5d (edited) • 🌱 Introductions
We have two new members!
Every new member reminds me to update you on what I am working on.
I have been focusing on water stress. Two aspects of it. The first is the changing pattern of rain all over the planet. This is causing all of us to adapt our farming methods and forcing us to work out we handle excess water when the rain is torrential. We need to capture some of this to prevent flooding and then store it for the months that are now drier than they have been.
Where I live the issue is the new situation of long dry summers. We are so used to having a distribtion of rainfall throughout the year. This has kept our crops watered and our wildlife alive.
Now with less rain we are seeing our hedgerows, trees, rivers and ponds suffer. This year many habitats suffered from drought. Trees were weakened and damaged and if this repeats next year, as the forecasts predict it will, we may lose trees from our countryside.
The demand ofr water is so high and our storage facilities so low that there is little we can do. But we can change what we are doing in our towns and cities. We risk losing the joy of trees in our communities. They bring delight and they help cool our environment. But it may come to the stage where we need to consider watering trees. We are used to helping young saplings in the early years, but not to supporting established trees.
Even now when I suggest that this might be needed there is incredulity from some of the people I speak to. But in our major public gardens they have begun to take this very seriously. An arboretum that loses 400 trees, as happened in one case, shows how serious a problem this is.
It also brings up the question of which tree do you plant? If we plant trees that are used to a climate that no longer exists are you wasting your time? If you don't, what happens to the birds and insects that used to live off them?
We are entering strange times.
So the conversations I am starting, are around increasing the number of water collection points and storage facilities to hold water to supply our urban trees.
The photos show newly planted fruit trees that are suffering from draught.
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We have two new members!
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