Updates
Pretty self-explanatory
If you like beer and live within driving distance of Waterbury, CT, the third annual Brass City Brewfest is Saturday the 13th. Unfortunately, my attendance looks unlikely this year. :(
Phoenix found water on Mars, which is huge. It also found perchlorate, which is a bit of a surprise and opens up rocket fuel possibilities in the distant future.
China pulled off the Olympics without any athletes choking on air pollution. It's amazing what you can do when you shut down every factory, construction site and coal power plant within 20 miles for two weeks. Now, if only they'd keep them shut down.
This tree is still dead. In fact, I helped my neighbor take it down this weekend. Judging by the ring count, it looks like it lived 55 years. Now it's fuel to keep my house warm this winter.
The concerns I had last Fall about the drought carried through the Winter. We had a snow deficit, again. While the rest of the country got blizzard after blizzard, we got one serious storm and a couple small ones. I think we had a foot of snow for the whole winter. The rest was rain. With the ground still frozen, all that rain did was run off into the drains, rivers and reservoirs. Rivers that normally crest in April did so in February. Then Spring was on the dry side, sending my fears about a wicked hot Summer sky high. But rains opened up in late Spring/early Summer, helping to keep temperatures around average. Yay! 90 degree days were few and far between and we didn't see a single one in August.
\_/
DED
If you like beer and live within driving distance of Waterbury, CT, the third annual Brass City Brewfest is Saturday the 13th. Unfortunately, my attendance looks unlikely this year. :(
Phoenix found water on Mars, which is huge. It also found perchlorate, which is a bit of a surprise and opens up rocket fuel possibilities in the distant future.
China pulled off the Olympics without any athletes choking on air pollution. It's amazing what you can do when you shut down every factory, construction site and coal power plant within 20 miles for two weeks. Now, if only they'd keep them shut down.
This tree is still dead. In fact, I helped my neighbor take it down this weekend. Judging by the ring count, it looks like it lived 55 years. Now it's fuel to keep my house warm this winter. The concerns I had last Fall about the drought carried through the Winter. We had a snow deficit, again. While the rest of the country got blizzard after blizzard, we got one serious storm and a couple small ones. I think we had a foot of snow for the whole winter. The rest was rain. With the ground still frozen, all that rain did was run off into the drains, rivers and reservoirs. Rivers that normally crest in April did so in February. Then Spring was on the dry side, sending my fears about a wicked hot Summer sky high. But rains opened up in late Spring/early Summer, helping to keep temperatures around average. Yay! 90 degree days were few and far between and we didn't see a single one in August.
\_/
DED
Labels: beer, China, environment, space_exploration
posted by DED at 10:46 PM
4 Comments:
Do you think a 55 year-old tree died from one drought? Or was their some disease as well?
There was no sign of disease on this one. I cut up the trunk and it looked quite healthy. I've got other birches with plenty of canker rot that have died and are still alive. The drought we had last year is the only thing I can point to. 55 is old enough that drought plus competition with neighboring trees wore it out. You can see the others in the picture, still, it doesn't look that bad. But this species likes wet soils so maybe it couldn't get enough water.
That same day we took down a 68+ foot birch (I think it was also sweet birch) which also died late last year. This one was in the back yard "forest" and was in danger of potentially falling on another neighbor's shed (more like a small barn). Now this tree was canker free, except at the base, but it's been that way for as long as I've lived here. The rest of the trunk was perfectly fine. This tree towered over most of its neighbors so competition wasn't a problem. So drought + canker + old age = death? I've still got trees with more canker than this one had and they're still alive.
Trees are individuals too. We tend to think they're all alike, especially within the same species. These two might've had a weak tolerance to drought conditions. Not being an arborist, this is a best guess on my part. I've talked to my neighbor, who is an arborist, and all he could offer was "maybe."
Makes sense. I just thought (incorrectly, I suppose) that all trees live a hundred years or more.
Most of them do (and for several centuries in fact), but not all. Depends on the species. Fast growing trees tend to have shorter lifespans. Cottonwoods and Lodgepole pines almost never reach 100. Peach trees might make it to 50.
I'll double check the age of the tree. If it's different, I'll post accordingly. But I'm pretty sure that I got most of the rings.
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