This article from David Suzuki has some great info on environmental conditions impacting monarch butterfly populations...also some suggestions for butterfly gardens that may help this species and others.
While the future of the monarch looks bleak, we can all help ensure its survival. (Credit: Tin Can Forest)
With a decline of monarchs in Mexico and pervasive threats during
migration, it wasn't entirely surprising that they arrived in Canada six
weeks later than normal this summer in unprecedented low numbers. Point
Pelee National Park in Leamington, Ontario, even cancelled its annual monarch count because of lack of butterflies.
While the future of the monarch looks bleak, we can all help ensure its survival.
I don't see monarchs here in the holler, but Roundup-free milkweed -- monarch caterpillar food source -- is plentiful. The swallowtails all seem to like it as well...for eating anyway. Here's a recent photo of a bee on some milkweed:
A USGS press release today illustrates the value of long-term monitoring and data collection:
March 2012 set records for warm temperatures that promoted early leafing and flowering across large areas of the United States. A team of scientists at the USA National Phenology Network, which is sponsored by the U.S. Geological Survey, have published a study which shows that 2012 was the earliest spring over the 48 U.S. states since 1900 when systematic weather data began to be available for the entire area.
Observations by citizen scientists contribute to studies like this one by the USA National Phenology Network. Anyone can sign up to be an observer, and you can watch plants and animals that live and grow right in your own yard or neighborhood.
Read or download the study article at EOS, Transactions of the American Geophysical Union:
When I caught sight of an orange butterfly visiting my planters yesterday, I assumed it was a Great Spangled Fritillary, a butterfly I see in the holler every year and a species I observe for the National Phenology Network. I grabbed my binoculars to verify the species.
Clearly this was not a Great Spangled Fritillary! It's wings were longer and narrower, its back had more orange and the spots on the underside of the wings were stringingly bright, and its flight pattern seemed different.
Gulf Fritillary (Agraulis vanillae) on 9 November 2012 [Photo credit: Cathie Bird]
Through the binoculars I could also see three white spots surrounded by black rings. All of these observations together pointed toward the identity of my visitor as a Gulf Fritillary.
This butterfly and the Great Spangled Fritillary, with which I was more familiar, are members of the same family (Nymphalidae) and subfamily (Heliconiiae). Further down the taxonomic chain, however, each is classified in a different tribe. The Great Spangled is a member of the Tribe Argynnini (the true Fritillaries), while the Gulf Fritillary is a longwing or Heliconian butterfly of the Tribe Heliconiini.
Silvery-white spots on the underside of the hindwing and forewing of the Gulf Fritillary, 9 November 2012 [Photo credit: Cathie Bird]
According to the guide I use (Glassberg 1999), the resident ranges of the Great Spangled and Gulf fritillaries don't overlap, but the Gulf is known to spread northward as the summer season progresses. Still, I was reluctant to identify this one without careful consideration, since it's November! Is it on its way back south again?
Glassberg's map shows a range for the Gulf Fritillary extending across the southern border of Tennessee, but not up to the northern reaches of the state where I live. On the other hand, Tennessee is a lot skinnier south to north than it is east to west, so maybe it's not all that far for a butterfly to migrate.
Whatever the case, I am totally delighted to have seen one, and glad there were still a few flowers blooming in my planters for it to feed on.
For comparison, here's a Great Spangled Fritillary (Speyeria cybele) that I photographed on 25 June 2012 [Photo credit: Cathie Bird]
I am still seeing at least two of the Sulphur species -- a pair of the smaller, yellower ones have been visiting the planters as I write this blog. I also saw eastern tailed blues (another species I observe for NPN) in late October. Another new species for me in the holler this September was a Checkered White. Unfortunately I could not get close enough to get good images.
Check out this time lapse video of a Gulf Fritillary chrysallis and the emergence of the adult on YouTube:
On Wednesday, the USDA released a new plant hardiness zone map, which contours the nation according to average annual lowest winter temperatures. The new zones analyze these temperatures for the period 1976-2005, updating a 1990 version of the map, which covered 1974-1986.
Although these zones, which serve as a guide to the kinds of plants that can grow, have shifted north in most areas, USDA shied away from making a climate change connection.
The summer and fall of 2007 was pretty rough on many species up here in the holler because of drought. I was especially worried about aquatic species as the streams got drier. Over a period of a week or so I watched a section of Terry Creek dry up, land-locking a significant number of fish in a deeper hole. That hole eventually dried up. On a holler walk one day, I smelled dead fish long before I got to the bridge. By the next day, though, the dead fish had been eaten by other wildlife, and not too long after that, we finally got enough rain for the creek to flow again.
Amazingly, some shallow pools higher up the holler -- in a stream that's actually a tributary of Terry Creek -- kept some water in them (because of the relationship of surface water channels to ground water up here, I think). Some of these pools were in the area where folks from the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency and the University of Tennessee had located (for the first time) several blackside dace, a small fish listed as "threatened" throughout its range by the US Fish and Wildlife Service under the Endangered Species Act.
Today I got a press release from the Southeast Region of USFWS that reminded me of these somewhat traumatic moments (for the fish and for me). Spring Creek, in southwestern Georgia, is a "hotspot" for a number of mussel species, two of which are endangered. Like the creeks up here in the holler, Spring Creek is susceptible to very low flows during droughts, and in recent years the mussel populations there have declined as a result.
Spring Creek mussel bed near Colquitt, Ga. site of water augmentation project. Photo by Tom MacKenzie
But now the Spring Creek mussels will have the benefit of a water augmentation pilot project that pumps ground water from wells into the creek during severe droughts. The project was a collaborative partnership with the Golden Triangle Resource Conservation Development Council, the City of Colquitt, the Georgia Water Planning and Policy Center, Georgia’s Department of Natural Resources’ Environmental Protection and Wildlife Resources divisions, Spring Creek Watershed Partnership, and the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Water from wells starts to flow into Spring Creek to test the system. Photo by Sandy Abbott USFWS.
“Spring Creek goes very, very low during drought,” said Doug Wilson, of the Golden Triangle Resource Conservation Development Council. “The wells are designed to augment the stream so we can sustain the habitat for the mussels. This is the first time that this has been tried in Georgia.”
According to the USFWS press release, this is considered to be a temporary solution to secure the mussels' habitat until a permanent solution can be found.
Interesting article at Science Daily summarizing studies on tree species shift in the West:
A huge "migration" of trees has begun across much of the West due to global warming, insect attack, diseases and fire, and many tree species are projected to decline or die out in regions where they have been present for centuries, while others move in and replace them.
Nicholas C. Coops, Richard H. Waring. Estimating the vulnerability of fifteen tree species under changing climate in Northwest North America. Ecological Modelling, 2011; 222 (13): 2119 DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2011.03.033
Richard H. Waring, Nicholas C. Coops, Steven W. Running. Predicting satellite-derived patterns of large-scale disturbances in forests of the Pacific Northwest Region in response to recent climatic variation. Remote Sensing of Environment, 2011; DOI: 10.1016/j.rse.2011.08.017
The ClimateWatch program in Australia was developed by Earthwatch with the Bureau of Meteorology and The University of Melbourne to understand how changes in temperature and rainfall are affecting Australia's plants and animals. This is the first project of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere. Any Australian citizen can go online to record data they collect on a number of indicator species.
Like data collected by USA-NPN observers, the Australians' data will help scientists monitor climate change and develop a scientific response to it.
A jacaranda tree in Wooroolin, Australia [Source: Rossrs at Wikipedia]
I first learned about the ClimateWatch project in Climate story emerges from purple haze, an article about a ClimateWatch trail at the Royal Botanic Garden in Sydney. The "purple haze" describes a flowering tree that is native to South America, but can be found in many Australian parks, gardens and neighborhoods:
LOVE them or loathe them, jacarandas, with their brilliant purple petals, have an important story to reveal about the effects of climate change.
The familiar Sydney trees are part of a new ''citizen scientist'' project in which visitors to the Royal Botanic Gardens can observe a selection of plants and animals and record information such as whether they are in bloom, nesting, or flying about.
Andy Donnelly, science director of Earthwatch, says it was important to include non-natives such as the jacaranda on the list so they could compare what's happening to the species in Australia with other parts of the world.
A jacaranda in downtown Buenos Aires, Argentina [Source: Beatrice Murch, Wikipedia]
There are a number of trails in Australia where citizens can observe species and record data, but they can also enter observations they make anywhere in Australia for the species listed.
A news release from the US Geological Survey today discusses an important study that provides the first integrated assessment of how the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (the Bay-Delta system) will respond to climate change.
According to the researchers, combined effects of increasing water temperature and salinity that is expected between 2010 and 2099 could reduce habitat quality for native species, such as the endangered Delta smelt and winter-run Chinook salmon, and intensify the challenge of sustaining their populations. The study also describes possibilities for longer dry seasons, diminishing snow packs and earlier snowmelt as well as risk from flooding as sea-level rise accelerates and snow melts earlier.
A small slough in Suisun Slough in the Suisun Bay, California. [Photo credit: Francis Parchaso, USGS]
The Delta provides drinking water and irrigation water for farmland crops, thus resource managers may face increasingly difficult decisions to balance allocations of water between human consumption and biological needs.
"As we plan for the future, it is important to consider more than just global warming," said USGS scientist and the study's lead author James Cloern. "We also have to consider other drivers such as land-use changes and population growth. A comprehensive assessment of the future looks at responses to global warming in the context of all factors that will change the resources we value."
In addition to projecting future conditions in the Bay-Delta system, the research provides a general guide to development of strategies that will help people in other coastal landscapes to adapt to climate change.
Accumulating evidence shows that the planet is warming as a response to human emissions of greenhouse gases. Strategies of adaptation to climate change will require quantitative projections of how altered regional patterns of temperature, precipitation and sea level could cascade to provoke local impacts such as modified water supplies, increasing risks of coastal flooding, and growing challenges to sustainability of native species.
Methodology/Principal Findings
We linked a series of models to investigate responses of California's San Francisco Estuary-Watershed (SFEW) system to two contrasting scenarios of climate change. Model outputs for scenarios of fast and moderate warming are presented as 2010–2099 projections of nine indicators of changing climate, hydrology and habitat quality. Trends of these indicators measure rates of: increasing air and water temperatures, salinity and sea level; decreasing precipitation, runoff, snowmelt contribution to runoff, and suspended sediment concentrations; and increasing frequency of extreme environmental conditions such as water temperatures and sea level beyond the ranges of historical observations.
Conclusions/Significance
Most of these environmental indicators change substantially over the 21st century, and many would present challenges to natural and managed systems. Adaptations to these changes will require flexible planning to cope with growing risks to humans and the challenges of meeting demands for fresh water and sustaining native biota. Programs of ecosystem rehabilitation and biodiversity conservation in coastal landscapes will be most likely to meet their objectives if they are designed from considerations that include: (1) an integrated perspective that river-estuary systems are influenced by effects of climate change operating on both watersheds and oceans; (2) varying sensitivity among environmental indicators to the uncertainty of future climates; (3) inevitability of biological community changes as responses to cumulative effects of climate change and other drivers of habitat transformations; and (4) anticipation and adaptation to the growing probability of ecosystem regime shifts.
A red-spotted purple butterfly visits my office windowsill, 20 August 2011 [Photo credit: Cathie Bird]
As Earth warms up, it has been assumed that some plant and animal populations would shift uphill or farther away from the equator. That's been been the best guess anyway, but for several reasons, it's been hard to connect species movement to climate change.
A recent study, however, looked at data and habitat range maps for about 2000 species over the last 40 years, collected from a lot of different scientific papers. The study team found that, on average, plants and animals have been moving up mountains and farther away from the equator at a speed that allows them to keep up with the effects of climate change. On a more disturbing note, the study also found that species may be shifting faster than had been predicted.
The study was published in the journal Science this week, and was reported by Sara Reardon in Science NOW in an article that summarizes key findings. I was especially interested in the article's discussion of challenges faced by the researchers:
The new study has plenty of limitations, Thomas acknowledges. The scarcity of papers meant that most of those included targeted only Europe and North America, few were from the Southern Hemisphere, and no marine species were included. "We're prisoners of the data," he says.
This assessment reminded me of the importance of work by citizen scientists who participate in networks such as USA-NPN's Nature's Notebook project. The focus of the USA National Phenology Network is to monitor the influence of climate on the phenology of plants, animals, and landscapes. People can sign up to record phenological events like leaf out, flowering, migrations, and egg laying, and then enter their observations into an online database. USA-NPN works with researchers to develop tools and techniques to use this data to support citizens, managers, scientists, and others in making decisions related to allergies, wildfires, water, and conservation.
It will be interesting to see which species move up, out or in to the holler as climate conditions evolve. It will be equally interesting to see if enough humans wake up to our collective contributions to species migration -- be it from global warming or ongoing widescale fragmentation of habitats -- so that we can work to reverse any trends that cause needless suffering for people or nature.
On my walk through the holler today, Earth Day was on my mind. I remember watching NBC's Today Show coverage of the very first Earth Day and thinking, "Wow! I sure hope this catches on!"
At the time, I was a new graduate of Michigan State's Parks and Recreation Administration program in which I'd focused on environmental interpretation. I'd been married about 18 days and had moved to Denver to start a new phase of my life -- one that would eventually include my launch as an Earth activist.
Today -- here in the Cumberland Mountains of Tennessee -- I continue that interest, but what a difference forty-some years make. On Earth Day 1, I remember feeling a sense of urgency that we, as a human collective, make significant and swift adjustments in the ways we were relating to Earth. On Earth Day 41...well, let me just say that sense of urgency is a lot more intense, and there are many more signs that people and nature are under stress in this relationship.
The more our interpendent lives show signs of trouble, the more I find myself in need of quiet space in nature to stay balanced. I unexpectedly found new levels of harmony and connection with fellow Earth species when I became an observer in the USA-National Phenology Network.
For one thing, I think that watching the seasons cycle through another species has huge potential for connecting us with more subtle energies of change within ourselves. I know that's happened for me.
Beyond the very personal exchanges I have with each individual that I observe, there is also a very satisfying element of contribution to the body of scientific knowledge about the species with whom we humans share Earth space. And, in particular, I understand that my notes as a citizen scientist helps professional scientists guage the responses that plants, animals, birds, insects, reptiles and amphibians might be making to shifts in climate.
Ultimately, we and all these other living beings are in this situation on Earth together. That's why I'm putting out this Earth Day challenge to anyone reading this blog who hasn't already signed up for the Nature's Notebook project.
It's easy to get started. Just click on the image in this post or the one in the sidebar, and you'll get to the sign-up page. There's lots of information that you can read before you hit the button that actually creates your own notebook where you'll record observations.
This is something you can do wherever you live in the United States, very urban, very rural, or anyplace in between. Please check it out and start celebrating Earth Day any day of the year!
