Trees Grow for Extra Month as Planet Warms
Researchers studying hardwoods in northwest Ohio say a century of warming has extended their annual growing season by a month on average.
Between 1883 and 1912, farmer Thomas Mikesell made meticulous notes on local tree growth, precipitation and temperature in his home town of Wauseon, Ohio. Researchers say Mikesell's observations are a near unique pre-warming dataset to compare with modern times. They found that leaves stayed on trees about 15% longer than they did in Mikesell's day. "An entire month of growing season extension is huge when we're talking about a pretty short period of time for those changes to be expressed."
Species responded to warmer temperatures in different ways - most kept their leaf colour longer into Autumn but some budded early.
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