A Northwoods Almanac for 12/22/23
Big Pines
Last week, daughter Callie and I bushwhacked to a site southern Iron County that supports some old white pines. The largest one we found had a diameter of 46.5 inches, which is in the top range for white pines on our current Wisconsin landscape. A smaller white pine, “only” 41.5 inches, had a very large fire scar. None of the other trees nearby, however, showed any signs of fire.
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| 46.5" dbh white pine |
Three observations: One, both trees had stubs of lower branches, which indicates they were open-grown trees. Therefore, they did not grow in a competing stand of similar-aged pines, because if they had, they wouldn’t have lower branches near to the ground. Pines competing for light in a dense stand of trees seldom invest energy in growing lower branches – they have to put most of their energy into reaching the canopy before other trees can get there. So, they grow straight, tall, and with very few, if any, lower limbs.
Two: Both pines became double-stemmed about 15 to 20 feet up. I call these “goalpost” trees, but I suppose you could call them “pitchfork” trees or “wishbone” trees, too. What has happened to these pines is that the leader stem was broken off, and two of the lateral branches then bent upward over time to take over the role of the leader stem. Often the breakage of the leader stem is due to a porcupine nipping it for food, or because of white pine weevil larvae chewing and burrowing completely around the stem causing the leader stem to die. My bet would be on a porcupine because the weevils usually attack younger trees, and these two trees were already nearly 20 feet tall.
Three: The large fire scar – about five feet from the base of the tree to the top of the scar – says that a fire came through here at some point likely killing most of the other trees since there are no others nearby with fire scars. But this pine survived.
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| 41.5" dbh white pine with fire scar |
I’d be fascinated to core both of the trees to determine their ages. My bet is that they’re not all that old – perhaps 130 to 150 years. White pines grow fast when, without competition, they’re given all the nearby nutrients and sunshine. I remember Mary and I stopping a decade ago at a home near Bayfield that had a massive, open-grown white pine in its yard (see the photo). We measured its diameter at nearly 50 inches, but when we asked the property owners about the tree, they showed us a picture of when it was planted in the mid-1890s. So, the tree was only around 115 years old at that time.
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| open-grown white pine in Bayfield County |
On the other hand, given how large the fire scar is, the tree could be 200 years old, or much older yet. White pines can live up to 400 years, so maybe I should take back my bet.
Age and size don’t always correlate in trees – so much depends on the conditions and the context.
No matter the age of the trees, we were delighted to find such large “grandmothers,” and can only hope they’ll continue to stand up to the ravages of high winds and potential fires.
Ice-up: Foster Lake Ice Dates
Ice-up on our lakes was a bit late this year. The date for every lake varies significantly based on water depth, surface area, amount of fetch (distance the wind can carry across the lake), the direction of the fetch, and the surrounding landscape. On 37-acre Foster Lake in Hazelhurst where Woody Hagge has been keeping records for 48 years, the lake iced over on 11/30, three days later than the average date for the lake which is 11/27. Earliest ice-up on Foster over all those years was 11/7/1991; the latest ice-up was 12/28/2015.
If you’re already counting the days until ice-out (God bless you, but you’re going to soon need a vacation in the south), here are Woody’s stats: Earliest ice-out in the spring was 3/20/2012; latest ice-out was 5/7/1996. Average date is 4/17.
So, taking the average ice-up and ice-out dates, using Foster as an “average” lake, we can look forward to around 141 days of ice-cover, or about 39% of the year.
Wisdom Returns!
Wisdom, a wild female Laysan albatross and the world’s oldest known wild bird, returned on December 4 to Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in the North Pacific Ocean. This latest sighting means her estimated age is now at least 72 years old.
Her long-time mate, Akeakamai, has yet to be seen and was absent the last two nesting seasons.
Jonathan Plissner, supervisory wildlife biologist at the national wildlife refuge, said he doesn’t expect Wisdom to nest this year, but he did witness the seabird participating in mating dances.
Biologists first identified and banded Wisdom in 1956 after she laid an egg. The large seabirds aren’t known to breed until at least age 5.
It is estimated that Wisdom has produced 50 to 60 eggs and as many as 30 chicks that fledged, according to Plissner.
Each year, millions of seabirds return to the wildlife refuge to nest, and Wisdom has been doing this since the Eisenhower administration.
Solar Panels
Mary and I installed 22 solar panels four years ago, and to date, the panels have produced 30.6 MWh (megawatt hours) of energy, which has amounted to $3,647 off our utility bill. This is almost exactly what the solar company had estimated we would receive, and we’re quite happy with this result – every time the sun is out, we’re making money!
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| 22 solar panels on our home in Manitowish |
A number of people have asked us about our panels, but we have no idea how many folks have taken the next step to actually install them.
So, what convinces people to take that next step? Well, researchers in the March Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences examined data from 430 individual studies to see what factors influenced people’s environment-related behaviors, from recycling to switching modes of transportation to installing solar.
Researchers found the most important factor that determined whether someone installed panels on their roof wasn’t subsidies, geography or policy. It was whether their neighbor had them. A single solar rooftop project increases installations by nearly 50 percent within a half-mile radius.
In other words, what we do or don’t do is contagious – we are profoundly influenced by how others act.
You’d think providing data or facts would matter the most, but the researchers found facts ranked last, persuading an average of only 3.5% of people to change their behavior compared to a control group.
Appeals to act more sustainably, more morally, fared better, but were still middling.
Financial incentives such as subsidies or savings performed relatively well, persuading about 12%.
But leading the pack were what scientists called “social comparisons” where people observed the behavior of others and compared it with their own. This persuaded more than 14% of people to change their behavior in experiments from around the world.
The upshot? Well, it supports the old saying that actions are stronger than words. If we want to create change, we have to be the change.
Hottest Summer on Record in the Arctic
This past summer was the hottest on record in the Arctic, which is warming nearly four times faster than any other location on the planet.
According to a report released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, key data points show that the Arctic continues to become less icy, wetter and greener. The trends, all linked to a warming climate, have been observed for decades.
The report, from 82 authors in 13 countries, makes clear that the Arctic continues to change, with the past 17 years accounting for the 17 smallest annual minimum sea ice covers in the 45-year satellite record.
Endangered Species Act Anniversary
This month marks the 50th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act. President Richard Nixon signed the law on Dec. 28, 1973. The conservation law grew out of a simple concept: to protect endangered and threatened species from extinction and protect their habitats. The ESA has proven to be one of the world’s most effective wildlife conservation laws, credited with saving 99% of the species it protects.
The Endangered Species Act currently protects 1,662 U.S. species and 638 foreign species, from iconic species like the whooping crane to the Apache trout in the Colorado River Basin.
Celestial Events
On 12/22, look before dawn for the rather modest peak of the Ursid meteor showers – expect about 10 meteors per hour. Later in the evening, look for Jupiter about 3 degrees below the waxing gibbous moon.
As of 12/23, our days begin growing longer by the tiniest of amounts – 0.05 seconds. But hey, you have to start somewhere.
December’s full moon – the “Little Spirit” or “Popping Trees” Moon – occurs on 12/26, and will be our year’s northernmost moonrise and highest altitude moonrise.
Sunsets have been growing later since 12/12, but as of 12/30, we will hit our latest sunrise of the year at 7:40 A.M. The sun will stall here for 5 days, but on Jan. 6, the sunrise will come one minute earlier.
And though it seems counterintuitive, in 2024, Earth's perihelion, its closest point to the sun, is on January 3. We’re 3.1 million miles closer than we will be in July when we’re the farthest away from the sun.
You’d think the closer we are, the warmer it would be . . . but no. It’s all about the tilt of the Earth to the sun, not the distance of the earth from the sun. The Northern Hemisphere is tilted away from the sun in the winter, and tilted toward the sun in the summer.
Thought for the Week
“The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.” – Robert Pirsig
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