🚀 go-pugleaf

[This is a short snip from a longer article that appeared in
 the fall, 1995, EARTH ISLAND JOURNAL, 300 Broadway # 28,
 San Francisco, CA  94133 Phone: 415-788-3666
 earthisland@igc.apc.org  or  http://www.econet.apc.org/ei/ ]

                AMERICA'S TREES ARE DYING
                  by Charles E. Little

    I remember what West Virginia landowner and self-taught
naturalist Joe Aliff told me when we were tramping through
the "falling forest" in the Appalachian hollows.  To see what
is happening, he said, "All you got to do is look."  By that
he meant something more than having one's eyelids in the open
position.  And when you look, you see that the trees are
dying.

    I have since learned to see a world of dying trees --
dying because the trunks have been bored into and the leaves
have been stripped by pests;  dying because fungi are girdling
their bases and branches and turning their leaves to black
corpses;  dying because their shrunken roots can no longer
absorb enough nutrients and water to keep them alive;  dying
from the direct effects of too much ozone in the troposphere
and not enough in the stratosphere;  dying because neighboring
trees have been clearcut, allowing cold, heat and drying winds
into their precincts;  dying because of being bathed too often
in the sour gases of industry;  dying because the weather
patterns have changed and they cannot adapt quickly enough.

    The more trees that die, the more trees that will die.
In the forlorn formulation of ecologist George Woodwell,
climate warming from an increasing greenhouse effect could, in
temperate forests especially, increase the respiration rate of
trees to the degree that it may surpass the rate of
photosynthesis . The tree would then no longer be a net
producer of oxygen, but a net producer of carbon dioxide.

    "The amount of carbon dioxide that could be injected into
the atmosphere," wrote Woodwell and longtime associate
Richard Houghton in Scientific American, could theoretically
approach "approximately 750 billion metric tons, or about the
same amount of carbon as there is in the atmosphere
currently."  Implied by this analysis is a devastating
feedback loop in which trees in the vast northern hemisphere
forests, instead of absorbing carbon, add to the global
build-up of CO2 in a nightmarish cycle, whose finale could be
a worldwide policy decision to cut down trees in order to
protect the Earth's oxygen supply!
. . . . . . . . .
from THE DYING OF THE TREES: THE PANDEMIC IN AMERICA'S FORESTS,
by Charles E. Little. Penguin, 1995. To order the book, please
call 1-800-253-6476.

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THE DESERT'S DYING CACTI

    According to Kate Kajtha, a biologist at Boston University,
the 63,000-acre Saguaro National Monument near Tucson has lost
more than 50 percent of its giant cactuses in the last 50 years
due to a mysterious affliction that turns the cactus brown
prematurely and causes the trunk and branches to lose their
spines.  "They're dying," Kajtha lamented.  "Their arms are
falling off.  They're keeling over."

    Some scientists suspect that air pollution from local
mining smelters may be involved, but the affliction is not
confined to the Tucson area;  it can be found even in remote
parts of the Sonoran Desert in northern Mexico.  This has led
researchers to consider the possibility that the rapid spread of
the disease may be linked to increased ultraviolet (UV-B)
radiation streaming through the thinning stratospheric ozone
shield, the result of the destruction of ozone molecules by
chlorofluorocarbons released from air conditioners and
refrigerators.  Cactus disease symptoms appear on the south side
of the plant, the side getting the most sun and therefore the
most UV-B rays.  Tellingly, in shaded saguaros, the  disease is
not found at all. --  CEL

---------------------------------------------------------------

            FOREST DEATH IN COAL RIVER VALLEY
                    by John Flynn

MONTCOAL, WV -- Sprawling across parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania,
West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and
Alabama, the mixed mesophytic forest is the greatest hardwood
forest in the world and the oldest in North America.  Nearly as
big as New England, the mixed mesophytic (meso, midrange and
physic, plant) forest is the largest relatively unbroken stretch
of deciduous woodland in the US.

    In The Dying of the Trees, Charles Little calls the mixed
mesophytic "the 'mother forest' of eastern North America -- the
forest that has provided the germplasm resources from which all
other forests have subsequently arisen."  This summer, the
Mother Forest turned sickly as the verdant greenery of southern
West Virginia was abruptly transformed into an eerie backdrop of
browns and yellows.

    In the last ten days of July, anthracnose-like browning
began to curl the foliage of yellow poplar, sycamore, red maple
and redbud along a 50-mile east-to-west belt in the Coal River
Valley, 40 miles west of Charleston.  Blister-like lesions on
petioles (leaf stems) were visible on all species. The damage --
and the suddenness with which it occurred -- was most easily
detected in poplar trees, which are relatively free of insect
and disease damage.

    Between July 20-25, poplar leaves began rapidly browning
and curling.  The damage began on leaf blades and spread
rapidly.  Within a few days, yards were littered with fallen
leaves.  Shedding occurred in leaves of all ages.  Foliage on
the outer twigs of larger trees in open settings was the most
severely affected.  Poplars growing in moister, less-exposed
settings were significantly less affected.

    During the first week of August, the foliage on shagbark
hickory and three species of oak -- white, chestnut and
chinkapin -- began curling and browning.  By August 20, damage
was evident at all elevations.

    The shedding was not drought-related, since the combined
rainfall for May and June was more than three inches above the
norm.  Normal sunlight, while possibly a contributing factor,
does not cause dark, burn-like discoloration on leaves.

    With the help of Ozone Action, the Appalachia Forest Action
Project (AFAP) obtained satellite readings prepared by National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration physicist Art
Neuendorffer.  The readings revealed that the ozone layer was at
record or near-record lows in southern West Virginia throughout
July.  Neuendorffer concluded that: "It's very likely the trees
were getting record amounts of UV-B."  In fact, the damage to
broad-leafed species was accompanied by severe needle damage on
white pines -- symptoms associated with UV-B damage.

    Upper-level ozone is measured by Dobson units.  As Dobson
units go down, UV-B exposure goes up at a rate of approximately
two-to-one.  During the past 16 years, southern West Virginia
had a July noontime average of approximately 330 Dobson.  The
average for July, 1995, however, was 292 for the month and 282
for the last 20 days, with a low of 278 on July 17.  This value
is 16 percent below normal, suggesting that UV-B intensity could
have been 30-35 percent higher than normal.

    On August, 14, 1995, AFAP volunteers observed severe
drooping and bending on white pine needles at several locations
in Raleigh and Boone counties.  The damage resembled UV-B-damage
symptoms that ecologist Orie Loucks of Miami University in
Oxford, Ohio, discovered in white pine in Ohio and Toronto,
Canada in 1993 during the worst ozone-loss readings on record.
Loucks observed similar damage in Ohio this summer when
stratospheric ozone levels were again severely depressed.

    Specimens of the damaged leaves were collected by the AFAP
and turned over to the US Forest Service (USFS) laboratory in
Morgantown, West Virginia.  USFS plant pathologist Martin
MacKenzie tentatively ruled out insects, fungi or chemical
pollution as a cause of the damage.  "The damage I observed was
sun-directed," MacKenzie concluded.

    If UV-B damage is ultimately confirmed, it would mark the
first evidence that the loss of stratospheric ozone has begun to
damage broadleaf trees.  Because of the critical need to be able
to "fingerprint UV-B damage," Loucks is calling for immediate
action at the federal level.  "As national policy, we simply
must have the answer to this question" before next spring, he
maintained.

*******
John Flynn is communications director for:
  AFAP, 168 Middleton Avenue, Montcoal, WV 21540   304-854-2215

==============================================================
 From fall, 1995, EARTH ISLAND JOURNAL, 300 Broadway # 28,
 San Francisco, CA  94133 Phone: 415-788-3666
 earthisland@igc.apc.org  or  http://www.econet.apc.org/ei/ ]