HAPPY EARTH DAY 2018!

Watercolor of Eastern redbud leaves

We celebrate our planet Earth today.  We see the connection of all the life forms in it.  Each of us can play a role in the health of our Earth.  Thinking about this led me to look at a an area of environmental science that I knew little about: phenology (not phrenology, the pseudo science of bumps on the head). 

Phenology measures the timing of cyclical biological events of all living things. It includes observing periodic plant and animal life cycle events and how they are influenced by seasonal change, climate variations, habitat, elevation, and weather itself.  The study includes tracking the timing of leafing out of plants, the emergence of flowers, the arrival of migrant birds, and the emergence of insects.  

We count on scientists to let us know about climate changes and dangers, and they have sophisticated tools like remote sensors on orbiting satellites like the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) and the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) that calculate amount of green vegetation and they have found that their satellite data match ground observations. Still those of us on the ground need to pay attention too. There have always been individuals who in their own small area collect important data about the health of their environment.  For example, Henry David Thoreau compiled his own data set of the leaf out of trees in Concord, Massachusetts in the mid-nineteenth century. I remember when we had a house in New Paltz how descendants of the Smiley family measured the waters in the Shawangunk ridge as well as noted leafing and other natural events in the Mohonk region over many decades and this work is continued by the Shawangunk Ridge Biodiversity Partnership.  

Each of us can take an interest in an area near where we live.  As part of Earth Day, it is a good project to go outside and notice the trees that are beginning to leaf out in your area.  In fact, a friend of mine has a young tree-loving son who is keeping a notebook with dates for when trees begin to leaf out in Forest Hills where he lives. In Riverside Park, the Callery pears, the redbuds, crabapples, and kwanzan cherry trees are beginning to bloom, and soon they will leaf out.  Birds are building nests and insects will emerge.  Spring will come.  

For most of us, leaves are the way we identify trees and know of their health.  For me, drawing leaves is cathartic, even meditative, but I don’t know very much about the secret underground lives of trees and it turns out that that may be where a lot of the action is taking place. Environmental scientists are finding out about roots and how root systems are really communication devices for trees to connect, feed each other, and even warn each other of dangers.  I recently heard Peter Wohlleben, author of The Hidden Life of Trees, talk about his remarkable findings about how trees communicate: 

“Tree roots extend a long way, more than twice the spread of the crown. So the root systems of neighboring trees inevitably intersect and grow into one another…usually there are fungi present that act as intermediaries to guarantee quick dissemination of news.  These fungi operate like fiber-optic internet cables…The fungal connections transmit signals from one tree to the next, helping the trees exchange news about insects, drought, and other dangers. Science has adopted a term first coined by the journal Nature for Dr. [Suzanne] Simard’s discovery of the `wood wide web’ pervading our forests” (10-11).

Wohlleben was originally a forester who was involved in chopping down forests and replanting them for industrial purposes. He questions what he used to do and has become a forest advocate and an above ground voice for the trees.  He tells us, “Trees live their lives in the really slow lane, even when they are in danger.  But this slow tempo doesn’t mean that a tree is not on top of what is happening in different parts of its structure” (4).  He does suggest that trees can mount their own defenses, but these days they may need some help from us.  Earth Day is a good day to think about that.  As Jane Goodall says, "Every single individual makes some impact on the planet every single day. And we have a choice as to what kind of difference we are going to make."