Climate change blamed for fading foliage

[onehandle]

Source: AP

EAST MONTPELIER, Vt. - Every fall, Marilyn Krom tries to make a trip to Vermont to see its famously beautiful fall foliage. This year, she noticed something different about the autumn leaves.

"They're duller, not as sparkly, if you know what I mean," Krom, 62, a registered nurse from Eastford, Conn., said during a recent visit. "They're less vivid." Other "leaf peepers" are noticing, too, and some believe climate change could be the reason.

Forested hillsides usually riotous with reds, oranges and yellows have shown their colors only grudgingly in recent years, with many trees going straight from the dull green of late summer to the rust-brown of late fall with barely a stop at a brighter hue.

"It's nothing like it used to be," said University of Vermont plant biologist Tom Vogelmann, a Vermont native. He says autumn has become too warm to elicit New England's richest colors.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071021/ap_on_re_us/fading_foliage

[emmadoggy]

1. I'm not in Vermont

but, I've said to my husband more than once recently that the fall colors just have not been good for at least a handful of years. And the timing definitely seems out of whack. :shrug:

I was thinking it was just me, but maybe not?

[freethought]

2. They have got that right!

I remember one reeeeaaally good year some time ago, it was one year out of 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 or 2002. One of those year had a nice summer with good rain, a good year for tree growth. And in the autumn of that year the colors were just spectacular. The New England hardwood forests were "ablaze", so to speak.
This year, it's really weird. A some trees have come into color, a few have even come into color quite well. There's a big Swamp Maple down the road which is colored in both bright red AND Yellow. What's really strange is many of the trees are still quite green. The Sugar Maples, and the Oaks. Many of them are just starting to show color, and it's mid-October!! WTF!!
For a life-long New Englander it's rather disconcerting.

[Hardrada]

5. Our trees here in the Iowa counties near the Mississippi

are usually brightly colored but this year many are still green. We had a belated warm spell that kept them so but now many are changing...but decidely later than usual.

[freethought]

6. Yeeeks!

I'm in Mid-Coast Maine. The Autumn foliage should be in full glory now. But just like your own locale, many of the trees are still green. It is very, weird.

[Lisa]

13. my folks have noticed this as well, in Ontario

They've lived there since just after WWII, and they commented that the sugar maples appear brown and drab -- possibly due to a hot, dry summer.

[DeepModem Mom]

3. So sad. nt

[truthisfreedom]

4. It's (almost past) time to start documenting what's left of our world and keeping track of dates

where mother nature normally has changes, quantifying and qualifying these changes, and charting the way they are evolving.

[fasttense]

7. And all of creation groans. n/t

[Buns_of_Fire]

8. The leaves here in SW Virginia seem to be going directly from green to dead.

As I sit here, with all the windows open, wearing short sleeves, and the thermometer reading 82 degrees. Most unusual.

[freethought]

11. That's what it was like last year

here in Maine. There did not seem to be any color display at all. The trees went from green to brown to bare in what seemed to be a matter of days.

[SoCalDem]

14. Weather stress weakens trees over several seasons, and then they get infestations

and tree diseases because their "immune systems" are weakened.. We have lost MANY trees here in S Cal.

The natural immunity systems of ALL living things are under constant assault..

Millions of years brought them to the point we are at, and in a relatively short time, things have changed enough to start unwinding the whole ball of string..

[alfredo]

9. In the seventies and early eighties I worked at a bike shop. In the

middle of Oct we would have our first cold snap. You could count on it. Even though it would warm up some, it killed the season. Now, you can't count on a real cold snap until some time in Nov, if then.

I live in Central Ky.

[spinbaby]

10. I cleaned out my garden today

I do it about this time every year. Usually, I clean out plants killed by frost. This year, I cleaned out plants killed by heat and drought.

[Auntie Bush]

12. I live in southern Vermont in the heart of the Green Mountains and

earlier in the season I complained about the lack of color. However after some good rains the colors were/are beautiful. IMHO I think the climate change is delaying the date of the height of fall foliage and killing off many Maple trees...but I think the color has to do more with the lack of rain and frost. We still haven't had a killer frost and I have a pink rose blooming off my patio as we speak/type. Last year we had new green growth till the first week in January. Now that's strange. We had the door open till a couple hours ago and that's strange too.

[cali]

15. I live in the Kingdom

and there were virtually no blaze reds and the oranges were muted. Foliage season wasn't just delayed, it more or less didn't happen here. We got our first real frost a week ago, almost a month late.

[yellowcanine]

16. This is kind of stupid - it is like judging climate change based on one winter.

It is possible that there are more warm autumns than before, yes - or that the average date of peak autumn colors is moving further into the fall - but to blame one year of dull foliage on climate change is too simple. Lots of factors influnce fall colors - anount of rainfall and timing of rainfall, day/night temp differentials, as well as average temperature, among other things. Global warming skeptics are rightly faulted for pointing to one snowy or cold winter as evidence against climate change - this is the flip side of that.

[onehandle]

17. If you read the article...

"The leaves fall off without ever becoming orange or yellow or red. They just go from green to brown," said Barry Rock, a forestry professor at the University of New Hampshire.

He says 2004 was "mediocre, 2005 was terrible, 2006 was pretty bad although it was spotty. This year, we're seeing that same spottiness."

[JCMach1]

18. Just got back from Armenia... was like the Smokies or New England for foliage

Climate change is shifting everything!

http://flickr.com/photos/9008613@N06/sets/72157602569004984/