Acorns Disappear Across the Country 474
Hugh Pickens writes "Botanist Rod Simmons thought he was going crazy when couldn't find any acorns near his home in Arlington County, Virginia. 'I'm used to seeing so many acorns around and out in the field, it's something I just didn't believe,' said Simmons. Then calls started coming in about crazy squirrels. Starving, skinny squirrels eating garbage, inhaling bird feed, greedily demolishing pumpkins. Squirrels boldly scampering into the road. And a lot more calls about squirrel roadkill. Simmons and Naturalist Greg Zell began to do some research and found Internet discussion groups, including one on Topix called 'No acorns this year,' reporting the same thing from as far away as the Midwest up through New England and Nova Scotia. 'We live in Glenwood Landing, N.Y., and don't have any acorns this year. Really weird,' wrote one. 'None in Kansas either! Curiouser and curiouser.' The absence of acorns could have something to do with the weather and Simmons has a theory about the wet and dry cycles. But many skeptics say oaks in other regions are producing plenty of acorns, and the acorn bust is nothing more than the extreme of a natural boom-and-bust cycle. But the bottom line is that no one really knows. 'It's sort of a mystery,' Zell said."
Anecdotal data point (Score:5, Informative)
acorns going down hill for 2 years (Score:2, Informative)
In Boston 2 years ago we were walkign on acorns, last year was a lower year, this year barely an acorn can be found. makes walking a bit safer :)
Another anecdotal data point - Dallas Texas (Score:3, Informative)
Seems like there are plenty of acorns here.
Re:Colony Collapse? (Score:3, Informative)
Oaks have male and female plants that use airborn pollenation techniques, but they will self pollenate or clone themselves if needed. I would look at chemicals or precipitation before looking at bees.
(for the Christers: perhaps God told the trees their children are no longer needed(/sarcasm))
I have heard reports in the past of hungry packs of squirrels attacking and eating cats and small dogs. I wonder if those reports will increase this winter.
Re:Acorns? As in a nut, not a computer? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Let me guess... (Score:2, Informative)
That's the thing that kind of bugs me is that Global Climate change gets all of the attention at the expense, it seems, over other issues. For example, coal fired power plants.
Coal-fired power-stations DO contribute to global warming. The down-wind mercury levels, whilst elevated, aren't high enough cause the well-known chronic toxity effects (google 'minimata' for the gory details), but they could (collectively) lead to TEOCAWKI. Which would be bad.
Coming out of an ice age (Score:1, Informative)
Re:acorns going down hill for 2 years (Score:3, Informative)
Having just walked across my patio barefoot yesterday, I can confirm that there are plenty of acorns in Maryland.
No acorns in NH either (Score:2, Informative)
Come to my house (Score:3, Informative)
We've got a bumper crop of acorns this year. I've never seen anything like it - my front yard is almost literally paved with acorn bits and pieces now. And we're less than 200 miles from the supposed VA dead zone in the article...
One big (75 foot tall) oak tree in NC (Score:2, Informative)
produced 4 large yard trash bags full of acorns just from the 400 sq foot parking pad which is located under its branches and perhaps covers 20% of the total area under its branches. While last year it produced about 5 to 10% of that.
I figure that this single tree produced between 400 and 800 pounds of acorns this year! Based on having to pick up the bags I shoveled them into from the parking pad.
The difference was a months long drought the year before and then this year we were consistently above seasonal average rainfalls through the entire year.
My other oak trees were also putting out acorns in heavy volumes this year in contrast to last.
When trees are feeling unstressed, they put energy into reproduction. When they are stressed, they focus on self-preservation.
Re:No acorns for you! (Score:3, Informative)
Not sure then how Rod Simmons is claiming New England has no acorns. Well, yes the answer to that is in TFA... he did all his research by reading newsgroups and BB's. I couldnt imagine a worse way to gather objective data, since no one would post normal or excessive acorn production, he doesnt compare newsgroup chatter to prior years with 'normal' acorn production, does no validation of claims, and still cherry-picks the results. Rod Simmons is an *idiot*.
Lots in Atlanta (Score:2, Informative)
We've had a bumper crop this year of acorns, chestnuts, and pecans. Especially pecans because of the drought the insect population that normally eats them is way down.
One long-term study already done (Score:3, Informative)
"LONG-TERM PATTERNS OF ACORN PRODUCTION FOR FIVE OAK SPECIES IN XERIC FLORIDA UPLANDS"
Study of acorn production across several species in FL from 1969 to 1996 http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/01-0707 [esajournals.org]
From the abstract: We identified regular cycles of acorn production ... and found evidence that annual acorn production is affected by the interactions of precipitation, which is highly variable ..., with endogenous reproductive patterns. In contrast, acorn production showed no significant association with minimum winter temperatures.
Re:Actually its a normal occurence (Score:5, Informative)
So I'm not the only geek in the world who takes an interest in trees after all?
I knew about mast years, and the following meagre years. This is a common adaptation to predation pressure or parasites. An extreme example of this are cicadas; predators don't live long enough for their population cycle to become synchronized with that of the cicada.
I'm curious what the synchronization mechanism could be. In my area (north western Europe), last year was a mast year ... for beeches, chestnuts and all four species of oak growing in my area. This fall I found only a handfull of chestnuts, no beech nuts and hardly any acorns.
While hiking in North Carolina this fall, I didn't see a lot of acorn remains either, but I attributed that to having been a bit late in the season.
I'm surprised and intrigued that the phenomenon appears coincided on both sides of the Atlantic this year. Are the cycles synchronized via some global (solar?) external trigger, or is this just coincidence? I always assumed it must be the weather, but that isn't even remotely similar on both sides of the Atlantic.
Re:Let me guess... (Score:4, Informative)
The best scientific introduction is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 4th Assessment Report, Working Group 1 (physical science). It attempts to be a comprehensive literature review of the mainstream science. It is all available online here [ucar.edu]. If you'd like to know more specifically about any particular issue, and are having trouble locating it in the IPCC report (e.g., if you don't know what keywords to look for), let me know and I might be able to provide more specific references.
The IPCC report is kind of dense and is a survey of the modern state of the art. If you're looking for more of a textbook sort of introduction to climate science, I'd recommend David Archer's book Understanding the Forecast. It's aimed at undergraduate freshmen, so it might be below the level you're looking for, but it's still pretty good at laying out a lot of the important issues.
Re:Let me guess... (Score:5, Informative)
Warming will cause an ice age. Because of "crucial heat exchanging currents." Got it.
Although that's an oversimplification, that has in fact happened many times in the past (e.g., Dansgaard-Oescher events). What happens is that warming causes more fresh water to be added to the North Atlantic, due to increased precipitation and ice melt, or freshwater pulses from draining inland bodies of water (e.g., Lake Agassiz and the Younger Dryas event). This disrupts the Atlantic thermohaline circulation which carries heat from the tropics to northern Europe. That region will experience strong cooling, although not all regions do. Numerous such cooling events are recorded in the geologic record, including plunging the regional climate back into an ice age shortly after recovery from one. However, it is thought that glacial climates are more susceptible to such events than is the current interglacial. Current estimates are that even if the thermohaline circulation shuts down, Europe will still warm, since the cooling there is counteracted by the large amount of warming necessary to trigger such a collapse.
Some of you have bought so heavily into this crap that you can't even tell how ridiculous you sound.
Some of you are so pathetically unaware of everything we know about climate that you can't even tell how ignorant you sound.
Re:Let me guess... (Score:3, Informative)
The problem is that there are only experts on one side of the argument. The global warming "debate" isn't honest experts shouting at each other - it is real experts being shouted at by PR propagandists who CALL themselves experts. Just look at all the so-called "Institutes" on the Web that look so professional and scientific when they claim to offer evidence that global warming is a myth. These are NOT scientific organizations - they are paid public relations firms posing as reputable independent research organizations. Don't be fooled - and they are very good at fooling people - it's what they do for a living.
Their job is to create controversy where there is none. By creating pseudo-controversy and the appearance of scientific disagreement they delay legislation and influence public opinion to the benefit of their clients.