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Quick translation: Because of heat waves and droughts, the coniferous forests of France are drying out and dying. A few interesting points: - Plants with a sh
by jbeales 7y ago
Quick translation: Because of heat waves and droughts, the coniferous forests of France are drying out and dying.
A few interesting points:
- Plants with a short lifecycle migrate pretty quickly with climate change, (so, plants that like heat are moving further north). Trees, because they have a long life cycle, don't move at the same pace, so more are dying.
- There's a government project called "Project Giono" where people are taking seeds (& trees?) from the southern forests that are used to heat and planting them in the north. For example, they might take stuff from forests near Marseille, (on the Mediterranean coast), and plant them in the forests of Verdun, (northeast of Paris).
- There are 2 ways trees deal with a lack of water and heat: Option 1 is to close up their pores and stop transpiration. This way they don't run out of water, but may overheat. Option 2: Get as much water as possible and increase transpiration to cool off - but in this case if there's not enough water air bubbles will end up in the tree's veins and it'll essentially have a stroke.
Edit: formatting.
- avip 7y agoWhat does the article say about the pine beetle? The spread and outbreaks are well known to be correlated with higher temps.
- jbeales 7y agoIt doesn't mention it. I'm guessing it doesn't live in France. The Government of Canada says it's native to western North America[1]. [1]https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/our-natural-resources/forests-and-forestry/wildland-fires-insects-and-disturbances/top-forest-insects-and-diseases-canada/mountain-pine-beetle/13381 https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/our-natural-resources/forests-and-fo...
- realusername 7y agoI'm from around the area in France affected in this article and I never heard about any kind of "pine beetle".
- avip 7y agohttps://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-france-forests/french-forests-scarred-as-heatwaves-bring-bark-beetle-infestation-idUSKCN1UE20S https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climate-change-france-for...
- realusername 7y agoAh I see what you mean now, yeah there's also a big problem with those.
- paganel 7y ago> (so, plants that like heat are moving further north) One of my current private and not yet launched projects is to map the spread of fig trees (more like fig plants) in Bucharest and the surrounding parts. The plant itself is not endemic to these parts of the continent and while it used to be present here and there it wasn't as wide-spread as it seems to be now (the winters were very detrimental to its spread). But in the last couple of years I've starting seeing more and more fig trees/plants in people's gardens, and for the moment I'm just taking photos of them and trying to post them on a searchable and browse-able map.