BLOCHER: You cant outguess Mother Nature, and she controls everything in this business. GRANT: It takes warm days and cold nights to get sap flowing through a sugar maple. [TAP DRILL] GRANT: They start drilling tap holes in the trees when daytime temperatures get in the 40s, and nights are still below freezing. When Blocher was a kid, they would tap in late February and early March. But he says thats changed in the past ten years. Now, they usually tap earlier as much as month earlier. And the timing is more erratic. Like most producers, Blocher remembers the winter of 2012 there was a thick layer of snow in his maple forest. And then, right as syruping was starting, temperatures shot up into the 80s it was the warmest March on record. BLOCHER: So we went from fighting our way through three or four feet of snow, and anticipation of a very good season, because of that heavy snow pack, to one of our poorest seasons we have on record because we had such a drastic change in the weather from cold, deep snow to too warm and in a matter of two weeks to three weeks, it ruined our season. New technologies helps sugar producers pull much more sap from the maple trees. (photo: Julie Grant) GRANT: Milroy Farms wasnt alone. Syrup production around the northeast U.S. was down 40 percent in 2012. Erratic years like that arent a surprise to Dave Cleaves. Hes the climate change advisor at the U.S. Forest Service, which means hes often the bearer of bad news. CLEAVES: God, in this job Im in, people hate to see me coming. They run like hell. GRANT: About fifteen years ago, the Forest Service published whats called the Climate Change Tree Atlas. And what it found didnt look good for sugar maples in the Northeast. CLEAVES: We will see it gradually disappear. Or become less prominent. GRANT: Cleaves says southern Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Maryland are on the southern edge of large scale maple syrup production. He says as the climate changes, theyre the first places that will have troubles with maple trees. CLEAVES: Because there are other more aggressive and adaptive southern species that are always there ready to take off and regenerate. GRANT: Milroy Farms owner Jason Blocher says his maple grove grows along Mt. Davis, the highest point in Pennsylvania, which gives trees the colder temperatures they like, so he doesnt get too worked up about climate change. BLOCHER: Oh, you hear about that all the time. And the global warming. But I think the sugar maple is a very hardy tree, and very adaptable. So I think under slight changes and so forth, it will adapt. GRANT: And some of the top maple syrup researchers in Vermont and New York agree with him. Temperatures in the northeast already have risen an average of twodegrees Fahrenheit since 1970, and they say maple syrup production is going gangbusters. [VACUUM TUBING] GRANT: Blocher is like most producers these days, he uses vacuum tubing to pull sap from the maple trees. This, coupled with other technologies, allows him to double production in half the time it took his parents. Michael Farrell is a maple syrup expert at Cornell University, and runs a sugar bush in northern New York. In his book, the Sugarmakers Companion, he says newer forest models, which take factors other than climate into account, show that things dont look as bad as the Forest Service predictions. Farrell says his own PhD research, looking at maple trees in the forest mix, backs that up. FARRELL: Were not getting replaced by oaks and hickories up here in the Northeast, its very unlikely that thats going to happen. And the foresters down in the Midwest and Mid Atlantic, where theres a lot of oak and hickory, theyre concerned that theyre not getting the regeneration of oak and hickory, and a lot of them consider sugar and red maple invasive species down there. GRANT: But thats not what the Forest Service is seeing in the long term, 85 years from now, in the time frame of a trees life. Dave Cleaves says maple producers and researchers may be experiencing good times now, trees arent falling over and dying. But forest service studies, that look at changes in the woodlands every few years, dont find many maple saplings in the Northeast. Jason Blocher's farm sells maple syrup and butter and candy. (photo: Julie Grant) FARRELL: When they actually get down on the ground and count the seedlings by species, then they get an idea of what is the future forest likely to look like, because then were looking at the babies here. GRANT: Cornell researcher Michael Farrell says the biggest danger to young sugar maples is deer, which can eat at the saplings. And syrup producers, like Jason Blocher, are more concerned about invasive insects, like the Asian Longhorned Beetle, than warming temperatures. But the Forest Services Dave Cleaves says problems like these are intertwined with climate change. CLEAVES: Its not just the changing climate, itself, that impacts, it works through these stressors that are already there. Say its moisture stress on the forest if it gets too dry, or if it gets wetter and moister, and thats more conducive to insect and disease proliferation, then its working through insect and disease. GRANT: At Milroy Farms, Jason Blocher says theres nothing he can do about global warming, so he doesnt worry about it. But some forest researchers go so far as to call the maple tree a poster child for climate change in the Northeast, because they say its a resilient tree, that might not make it, unless efforts to cut greenhouse gases take root. CURWOOD: That's Julie Grant of the public radio program the Allegheny Front.

CURWOOD: Theres nothing like real maple syrup on a pancake or waffle, and these days technology has boosted the yields of sugar maples – as long as the weather cooperates. Sugar bush owners in the Northeast and Canada are finding the weather more and more erratic, with record cold followed by record heat, gyrations that that interrupt the flow of sap. And thanks to warming, the sugaring season is already about ten percent shorter than it was a few decades ago. Also, long-term federal climate predictions suggest rising temperatures could wipe out most northeastern maple groves by next century. But right now producers arent too worried as maple syrup prices are high and in many places the sap is flowing just fine. Julie Grant of the public radio program the Allegheny Front has our story. [OUTDOORS AT MAPLE FARM] GRANT: Jason Blochers livelihood each year largely depends on the weather in February and March. Hes the third generation in his family to run Milroy Maple Farms in Somerset County, on Pennsylvanias southern border, just a few miles from Maryland. BLOCHER: You cant outguess Mother Nature, and she controls everything in this business. GRANT: It takes warm days and cold nights to get sap flowing through a sugar maple. [TAP DRILL] GRANT: They start drilling tap holes in the trees when daytime temperatures get in the 40s, and nights are still below freezing. When Blocher was a kid, they would tap in late February and early March. But he says thats changed in the past ten years. Now, they usually tap earlier as much as month earlier. And the timing is more erratic. Like most producers, Blocher remembers the winter of 2012 there was a thick layer of snow in his maple forest. And then, right as syruping was starting, temperatures shot up into the 80s it was the warmest March on record. BLOCHER: So we went from fighting our way through three or four feet of snow, and anticipation of a very good season, because of that heavy snow pack, to one of our poorest seasons we have on record because we had such a drastic change in the weather from cold, deep snow to too warm and in a matter of two weeks to three weeks, it ruined our season. New technologies helps sugar producers pull much more sap from the maple trees. (photo: Julie Grant) GRANT: Milroy Farms wasnt alone. Syrup production around the northeast U.S. was down 40 percent in 2012. Erratic years like that arent a surprise to Dave Cleaves. Hes the climate change advisor at the U.S. Forest Service, which means hes often the bearer of bad news. CLEAVES: God, in this job Im in, people hate to see me coming. They run like hell. GRANT: About fifteen years ago, the Forest Service published whats called the Climate Change Tree Atlas. And what it found didnt look good for sugar maples in the Northeast. CLEAVES: We will see it gradually disappear. Or become less prominent. GRANT: Cleaves says southern Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Maryland are on the southern edge of large scale maple syrup production. He says as the climate changes, theyre the first places that will have troubles with maple trees. CLEAVES: Because there are other more aggressive and adaptive southern species that are always there ready to take off and regenerate. GRANT: Milroy Farms owner Jason Blocher says his maple grove grows along Mt. Davis, the highest point in Pennsylvania, which gives trees the colder temperatures they like, so he doesnt get too worked up about climate change. BLOCHER: Oh, you hear about that all the time. And the global warming. But I think the sugar maple is a very hardy tree, and very adaptable. So I think under slight changes and so forth, it will adapt. GRANT: And some of the top maple syrup researchers in Vermont and New York agree with him. Temperatures in the northeast already have risen an average of twodegrees Fahrenheit since 1970, and they say maple syrup production is going gangbusters. [VACUUM TUBING] GRANT: Blocher is like most producers these days, he uses vacuum tubing to pull sap from the maple trees. This, coupled with other technologies, allows him to double production in half the time it took his parents. Michael Farrell is a maple syrup expert at Cornell University, and runs a sugar bush in northern New York. In his book, the Sugarmakers Companion, he says newer forest models, which take factors other than climate into account, show that things dont look as bad as the Forest Service predictions. Farrell says his own PhD research, looking at maple trees in the forest mix, backs that up. FARRELL: Were not getting replaced by oaks and hickories up here in the Northeast, its very unlikely that thats going to happen. And the foresters down in the Midwest and Mid Atlantic, where theres a lot of oak and hickory, theyre concerned that theyre not getting the regeneration of oak and hickory, and a lot of them consider sugar and red maple invasive species down there. GRANT: But thats not what the Forest Service is seeing in the long term, 85 years from now, in the time frame of a trees life. Dave Cleaves says maple producers and researchers may be experiencing good times now, trees arent falling over and dying. But forest service studies, that look at changes in the woodlands every few years, dont find many maple saplings in the Northeast. Jason Blocher's farm sells maple syrup and butter and candy. (photo: Julie Grant) FARRELL: When they actually get down on the ground and count the seedlings by species, then they get an idea of what is the future forest likely to look like, because then were looking at the babies here. GRANT: Cornell researcher Michael Farrell says the biggest danger to young sugar maples is deer, which can eat at the saplings. And syrup producers, like Jason Blocher, are more concerned about invasive insects, like the Asian Longhorned Beetle, than warming temperatures. But the Forest Services Dave Cleaves says problems like these are intertwined with climate change. CLEAVES: Its not just the changing climate, itself, that impacts, it works through these stressors that are already there. Say its moisture stress on the forest if it gets too dry, or if it gets wetter and moister, and thats more conducive to insect and disease proliferation, then its working through insect and disease. GRANT: At Milroy Farms, Jason Blocher says theres nothing he can do about global warming, so he doesnt worry about it. But some forest researchers go so far as to call the maple tree a poster child for climate change in the Northeast, because they say its a resilient tree, that might not make it, unless efforts to cut greenhouse gases take root. CURWOOD: That's Julie Grant of the public radio program the Allegheny Front.