The last few days have been dominated by a trip north into Canada, partly to visit my aunt and uncle for Thanksgiving (in Canada, Thanksgiving is 6 weeks earlier than in the US - simply because harvest time is so much earlier further north), and partly to take up an invitation to visit the Canadian Forest Service headquarters in Ottawa.
This has also been about the peak weekend for the Fall colours, and in the sunshine the effects were really breathtaking - particularly on the maples which give the impression of a glowing ember - yellows and reds within the canopy, darkening (as if they were cooling) to crimson and almost purple on the outermost leaves.
The visit and my presentation at CFS seemed to go well. They've just completed a large project on Assisted Migration (AM) which relates closely to my own project here at Harvard - but of course the scale and structure of their forests and landscapes has many contrasts with UK or Scotland. In particular, the continuity of forest from south to north means that most of the AM response to climate change is focused on adjusting seed zone regulations by fairly modest distances, or allowing certain species to be planted a little further north, or higher up. A lot of information, links and contacts to follow up after this visit, including some researchers in Waterloo, Canada who are studying public perceptions of changes in forests - perhaps a very interesting lead.
I drove back to Harvard Forest via the eastern Adirondacks of northern New York State. This is an Amish area, and it's fascinating to see horsedrawn buggies on the roads and a farmer ploughing with 2 horses. The buggies are hard to see in dim conditions being black and deliberately free of any reflective 'adornments' - unlike the similar Mennonites in southern Ontario which do allow reflective triangles on their buggies. This part of NY State was very attractive, with evidently fertile farmland in a mosaic with forest, rock and swamp - a pattern perhaps ideally suited to small scale non-industrialised agriculture, and maybe part of the reason the Amish are here.
This week's useful information:
- Black bears in the Fall are stocking up for winter. That means they are eating around 20000 calories a day.
I just checked on how many calories there are in a pound of beef. For 20% fat, it's 1152 calories/pound. So if a black bear catches a human weighing 170 pounds, with average or slightly below average body fat, that's 10 days worth of food for it. (The bear might get bored and want some berries occasionally, of course).
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