Muddy forests, shorter winters present challenges for loggers

Stable, frozen ground has long been recognized a logger's friend, capable of supporting equipment and trucks in marshy or soggy forests. Now, a comprehensive look at weather from 1948 onward shows that the logger's friend is melting.

The study, published in the current issue of the Journal of Environmental Management, finds that the period of frozen ground has declined by an average of two or three weeks since 1948. During that time, wood harvests have shifted in years with more variability in freezing and thawing to red pine and jack pine -- species that grow in sandy, well-drained soil that can support trucks and heavy equipment when not frozen.

Jack pine, a characteristic north woods Wisconsin species, is declining, and areas that have been harvested are often replaced with a different species, changing the overall ecosystem.

The study was an effort to look at how long-term weather trends affect forestry, says author Adena Rissman, an assistant professor of forest and wildlife ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "When my co-author, Chad Rittenhouse, and I began this project, we wanted to know how weather affects our ability to support sustainable working forests. We found a significant decline in the duration of frozen ground over the past 65 years, and at the same time, a significant change in the species being harvested."

"This study identifies real challenges facing forest managers, loggers, landowners, and industry," says Rittenhouse, now an assistant research professor of natural resources and the environment at the University of Connecticut. "Once we understood the trends in frozen ground, we realized how pulling out that issue tugged on economics, livelihoods, forest ecology, wildlife habitat and policy."

Mud can make forests impassable in fall, and even more so after the snow melts in spring, making life difficult for companies that buy standing trees, Rittenhouse says. "Nobody wants to get stuck; you lose time and have to get hauled out or wait for the ground to firm up again."

Shorter winters and uncertainty complicate management for logging companies, Rissman adds. "They often need to plan out their jobs for the next six months or year." The same is true for managers of state and county forests, which typically allow two years for a cut to be completed. "In some cases," she says, "they are going to three-year contracts to give more time to get the timber out."

Even if equipment can traverse muddy roads, their ruts may ruin the road and cause unacceptable erosion. "There is increased attention to rutting on public land, and on private land that is in the state's managed forest program or in a form of sustainable forest certification," says Rissman. "Excessively wet and muddy ground during harvest is a lose-lose-lose for the logger, the landowner and the environment."

The study drew data from weather records from airports, used to model when the ground was frozen; Department of Natural Resources records on harvest levels for various tree species; and interviews with forest managers and loggers.

"People in the forestry industry say this is a big deal; winter is normally the most profitable time," Rissman observes. "It's more and more difficult to make a profit in forestry (with) more loggers (taking) on a lot of debt -- they are heavily mechanized, have heavy labor and insurance expenses, and these costs don't end when they don't have work."

The uncertainty about when and where they can work emerged during an interview with a veteran logger, who is quoted as follows in the study: "When I started in the business ... the typical logger ... would shut down and not do anything for the month or two months that the spring break up would last for. Nowadays, with the cost of equipment, and just the cost of insurance on that equipment alone, you're looking for work almost 12 months out of the year."

The shorter winters seem linked to climate change, Rissman acknowledges. "For many people, climate change is something that happens, or not, in places that are far away, at scales that are difficult to see or understand through personal experience. Here's an example of something we can clearly document, of a trend that is having an impact on how forests are managed, right here at home."

View the original article here

Natural variation: Warm North Atlantic Ocean promotes extreme winters in U.S. and Europe

The extreme cold weather observed across Europe and the east coast of the US in recent winters could be partly down to natural, long-term variations in sea surface temperatures, according to a new study published today.

Researchers from the University of California Irvine have shown that a phenomenon known as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) -- a natural pattern of variation in North Atlantic sea surface temperatures that switches between a positive and negative phase every 60-70 years -- can affect an atmospheric circulation pattern, known as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), that influences the temperature and precipitation over the Northern Hemisphere in winter.

When the AMO is in its positive phase and the sea surface temperatures are warmer, the study has shown that the main effect in winter is to promote the negative phase of the NAO which leads to "blocking" episodes over the North Atlantic sector, allowing cold weather systems to exist over the eastern US and Europe.

The results have been published today, Wednesday 2 April, in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research Letters.

To arrive at their results, the researchers combined observations from the past century with climate simulations of the atmospheric response to the AMO.

According to their observations, sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic can be up to 1.5 ?C warmer in the Gulf Stream region during the positive phase of the AMO compared to the negative, colder phase. The climate simulations suggest that these specific anomalies in sea surface temperatures can play a predominant role in promoting the change in the NAO.

Lead authors of the study Yannick Peings and Gudrun Magnusdottir said: "Our results indicate that the main effect of the positive AMO in winter is to promote the occurrence of the negative phase of the NAO. A negative NAO in winter usually goes hand-in-hand with cold weather in the eastern US and north-western Europe."

The observations also suggest that it takes around 10-15 years before the positive phase of AMO has any significant effect on the NAO. The reason for this lag is unknown; however, an explanation might be that AMO phases take time to develop fully.

As the AMO has been in a positive phase since the early 1990s, it may have contributed to the extreme winters that both the US and Europe have experienced in recent years.

The researchers warn, however, that the future evolution of the AMO remains uncertain, with many factors potentially affecting how it interacts with atmospheric circulation patterns, such as Arctic sea ice loss, changes in solar radiation, volcanic eruptions and concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

The AMO also shows strong variability from one year to the next in addition to the changes seen every 60 - 70 years, which makes it difficult to attribute specific extreme winters to the AMO's effects.

Responding to the extreme weather that gripped the eastern coast of the US this winter, Yannick Peings continued: "Unlike the 2012/2013 winter, this winter had rather low values of the AMO index and the pattern of sea surface temperature anomalies was not consistent with the typical positive AMO pattern. Moreover, the NAO was mostly positive with a relatively mild winter over Europe."

"Therefore it is unlikely that the positive AMO played a defining role on the east coast of the US, although further work is necessary to answer this question. Such an event is consistent with the large internal variability of the atmosphere, and other external forcings may have played a role.

"Our future studies will look to compare the role of the AMO compared to Arctic sea ice anomalies, which have also been shown to affect atmospheric circulation patterns and promote colder, more extreme winters."

View the original article here