The Adirondack Common Ground Alliance is holding the final session of its 2021 Annual Forum on Wednesday, September 8 from 9-10a via Zoom webinar. This session is open to all, regardless of whether you attended this year’s forum. During the hour, we’ll cover the following agenda:
When I’m asked to diagnose tree problems, folks naturally want the remedy. Sometimes the only solution is tree removal; other times it’s a cable brace, pest management, corrective pruning or fertilizing. But increasingly, the diagnosis is climate change. If anyone knows how to solve that through an arboricultural practice, please let me know.
With rising temperatures, a novel weather pattern has taken hold with longer and more intense dry and wet periods. In 2012 many areas had the lowest soil moisture ever recorded. Nonstop rain in 2013 led to flooding and farm disaster relief. A drought in 2016 set more records in some places, and catastrophic flooding hit in 2017. Drought followed in 2018, and 2019 was another massive flood year. Prolonged dry spells cause root dieback, weakening trees for several years afterward. But unusually wet seasons are just as bad for trees.
(Photo at left: Mundhenk, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
A survey of 241 cities, villages and other jurisdictions along the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River shows that coastal damage from climate change will cost at least $1.94 billion over the next five years, with shoreline communities having already spent $878 million over the past two years. These figures only represent a fraction of the true need as not all shoreline jurisdictions are reflected in this figure.
Join NYS ReLeaf’s Hudson Valley committee for a webinar on Climate and Community Forest programs. This lunchtime webinar on on May 6 from noon – 1:15 p.m. will introduce you to programs that can help your community get climate smart and prepare your community forest for the future.
Angelica Patterson (master science educator, Black Rock Forest and PhD candidate Columbia University) will talk about how plants are responding to warming climate and the factors driving climate-induced tree migrations, while Andy Hillman (arborist, urban forestry consultant, NYS Urban Forestry Council) will present a selection of trees from other regions evaluated for the northeast and the importance of considering hardy cultivars for future climates, and Dazzle Ekblad (Office of Climate Change, NYS DEC) will introduce the Climate Smart Communities program and how to get started with climate smart programs in your community.
Registration is free but required; register now via Webex.
Free, Easy-to-Use Guide Provides Resources to Build Support for Local Wind and Solar Projects to Reap Community Benefits
To help community members who want to build support for local clean energy projects, The Nature Conservancy in New York and New Yorkers for Clean Power have published a toolkit to support their efforts. Entitled Building Out a Clean Energy Future, the free, online toolkit provides background, strategies and resources for New Yorkers regardless of prior knowledge about clean energy.
Identifying common barriers and outlining actions to manage and overcome them, the toolkit shares steps that community members can take to support renewable energy projects in their city, town, or village and help bring about the many benefits of clean energy including cleaner air to breathe, a stronger economy with good-paying local jobs, and less carbon pollution, the driver of climate change.
Fantastic Foods & Simple Solutions, in 3 Parts
The climate crisis, by its very nature, is tough to wrap your head around. We can feel some of its immediate effects, but most of the most severe changes happen on a scale that is beyond the ability of one person to see. Many of the actions we can take as a society to mitigate those effects have proven challenging to do. More and more of us agree that collective, systemic action is needed to combat climate change. In addition to systemic action, it is important that individuals still do our part. It can be really tough to figure out what to do!
When faced with the enormity of the climate crisis, we often find ourselves asking: what can we do to help?
I’d like to present a very simple answer to that question.
North Country Live returns this winter and spring with a variety of programs focused on outdoor recreation, environmental issues, history, and more.
The upcoming edition of North Country Live, sponsored by International Paper, will feature the following sessions, each of which takes place at 7 p.m. on Zoom. All these programs are free and open to the public:
Do you have a favorite tree of the Adirondacks? I do. Among the many wonderful options, it’s quite hard to choose.
My favorite tree isn’t the beautiful sugar maple, responsible for both fiery autumn colors and delicious maple syrup. Though I love the deep green color of the Eastern hemlock, it too is passed over. I regrettably often don’t even notice the birches, the beeches, or the red maples. Although I greatly enjoy hiking uphill through a thick tunnel of red spruce, this conifer is a close friend but not my closest. The tall and delightfully shaped Eastern white pine comes in second, but even this icon of the woods doesn’t hold first place in my heart.
My favorite tree is perhaps many people’s favorite: the Adirondack classic, the balsam fir. If nature has produced a more wonderfully appealing, delightfully fragrant, overall MVP of conifer trees on the East coast, I have yet to encounter it. There isn’t a tree that I associate more directly with the deep sense of peace and wholeness that I feel while in the woods than the balsam fir.
An upcoming presentation at 6:30 pm tonight via Zoom will focus on boreal species such as Black-backed Woodpecker, Olive-sided and Yellow-bellied Flycatchers, Canada Jay, Boreal Chickadee, Bicknell’s Thrush, Lincoln’s Sparrow, Rusty Blackbird, and Blackpoll and Palm Warblers, among others, and their high and low elevation habitat. The presentation will utilize photographs, video, and audio of these iconic bird species of the Adirondacks, along with a few mammal species.
The Village of Saranac Lake and the Village of Homer in the Finger Lakes region were awarded a bronze level certification in the New York State Climate Smart Communities (CSC) program. The awards came during NYS Climate Week.
The efforts of young people mobilizing for climate action and resilience, inspired by the Wild Center’s Youth Climate Program and its annual Adirondack Youth Climate Summit, is seen as a key contribution to this designation. The climate program has brought together over 180 students from over 30 NYS schools to increase their climate literacy and leadership abilities since 2008.
Cedar Young, a youth leader in the Village of Saranac Lake says the following about the certification: “By receiving bronze certification, Saranac Lake has shown leadership in raising public awareness of climate change and lowering our community’s carbon footprint.”
Registration is now open for the Stay-In-stitute for Climate Change Education, a virtual conference for educators across the country. Hosted in partnership with Climate Generation: A Will Steger Legacy, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s Climate Program Office, and The Wild Center’s Youth Climate Program. From July 22-24, the three-day training will provide educators with skills, tools and resources to teach climate change concepts and empower students in all subject areas.
The Wild Center is planning a virtual “Stay-In-stitute” for Climate Change Education.
Scheduled for July 22-24, from 10 a.m. – 5 p.m., the institute aims to bring together both middle and high school teachers from across the country and from a variety of disciplines, to engage in an active exploration of climate change, and the best educational practices related to it.
The Adirondack Council awarded 10 micro-grants totaling over $32,000 to local farmers. According to a press release, the grants are an effort to address the greatest short-term and long-term threats to public health and the Adirondack Park: COVID-19 and climate change.
“COVID-19 and climate change each have the potential to devastate Adirondack communities,” says Adirondack Council Conservation Associate Jackie Bowen, the coordinator of the grant program alongside the Essex Farm Institute. In some cases, farms/food producers need to prepare more serve-at-home meals…others need equipment and funding to protect and sustain their employees who work in urban farmers markets.
The Lake Champlain Sea Grant team is hosting an interactive webinar series focused on watershed and aquatic science called “Zoom a Scientist.”
For one hour starting at noon every Tuesday and Friday, scientists give viewers a virtual tour of the Lake Champlain watershed and showcase their research. Scientists from the University of Vermont Rubenstein Ecosystem Science Laboratory, SUNY Plattsburgh, Lake Champlain Research Institute, and other organizations present on content is geared towards middle school and high school students, but all ages are welcome.
See below for the schedule. If you are looking for content geared specifically towards kids, an At-Home-Creativity section is offered by the Lake Champlain Committee, and is stocked with information and resources to keep them entertained and informed.
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‘If Allowed to Continue at Present Rates’
Here are a few excerpts from past Adirondack conferences preparing audiences for climate change, severe weather events, and consequences.
Photo: Post Hurricane Irene streambank and instream restoration efforts on the E. Branch Ausable River. Photo by Dave Gibson
September, 1989: George Woodwell, global ecologist and then director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, from an address at the Ausable Club, St. Hubert’s, Keene:
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