It’s Environment 101: Trees help save the planet. But not everywhere.

Yes, they suck carbon dioxide out of the air and store it in forests — just what the doctor ordered for an industrialized atmosphere coughing on too many greenhouse gases.

But new research clarifies that deploying trees against global warming backfires in parts of the U.S. and Canada, including much of the Great Plains.

“Trees are great in the right place,” said Susan Cook-Patton, a senior forest restoration scientist at The Nature Conservancy. “But they’re not uniformly awesome across the globe.”

Trees darken the ground. So a place that otherwise would reflect more sunlight and send some of its heat straight back into outer space instead soaks up that heat. In some regions, this outweighs the trees’ potential carbon storage.

This is the case for many grasslands, meaning that the dense, dark juniper trees spreading west across the center of the country can cost the landscape more of its valuable reflectivity than the trees’ carbon-sucking capabilities are worth.

That adds urgency to grassland conservation efforts. Prairies are vanishing beneath a rapidly spreading blanket of woody plants that threatens rancher livelihoods, makes wildfires worse and eliminates habitat for grassland wildlife.

Scientists in Oklahoma have dubbed the phenomenon that is gobbling rangeland from Texas up into the Dakotas the “Green Glacier.” Humans triggered the Green Glacier through a combination of changes to the environment.

Why won’t adding more trees help cool off the Great Plains?

It’s like standing in the sun on a hot summer day in a white T-shirt instead of a black one, Cook-Patton said. The darker your clothes, the more you’ll feel the heat.

The portion of sunlight that bounces back into space is called albedo.

Trees warm the planet in places where they reduce the ground’s reflectivity a lot, and don’t capture enough carbon to offset that problem.

Trees cool the planet in places where they pack away a lot of carbon and don’t change albedo very much, such as regions that aren’t very reflective anyway.

“Our work in general suggests that adding trees to Kansas grasslands provides limited to no climate mitigation,” Cook-Patton said.

Adding trees to some parts of eastern Kansas can have a cooling effect, but the trees change the color of the surface so much that this will “undercut the benefit of the carbon storage quite substantially.”

In the drier western half of the state, adding trees has a warming impact on the climate.

Ultimately, many factors play into the net effect of trees. That includes, for example, the color of the soil, the rain and snowfall patterns, the kind of trees that thrive there and the transparency of the atmosphere. (Atmospheric transparency varies globally.)

As it turns out, rebuilding forests is often a great idea where they existed historically in recent centuries, such as in the Pacific Northwest and many eastern states. Adding forest is generally a bad idea in places that were historically prairie.

The authors found that adding trees is negative for the climate in most temperate grasslands, savannas and shrublands globally.

They created a tool to help decision-makers anywhere in the world understand both sides of the equation — the carbon impact and the albedo impact.

This makes it easy to see where restoring forests pays off.

The authors hope that will help agencies working across big geographic scales — such as a country or state government — to hone their reforestation efforts.

It could also allow planners of carbon storage projects to calculate more accurate estimates of how much climate benefit any given tree-planting project would offer.

Are there other benefits to trees, including in cities?

Urban areas offer one illustration of the complexity of deciding where to plant trees.

Cities want trees for a whole host of benefits to their residents that the authors of the albedo study agree are important and worthy. Those benefits range from improving air quality to shading streets from brutal summer heat.

But the authors of the study, published in the journal Nature Communications last month, note that actions to combat climate change and actions to help us live in a warming world aren’t always the same.

“Trees can make it cooler locally,” said geography professor Chris Williams, director of environmental sciences at Clark University in Massachusetts, “but still warmer on a planetary scale.”

Cities aim to beef up their urban tree canopies to mitigate heat from pavement and to absorb air pollution, both of which improve local human health and quality of life.

Trees can also benefit water quality, prevent erosion and feed wildlife.

That means decision makers in parts of the country where trees are climate-negative have to consider many factors when deciding whether to plant them.

Kansas News Service.

Sheridan Wimmer
Kansas Living
Magazine

One thing you don’t expect as a homeowner is the possibility of a swarm of bees entering your home and taking residence. While they aren’t necessarily eating your food or using your utilities, these sorts of freeloaders can be a bit bothersome.

Instead of calling an exterminator, a Lawrence man suggests a different method of evacuation due to the decline in honeybee populations.

“I noticed bees in Lawrence were being killed by homeowners and with the steep decline of honeybees, I wanted to help provide a solution to both problems,” says Robert Brooks, who has a doctorate in entomology from University of Kansas and has been working with honeybees for more than 30 years.

A BEELINE FOR BOXES

Brooks is now in his second year of a two-year grant from the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Sustainable Research and Education Program to place swarm rescue boxes in 32 city parks in Lawrence.

“I had a swarm box every square mile of Lawrence’s 35-square miles,” Brooks says. “I caught 26 swarms in 2023 and 23 swarms the year before.”

The boxes in Lawrence’s city parks, which the City of Lawrence Parks and Recreation Department is supportive of, are aimed at having bees swarm there instead of between the floorboards or in the siding of Lawrence homes. When Brooks gets to a swarm box and sees bees, they are relocated to rural areas where they can pollinate sunflower or lavender fields and be made available to local beekeepers.

To keep the bees at a safe distance from people visiting the city parks, Brooks places the swarm boxes 12 to 15 feet up in trees. They are checked weekly and once a swarm arrives it is relocated to a double-walled insulated hive.

He wants to extend the program to other cities, and he has gained approval in Ottawa, a town about 30 miles south of Lawrence.

THE MOST FERAL OF THEM ALL

Where bumble bees and carpenter bees hibernate over the winter, honeybees don’t; they stay active inside their hives. Typically, when temperatures fall below 50 degrees, they’ll cluster together for warmth. Worker bees make sure to protect the queen by placing her in the middle of the cluster. But Kansas winters can get brutally cold, and some bees can’t acclimate as well.

“Most honeybees are not overwintering well with 30 to 80 percent dying each winter in Kansas for various reasons,” Brooks says. “The bees I work with are considered “mostly feral” and can survive the Kansas winters better than honeybees purchased from southern states.”

Winter loss is one cause of honeybee population decline over the years, but there’s been a steady decline since 2006. Honeybees represent an irreplaceable pollinator so researchers across the nation are working to improve populations and Brooks is providing part of the solution. Just in the U.S. honeybees pollinate $15 billion in agricultural products each year including more than 130 types of fruits, nuts and vegetables.

Kansas has seen the highest average colony loss rate between 2015 and 2022, losing one-fifth of state honeybee colonies each season. There are many causes for the decline, including mainly the parasite Varroa mite, which debilitates the overwintering bees. The only permanent solution is to find mite resistance in feral colonies.

The efforts made by passionate individuals like Brooks help to keep the agricultural economy running, one urban square mile at a time.

The next time a swarm of bees enters your home, consider reaching out to Brooks before you call an exterminator. They may not be the best roommates, but they’re vital to the many products they pollinate (plus honey).

Get more information about Brooks and his project at www.brookswildbees.com.Kansas Beekeeper Works To Improve Urban Removal Of Colonies

https://kansaslivingmagazine.com/articles/2024/04/01/kansas-beekeeper-works-to-improve-urban-removal-of-colonies