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American Trees Are Moving West
- all_usernames 9y agoMy first thought upon looking at the map: they're moving away from the coastline.
- d4l3k 9y agoThe "no one knows why" seems to be a stretch. It mentions in the article that western areas are less moist and moisture levels have been increasing. Seems like they're pretty confident that's the reason.
- firethief 9y agoYeah, the <title> of the page is the non clickbait version: "Climate Change Is Forcing Trees to Move Northwest". Completely at odds with the headerline...
- wmeredith 9y agoWe know why. It's climate change. It says so in the freakin' article! r/savedyouaclick
- piotrkaminski 9y agoActually, no, it doesn't. The subtitle (!) is: > Climate change only explains at least 20 percent of the movement. So what explains the other 80%?
- djtriptych 9y ago"at least 20%"... so at most 100%?
- _delirium 9y agoPretty much, yeah. "Fei and his colleagues argue that at least 20 percent of the change in population area is driven by changes in precipitation, which are heavily influenced by human-caused climate change". Could be more than 20%, but that's what they have solid evidence for so far.
- unethical_ban 9y agoThat is a reference from the site that shall not be named. The conversation is better here without the memes.
- Jabanga 9y agoHigher atmospheric CO2 levels allow plants to survive in lower precipitation environments. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130708103521.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/07/130708103521.h...
- fotbr 9y agoI wonder what affect 30+ years of "free tree" programs that various states and environmental clubs run for arbor day and such has had. Growing up in the midwest/great plains, ever year in elementary school we were given trees to take home and plant for arbor day. Little sticks, maybe a foot long with a small handful of roots, wrapped in damp paper towels to survive the trip home. Someone says "oh, white oaks grow alright across the entire state, and their acorns are a good food source for the local wildlife" and they send out a few thousand of them for arbor day via elementary schools. Some of them even survive. 30+ years later, those trees have dropped millions of acorns, most of which feed squirrels and deer or rot away, but some turn into trees. Rinse and repeat every year. Seems like you could, over the course of nearly 40 years, unintentionally shift the population of a tree species.
- manarth 9y agoThe interesting question for me is this: is there a reason to believe human seed distribution is biased towards the west? If it is human-influenced, what are the determinative factors? Do humans favour certain seeds/trees in this selection? Are the seeds geographically distributed evenly, or is distribution biased towards the west? Is the westward growth bias caused by seed distribution, or locale viability? If humans weren't distributing the seed, are there other vectors that would provide an equivalent function?
- Someone 9y agoI'm not saying it explains everthing they found (they may even have corrected their stats for it), but the area they studied seems closer to the east coast then to the west coast. Moving long distances east is hard there for trees. First, they would hit larger populations centers; then, the ocean.
- piotrkaminski 9y agoSo basically they're moving west because there's more space there? ;)
- thatwebdude 9y ago
- ouid 9y agowhat the hell does "only explains at least 20%" mean?
- nonbel 9y agoIts just another one of those fallacies about statistics people came up with. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explained_variation#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explained_variation#Criticism
- mabbo 9y agoWhat really should interest/worry you about this is the ecological changes that will follow. Different animals and birds have special relationships with certain types of trees. When forests change, animals change. This can have a compounding effect, as animal changes can change forests in turn. A few small changes here and there can be the catalyst for much larger changes over time.
- cmurf 9y agoTrees have been around for a very long time, hundreds of millions of years. Much longer than we have been. Possibly something they "know" at a genetic level is a sort of risk assessment where species are calculating better long term odds for the species based on local trend. They could be migrating toward areas where less adaptation is needed to survive; or maybe even a substantial but available path to adaptation via recessive genes. This migration isn't the first. They've been doing this all along.
- manif3std3stiny 9y agoManifest destiny?
- yellow103 9y agoDoesn't say how much of this is due to new trees on the leading edge compared to less trees on the other end. In the analogy of a line of people, adding people to one end will move center that way as long as you don't add more to the other. The trees could grow each way or shrink each way and still show a movement, as long as one side is doing so at a different rate.
- fgrimes 9y agoHarumph.
- sanatgersappa 9y agoWhy not? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NZ04BG7TfA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NZ04BG7TfA
- justforFranz 9y agoCan you blame them? Look at how people vote East of the Pacific coast states. It's disgusting. If I were a tree, I'd move immediately.