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Global Climate Change Digest
A Guide to Information on Greenhouse Gases and Ozone Depletion
Published July 1988 through June 1999

FROM VOLUME 1, NUMBER 3, SEPTEMBER 1988

PROFESSIONAL PUBLICATIONS...
IMPACTS

Item #d88sep58

"Effect of Climate Change on Fire Regimes in Northwestern Minnesota," J.S. Clark (Biol. Survey, NY State Museum, Albany NY 12230), Nature, 334(6179), 233-235, July 21, 1988.

Petrographic thin sections were used to determine the annual production of charcoal within a lake catchment over the past 750 years, providing the long and high resolution records required to elucidate fire regimes. Maximum abundance and frequency occurred in the warm, dry 15th and 16th centuries, and fire importance decreased dramatically with the onset of intensification of the little ice age, AD 1600. Fire cycles related to 22-year drought cycles, and to the breakup of early successional stands, suggesting a synergistic influence of climate and fuel accumulation.

Item #d88sep59

"Three Phases of Plant Response to Atmospheric CO₂ Enrichment," S.B. Idso (US Water Conserv. Lab., Phoenix AZ 85040), Plant Physiol., 87(1), 5-7, 1988.

The beneficial effects of CO₂ enrichment at three different levels of water stress has been established through research on five terrestrial and two aquatic species. In the well-watered phase, a 300 ppm increase in CO₂ content generally increased productivity by 30%. Under non-lethal stress, this increase is more than half again as effective in increasing plant productivity. Under severe water stress, enrichment may actually keep alive plants that would otherwise die.

Item #d88sep60

"Climatic Warming, Spring Budburst and Frost Damage on Trees," M.G.R. Cannell (Inst. Terr. Ecol., Bush Estate, Penicuik, Midlothian EH26 OQB, Scotland), R.I. Smith, J. Appl. Ecol., 23, 177-191, 1986.

If future CO₂-induced warming of 2° C increased the incidence of warm springs of the type that have occurred in Britain during this century, then warming would induce earlier blossoming and budburst in many temperate trees, with an increase in the risk of subsequent damaging frosts. However, in many trees there is an increase in thermal time to budburst with decreased chilling. Empirical thermal time-chilling models suggested that, on average, Cox's apple in Kent would blossom 18-24 days earlier than at present following 2° C warming, but that P. sitchensis in the Scottish uplands would burst its buds only 5 days earlier than at present.