False Spring Research Articles

Provision of false flax spring elements of nutrition, depending on features of fertilization

Provision of false flax spring elements of nutrition, depending on features of fertilization

Predicting major peach yield reductions in the Midwest and Southeast United States

Many fruit crop failures, including those for peaches, are caused by extremely low winter temperatures or by false springs, which is when a hard freeze occurs in the spring after plants have broken dormancy and started to grow. A decision‐support tool was created to predict major, regional peach yield reductions based on the analysis of significant peach crop loss years between 1934 and 2016 in the Midwest (Illinois, Missouri and Arkansas) and Southeast (Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina) regions of the United States using surface temperature data. The tool was tested using data from high‐yield peach years and was found to function well in all the sample years for the Midwest, but only for 75% of years for the Southeast. The tool was then tested on the 2017 false spring event that occurred over parts of the Eastern United States. The tool correctly indicated that the entire Southeast region would likely experience a major peach crop yield reduction, while many peach‐growing areas in the Midwest were spared as not all Midwest stations had accumulated enough growing degree‐days before experiencing a hard freeze. Composite 500 hPa geopotential height anomalies associated with the “warm” periods of false spring events were 100 m above average for the Midwest, and 100–125 m for the Southeast. Cold period composites of the low‐yield years suggested 500 hPa geopotential height anomalies were 100–200 m below average for the Midwest, and 100–175 m for the Southeast. The decision‐support tool will assist the peach industry to anticipate major, regional yield reductions.

Divergent trends in the risk of spring frost damage to trees in Europe with recent warming.

Frost events during the active growth period of plants can cause extensive frost damage with tremendous economic losses and dramatic ecological consequences. A common assumption is that climate warming may bring along a reduction in the frequency and severity of frost damage to vegetation. On the other hand, it has been argued that rising temperature in late winter and early spring might trigger the so called "false spring", that is, early onset of growth that is followed by cold spells, resulting in increased frost damage. By combining daily gridded climate data and 1,489k in situ phenological observations of 27 tree species from 5,565 phenological observation sites in Europe, we show here that temporal changes in the risk of spring frost damage with recent warming vary largely depending on the species and geographical locations. Species whose phenology was especially sensitive to climate warming tended to have increased risk of frost damage. Geographically, compared with continental areas, maritime and coastal areas in Europe were more exposed to increasing occurrence of frost and these late spring frosts were getting more severe in the maritime and coastal areas. Our results suggest that even though temperatures will be elevated in the future, some phenologically responsive species and many populations of a given species will paradoxically experience more frost damage in the future warming climate. More attention should be paid to the increased frost damage in responsive species and populations in maritime areas when developing strategies to mitigate the potential negative impacts of climate change on ecosystems in the near future.

Predicting the patterns of change in spring onset and false springs in China during the twenty-first century.

Spring onset has generally shifted earlier in China over the past several decades in response to the warming climate. However, future changes in spring onset and false springs, which will have profound effects on ecosystems, are still not well understood. Here, we used the extended form of the Spring Indices model (SI-x) to project changes in the first leaf and first bloom dates, and predicted false springs for the historical (1950-2005) and future (2006-2100) periods based on the downscaled daily maximum/minimum temperatures under two emission scenarios from 21 General Circulation Models (GCMs) of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5). On average, first leaf and first bloom in China were projected to occur 21 and 23days earlier, respectively, by the end of the twenty-first century in the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5 scenario. Areas with greater earlier shifts in spring onset were in the warm temperate zone, as well as the north and middle subtropical zones of China. Early false spring risk increased rapidly in the warm temperate and north subtropical zones, while that declined in the cold temperate zone. Relative to early false spring risk, late false spring risk showed a common increase with smaller magnitude in the RCP 8.5 scenario but might cause greater damage to ecosystems because plants tend to become more vulnerable to the later occurrence of a freeze event. We conclude that future climate warming will continue to cause earlier occurrence of spring onset in general, but might counterintuitively increase plant damage risk in natural and agricultural systems of the warm temperate and subtropical China.

Spring plant phenology and false springs in the conterminous US during the 21st century

The onset of spring plant growth has shifted earlier in the year over the past several decades due to rising global temperatures. Earlier spring onset may cause phenological mismatches between the availability of plant resources and dependent animals, and potentially lead to more false springs, when subsequent freezing temperatures damage new plant growth. We used the extended spring indices to project changes in spring onset, defined by leaf out and by first bloom, and predicted false springs until 2100 in the conterminous United States (US) using statistically-downscaled climate projections from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 5 ensemble. Averaged over our study region, the median shift in spring onset was 23 days earlier in the Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 scenario with particularly large shifts in the Western US and the Great Plains. Spatial variation in phenology was due to the influence of short-term temperature changes around the time of spring onset versus season-long accumulation of warm temperatures. False spring risk increased in the Great Plains and portions of the Midwest, but remained constant or decreased elsewhere. We conclude that global climate change may have complex and spatially variable effects on spring onset and false springs, making local predictions of change difficult.

Stress factors associated with forest decline in xeric oak forests of south-central United States

Near total canopy mortality occurred over several tens of hectares of post oak-blackjack oak forests in the Cross Timbers of south-central United States in 2008. This event closely followed extreme drought in 2006 and a region-wide late spring frost in 2007. Oak decline could contribute to the vegetation pattern of the Cross Timbers which is characterized as a mosaic of forest, savanna and grassland. We investigated the roles played by various stress factors involved in this oak decline. The suspected long-term predisposing factors, short-term inciting factors, and contributing factors ultimately responsible for oak decline were examined after the decline using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) analysis, binary logistic regression, climate data and by direct observation of trees affected. Analysis of predisposing factors showed areas affected by oak decline tended to be close to water, on low elevation steep slopes facing northeast, east or southeast. Proximity to water possibly led to underdeveloped root systems that made trees more susceptible to drought. The extreme drought of 2006 was the fourth most severe since 1895 and may have played a role in the decline by making trees more susceptible to other stresses. A false spring in 2007 was suspected to be a major inciting factor, as its potential to cause cavitations and permanent damage to important conducting vessels in early wood could have led to significant stress for trees already weakened by drought. Three weak fungal pathogens that may have contributed to oak decline were isolated and identified: Biscogniauxia mediterranea, Botryosphaeria obtusa and Discula quercina. Global climate change projections suggest increases in intensity and frequency of extremes in precipitation and temperature events such as severe drought and late spring frost. These deviations could increase oak decline and thereby contribute to changes in the vegetation patterns in ecotones such as the Cross Timbers where there is a mosaic of forest, savanna and grassland.

Observed changes in false springs over the contiguous United States

Climate warming fosters an earlier spring green-up that may bring potential benefits to agricultural systems. However, advances in green-up timing may leave early stage vegetation growth vulnerable to cold damage when hard freezes follow green-up resulting in a false spring. Spatiotemporal patterns of green-up dates, last spring freezes, and false springs were examined across the contiguous United States from 1920 to 2013. Results indicate widespread earlier green-up and last spring freeze dates over the period. Observed changes in these dates were asymmetric with the last spring freeze date advancing to earlier in the year relative to green-up date. Although regionally variable, these changes resulted in a reduction in false springs, notably over the past 20 years, except across the intermountain western United States where the advance in green-up timing outpaced that of the last spring freeze. A sensitivity experiment shows that observed decreases in false springs are consistent with a warming climate.

The False Spring of 2012, Earliest in North American Record

Phenology—the study of recurring plant and animal life cycle stages, especially their timing and relationships with weather and climate—is becoming an essential tool for documenting, communicating, and anticipating the consequences of climate variability and change. For example, March 2012 broke numerous records for warm temperatures and early flowering in the United States [Karl et al., 2012; Elwood et al., 2013]. Many regions experienced a “false spring,” a period of weather in late winter or early spring sufficiently mild and long to bring vegetation out of dormancy prematurely, rendering it vulnerable to late frost and drought.

False Spring, and: Elephants

False Spring, and: Elephants Martin Cockroft (bio) False Spring In certain northern cities, that ting of unexpected thaw,cool pavement, airearthen, diaphanous, caught up in curtains;something open and unattached— palmful of dirt, sky not cloudy or clearbut geometric, a math of sprungwindows, starlings inked on rooflines, snowsoftening black wireas I walk, long nights behind. [End Page 97] Elephants Like sleeping elephants,rocks crowd each otheron a hill in Pennsylvania. Incongruous I admit, but then just yesterday I sawlight on Purman Runso broad and pure, three neighborhood roughsleft their clothes by a rootand walked barefoot on a gilded pitch of water. When the light turned I lost them,jittery with laughterin cool banks of shadows. The rocks on a hill in Pennsylvaniamay not be sacred.They may not be rocks said to groan by moonlight. But they rise, dust curlingat their feet, to speakfor what goes unspoken and mourn a distant land. [End Page 98] Martin Cockroft Martin Cockroft's recent poems appear or are forthcoming in Anon, Beloit Poetry Journal and Connotation Press. He teaches at Waynesburg University. Copyright © 2011 University of Nebraska Press

In the future, the future will be the past, and: BRCA1, and: Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down, and: Meditation on a false spring, and: From the history of grade school

In the future, the future will be the past, and: BRCA1, and: Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down, and: Meditation on a false spring, and: From the history of grade school Bob Hicok (bio) In the future, the future will be the past Bob Hicok A woman screamed during the protest between supporters of Arabs on one side and Israelis on the other that Jews should “go back to the ovens.” There’s a picture of her on the web in a white scarf, mouth open, everything slightly blurry because she was moving or the camera was or the Earth jumped a bit at what she said. As I looked at the picture, Eve was behind me folding a shirt, sleeves first and then in half and then in half again the other way, making me glad I’m not a shirt, she coughed and I saw her in an oven. This wasn’t a thought but a vision, not a Jew in an oven but this Jew in an oven, not this Jew in an oven but these lips, eyes, this voice made ash. I got up and kissed her to make sure she was there, not telling her she’d just died in my brain, then sat before the screen and stared and stared again at the picture of the woman, refreshing my gaze at whatever rate humans do who want to know what it feels like to wear a particular head, to own a different tongue. Sure that, if I could meet her, if the crowd dispersed, if screaming were put aside, if she sat across a table from Eve, and saw her stirring coffee, worrying a hair into place, and I gave this woman paper and pencil and told her, I am a god, you can sketch anything you want to happen and it will happen, she wouldn’t sketch an oven and Eve in the oven, wouldn’t draw fire but a hill, as all children draw hills, [End Page 148] as all adults are children in the universe in which I am a god, a hill with a view of other wavings from other hills— these are examples of the thoughts I have of people, as these are examples of questions I ask the falling snow: if I could burn a sock could I burn a foot, if a foot a finger, if a finger an ear, if an ear a womb, could I ever burn a womb, snow, in your opinion, how did we get here? [End Page 149] Copyright © 2009 The Curators of the University of Missouri BRCA1 Bob Hicok She has the gene, the cytosine, adenine her mother sister had, her sother mister had, they’ve named the gene. If I named a gene I’d name it Gene, I knew a Gene, brother to Greg. We are like genetically mice, tiny creatures with toes, she is like genetically eighty-seven percent likely to have breast cancer, ovarian cancer: ovum, Oppen, open, closed. So come July, away with thee, mammaries and ovaries, live together in imperfect harmony . . . it only takes a day to remove the real and add, pick a word: prosthetic, cosmetic, the faux breasts and the egg sacks are just gone, call them the nothings, the novaries. And there I am/was cringing, and there she is/was smiling, touching my hand, saying nononononono, this is a good thing, the best thing the universe has come up with since the wet kiss, I am taking dialogic license there but she was happy as a torch in a Frankenstein flick. The townspeople have gathered to kill the monster. [End Page 150] It’s dark, but they have fire, she has fire, she’s going to kill the monster that killed her mother, her sister, if I may pare-a-phrase down to its essentials: hurray. But ouch. Hurray. But seriously: ouch. And the world, one day, had a second sky, a sky for just the sky to stare up and deepblue and into, and a lake for the lake to dive giggling in and doggypaddle across, and a new and soon improved her sitting there midlife grinning brights...

Ancient Savannah Roots of the Carbohydrate Revolution in South-Central North America

Along the ecotone between North America’s southern Plains and southeast Woodlands, the oldest known earth ovens with rock heating elements date to 8,000–9,000 years ago. Through the millennia, the number and diversity of earth ovens increased markedly, but they typically functioned as plant-baking facilities, especially for geophytes, plants with underground storage organs. Among the important early Holocene geophytes in oak savannah regions were onions (Allium spp.) and camas (Camassia spp.). In the drier savannahs, including Texas’ Edwards Plateau, agave (Agave lechuguilla) and sotol (Dasylirion spp.), plants with above-ground storage organs, dominated oven cookery. Rock-filled earth ovens were common in comparatively wet regions with sandy soils, including Texas’ Post Oak Savannah, but floral preservation conditions are poor. Ethnobotanically and ecologically derived expectations, however, suggest false garlic (Northoscordum bivalve), onions, and spring beauty (Claytonia virginica) as potential plant food staples. Various plant foods were undoubtedly eaten throughout the pre-Columbian era but geophytes appear to have sparked and sustained an ancient carbohydrate revolution that led to significant early Holocene land-use intensification. Such a profound dietary shift may yet be shown to have played an important role in changes in Native American cranial morphology during the early Holocene.

The winter of 1827–1828 over eastern North America: a season of extraordinary climatic anomalies, societal impacts, and false spring

This study reconstructed the weather and its impacts on society for the winter of 1827–1828, focusing on the eastern United States. Data comprise of daily and monthly instrumental records, diaries with both daily and seasonal resolution, newspapers, fur trapper accounts, and tree-rings. Temperature anomalies were calculated and mapped based on the means during the 1820–1840 period to account for different fixed observation times. Precipitation frequencies provided direct comparisons of the 1827–1828 weather with modern climatic normals. Daily plots of temperature also reveal weather variations at daily timeframes. Results indicate that the eastern United States experienced strong positive temperature anomalies that are among the most extreme known in the historical record, particularly its large spatial extent. In contrast, historical evidence reveals strong negative temperature anomalies over northwestern North America, and positive temperature anomalies are evident for coastal Alaska. These temperature anomaly patterns sharply contrast to what is normally experienced during a warm El Nino event. Furthermore, results clearly describe remarkable climatic impacts in the Southeast U.S., including widespread blossoming of fruit trees in mid-winter (false spring) that led to a widespread severe killing frost in early April of 1828. Widespread positive precipitation frequency anomalies are also evident for much of the Southeast U.S., which also played a prominent role on winter vegetation growth. Other weather events and impacts include unusual opening of river traffic in winter in New England, severe flooding in the Mississippi River Valley, and heavy snowfall in northwestern North America.

False Spring Is Making Its Rounds

False Spring Is Making Its Rounds

At the Wall of Flame, and: The Window, and: At Seventeen, and: At Eight A.M., and: Hospital Elevator, and: What Endures, and: Fall Into Winter

AT THE WALL OF FLAME / Liz Rosenberg "Love, that moves the sun, and the other stars." Here may be suffering, but not death, promised Virgil—but how would he know? Always the calm guide, gUding through the waters of phUosophy, the good citizen, neither in heaven nor in heU. Here Virgil stops, a great change comes at this crossing, when Dante passes through the flaming wall, Uke melting glass, in agony, alone to where his blessed lady waits gaudy in red and gold— the white-heat of his passion fanned alive for thirty years cool now as the waters of Paradise. She must have seemed a statue, a stone— and Virgti, fast-disappearing into oblivion at the curve of heaven, the beloved guide a ghost whom no hand touches, and no fire burns. 72 · The Missouri Review THE WINDOW / Liz Rosenberg In the window across the street the passersby walk by blurry, in colors of a circus poster, fleeting as clouds. Hear the rattle of cars, see the pink coat passing in the dark glass. If something trembles, is it a fault in the world, a loose pane, or a problem in the cornea? A local woman smears her naked body with chocolate, presents herself to a neighbor as an Easter present— what mania? How many days of false spring, false promise, a neighbor's wave mistaken as an obscene invitation? Consider it from his side; how she passed Uke a shudder over the lens of his horrified eye. Then you look across at the window again: see a dark square made up of two rectangles, framed in blue paint, with nothing inside. The Missouri Review · 73 AT SEVENTEEN / Liz Rosenberg I wanted you aU summer whUe you slept—or tried to sleep, inching yourself farther from me and closer to the waU. Searching for clues, the sUghtest sign, I watched aU that hot June whUe you lay Uke a chtid in fever, and once you cried Liz! I can't sleep! so mournfuUy I almost fled to the next Ufe where I wouldn't feel so lonely, so cast out. One cat slept on my lap, one on my chest, and God knows how I didn't die of heat prostration. But you'd died. You were dead, you said, your heart had turned to stone. I stroked your hair back from your forehead, held your hot hand, and laid my own head on the empty space above your ribs. I spent that summer alone to keep you company, to prove you weren't dead. Once, I'd felt your heart pound, felt your arms tremble when we kissed. 74 · The Missouri Review AT EIGHT A.M. / Liz Rosenberg Like a servant in the old courts of nobUity I walk a discreet three yards behind my son and his best friend, walking to school, their giant backpacks tails wagging the dog, as if they were going to be jet-propeUed. They're not. They dawdle along the way, hunkering down sometimes, and bumping into one another, spinning planets on the loose. FinaUy theirextra-sensory perceptionteUsthem a grownup is lurking around—my bootheels clacking on concrete, and one of them turns, and then the other, slowly, regaUy. "I just want to make sure you're safe!" I say, hunching my shoulders beggar-style. "Look, I'm not bothering you." My son gestures with one hand, Uke the Pope. "Come walk with us. We want you to." Now they can go back to fuU-time daydreaming, no interruptions at the curb—they güde across, looking no ways but down, and once I have escorted them inside the school—where the principal stands yelling in his big voice at the steel door, "Slow down! Don't run! Hurry up!" I walk back down leaf-Uttered streets, peopled by ghosts— last year's baby-sitter stands waiting for a bus, my brother-in-law safely asleep in Cleveland, lounges on the corner, reading the daUy news, back to the great ghost, still sleeping upstairs; the father of the prince, my husband, old man of the castle ruUng the final ruins of his dreams. The Missouri Review · 75 HOSPITAL ELEVATOR / Liz Rosenberg With...

“The Virtuoso Tribe of Arts and Sciences”: Studies in the Eighteenth-Century Work and Membership of the London Society of Arts ed. by D. G. C. Allan, John L. Abbott

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 411 extrapolating back into the 18th century by using other forms of evidence, such as insurance registers. This is successful enough as far as individual numbers and occupations are concerned but lacks any sense of the coherence of London as an industrial center. What does emerge, however, is how limited technological change was in London, with both the steam engine and the factory little in evidence in manufacturing throughout the period. Once its economy has been established, Schwarz tries to analyze London’s social structure, especially the hierarchies present in indi­ vidual trades. It is clear that in London most manufacturing activity employed little capital and generated low incomes, and it was very difficult for the average producer to alter this situation. The London manufacturer who accumulated vast wealth was a rarity during the Industrial Revolution. Instead, the tendency was either a proliferation of small-scale but increasingly specialized producers or the death of industry in the face of more technologically advanced mass production elsewhere in Britain. Despite attempts to isolate themselves from competition, as with the guilds, London manufacturers were unable to alter the forces for economic change in their favor. This can be seen both generally and in the case studies of tailors, shoemakers, furniture makers, and silk weavers. Finally, the book devotes a chapter each to the influence of economic cycles/wars and the seasons on economic and social conditions in London, and one chapter on its demography. Interesting as these are, they do illustrate the problems of this book: they are more a series of essays on London’s economic and social structure, with a heavy reliance on population data, than an attempt to examine what happened to London as a whole. Perhaps that is not possible yet, not until the completion ofmuch more work of the kind that Schwarz has undertaken. Generally, this is a very worthwhile study that took years in the research and the writing. Not least among its merits is its demonstration of how economic change can take the form of organizational rather than technological change, and that this can, in turn, induce important social change. Ranald Michie Dr. Michie is a senior lecturer in economic history at the University of Durham and author of The City ofLondon: Continuity and Change since 1850 (London, 1992). “The Virtuoso Tribe of Arts and Sciences": Studies in the Eighteenth-Century Work and Membership of the London Society of Arts. Edited by D. G. C. Allan and John L. Abbott. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992. Pp. xxvi+447; illustrations, tables, notes, appendixes, index. $65.00. The Royal Society for the Encouragement ofArts, Manufactures and Commerce (not to be confused with its older scientific counterpart, the 412 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGYAND CULTURE Royal Society of London) began its work in 1754 with energy and enthusiasm. By 1764 it boasted a fantastically large membership of nearly 2,500 and was encouraging innovation by offering a bewildering variety of premiums—380 in all—in the fields of agriculture, chemistry, colonies and trade, manufactures, mechanics, and the “polite arts.” Cobalt mining, madder cultivation, tinning, American silk cultivation, papermaking, saltpeter, varnishes, dyeing, preservation of ships’ hulls, soils and manures, carpets, sculpture, borax, verdigris, bismuth, and mechanical methods for cleaning chimneys—these werejust a few of the manifold subjects encouraged at one time or another by the society’s premiums, which yielded not merely cash prizes for inventors, artisans, and artists but also a measure of prestige and, with luck, financial backing. Such a frenetic pace could not be sustained for long. In the second decade of its existence, the society fell out of fashion: membership plummeted, dues fell into arrears, and the number of premiums was radically reduced. Despite this false spring, the Society ofArts did go on to have an impact on British technology and culture, though how much of an impact is still not terribly clear. Some historians have noted a coincidence between the society’s founding and the growth of British imperial power, but others have been more skeptical. T. S. Ashton, for instance, argued that the society’s premiums were “small bait” com­ pared with the incentives of the market. To historians...

Out of the Greenhouse

In the false Spring of our times, everything is painted green: it is the appointed liturgical colour for our post-historical sabbath. It’s to everyone’s taste, the guarantee of minimum respectability. There’s a Green party, but that doesn’t get very far, because it appears to appropriate for a particular cause the symbol that belongs to all. The colour has a utopian hint, or rather that of a puritan arcadia, but at the same time it soothes the passages of capitalist economic exchange. More than that: the guarantee of a ‘good’, ‘healthy’ relation to nature, as to one’s own body, increases surplus value. Capitalism has already incorporated, in the interests of profit, the new religiosity of our times, which takes the form of transcending one’s humanity in order to celebrate nature or animality as the ‘other’ with which one nonetheless seeks to become united.I don’t want to be misunderstood. The planetary structures which support life have been dangerously interfered with; much natural beauty, along with the delicate and long-developed harmonies of people’s everyday environments has been ruined or destroyed. Technology is employed indiscriminately and for the mere sake of size and complexity. However, ‘Green consciousness’ is not the complete answer to all this: in too many ways it may collude with precisely what it purports to oppose.