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No More Pancake Syrup? Climate Change Could Bring an End To Sugar Maples (sciencemag.org)
An anonymous reader shares a research report: Savor that sticky, slightly nutty sweetness drenching your Sunday morning pancakes now. The trees that make maple syrup will struggle to survive climate change, a new study reveals. Researchers had thought that pollution from cars, factories, and agriculture might buffer sugar maples against an increasingly warm and dry climate by supplying soils with fertilizing nitrogen. But the new analysis, which examined 20 years of tree and soil data in four Michigan locations, finds that extra boost of nitrogen won't be enough. Instead, the researchers report today in Ecology, a lack of water will stunt the trees' growth.
I believe that human caused climate change is occurring considering everything else we've changed on earth (we literally move mountains now) but I don't think it means the end of the world. Folks who are predicting the end of the world are likely being overly alarmist but that's not to say we should sit back and do nothing. I've seen increasingly worse local flooding in recent years and weather's becoming more unstable. The worry isn't so much that the world will end but that it is going to be more difficult to make a living as the things we've been use to (relatively stable climate and weather for close to a millennium) might be going away. Change is expensive.
I live in Canada, I like maple syrup and it makes sense that if it warms on average that trees might not do so well. Trees are rooted and take decades to mature so I imagine to compensate it's going to take a few decades to move them north to more appropriate climates. So saying there's no more maple syrup seems silly, saying that there might be shortage and it'll get more expensive makes more sense.
As a Canadian, I completely agree with all of the sentiments you've expressed here. Every year the local farmers bring hundreds of gallons of freshly made pure maple syrup to the local markets, and trust me, if there's a production problem, they'll figure out how to fix it right quick.
Even the local Mennonites who bring the syrup in horse-drawn buggies don't use pails anymore. You only see them in use at the "historical park" sites that school trips visit, on three or four of the trees, to show the kids "how it used to be done" - and then they point at the hoses and rigging on the other trees and tell them about modern collection methods.
Also, the Canadian government's Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve(tm) (it's a real thing!) is intended to cover for exactly the type of (very temporary) shortage this would involve.
If this article is anything to go by it got a lot less real. What all these sorts of articles (there was one about coffee being wiped out a year or so ago) completely fail to take account of is that if one area is becoming less hospitable to a particular plant another area is almost certainly becoming more hospitable. The regions where certain crops will grow changes over time even without human-made climate change: the Romans used to have vineyards in the UK, something which is only recently again becoming feasible with rising temperatures.
Having to move to another region will be disruptive but that is nowhere near the same as claiming that maple production will be wiped out. It will just move further north to colder, wetter climes. Human-induced climate change is a serious problem and we have to act to curb it but I do wish we could "keep it real" when discussing the problems it will cause: these are bad enough without stupid articles like this gratuitously inflating them and making it easier for the deniers to ignore all warnings because some are so ridiculously wrong.
And how long will it take for those Maples to grow in Northern Ontario? Is the soil suitable? Here, maples prefer rich bottom land soil. Are there other tree species that can move north faster and/or adapt faster? Here, Alders are the primary pioneer species, not surprisingly as they can fix their own nitrogen.
There's also the question of whether warming will cause more or less rainfall. The Maples around here love rain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
wtf?
Ontario and Quebec are literally covered in maple trees. Maple syrup productions is practically a cultural tradition in Quebec. The whole Canada/Maple Syrup thing is one of the stereotypes which is actually true.
How are you seriously wondering if CANADA, the country with a maple leaf on it's flag, will be able to grow maple trees??
I am no scientist, but I am a hobby maple syrup producer. We make maple syrup from a variety of trees that are available locally to us Red, Silver, Norway and Sugar. The difference is Red and Silver have lower sugar content and subsequently take more energy to convert to syrup. According to the abstract, this study focused on Acer saccharum (Sugar maple). I wonder for the short-term (20-50 years) the other species might out last sugar and what you see is a spike in real maple syrup sales. Just my thoughts.
This is crap. The sugar maples are doing just fine, and every year the yield is different based on the spring melt.
Most consumers will never notice, most of the pancake syrups in the supermarket are just manufactured sugar with some coloring.
That's why I use High Fructose Bee Vomit.
Same problem, manufactured sugar with some coloring.
I've not seen honey for sale, labeled as such, that wasn't honey when you look at the ingredient list. Are they lying/being fooled by suppliers?
Somebody finds my comment funny, but it wasn't meant to be. Counterfeit honey is a real problem and detecting it using sophisticated scientific methods is a growing business since the counterfeiters are getting extremely sophisticated at beating the quality assurance tests. A lot of cheap counterfeit honey comes from China and it is bankrupting natural honey producers around the globe in large numbers. There is a new documentary series on Netflix Called 'Rotten' that contains an excellent episode on the honey industry and the problem with fake honey.