Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you
Speaker 2: should know that we're all melting.
Speaker 1: Addition, Yeah, I'm just a migrating fern.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's a good one to be.
Speaker 1: Blowing through of the forest looking for a new home. Sure,
Speaker 1: I'm a spore.
Speaker 2: What happens when you get their spore?
Speaker 1: Well, I'll probably grow into a beautiful new fern because
Speaker 1: ferns are pretty party.
Speaker 2: That's awesome, and I'll bet you'll contribute to society and
Speaker 2: all sorts of beneficial ways that ferns that were already
Speaker 2: there couldn't necessarily do.
Speaker 1: I hope. So there is fern stuff in here, and
Speaker 1: I have a wonderful fern scene at my camp on
Speaker 1: the other side of the feeder creek that goes into
Speaker 1: the main creek. I call it. I even have a son.
Speaker 1: This is fern forest, and it's a forest of ferns.
Speaker 1: Is quite lovely.
Speaker 2: God knows where they're from, because those things can travel
Speaker 2: quite a bit, as we'll see.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they could be from Alabamy easily.
Speaker 2: I'm not kidding. Easily. Man, I've got a stat that's
Speaker 2: gonna blow your mind in a second. Uh oh boy, Actually,
Speaker 2: I'll just bust it out now, you ready? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah? How far can a fern travel?
Speaker 2: A fern can travel. The Tasmanian tree fern in particular,
Speaker 2: can send it spores five hundred to eight hundred kilometers.
Speaker 2: It's three hundred to five hundred miles from the mother plant.
Speaker 2: And get this, a single frond a fraud produces more
Speaker 2: than seven hundred and fifty million of those spores.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: So you can understand that ferns, I mean, you find
Speaker 2: ferns everywhere. They're really hardy. They can actually survive cold,
Speaker 2: colder temperatures than you would think. They also thrive in
Speaker 2: the tropics. They're like a really great pioneer plant. They
Speaker 2: usually are among the first large plants that show up
Speaker 2: in a newly cleared part of Earth. Right, this all
Speaker 2: makes sense then, Okay, So what we're talking about then,
Speaker 2: is that those ferns that showed up in this new
Speaker 2: place and said, hey, let's get this, let's get this
Speaker 2: biosphere going again, let's get this biome back into shape
Speaker 2: after this wildfire or something like that. Or there's like
Speaker 2: a stampede because there was a really great ice cream
Speaker 2: truck that drove through one of those two. Those ferns
Speaker 2: have migrated. They came from Tasmania apparently all the way
Speaker 2: to wherever the ice cream truck was. Right now they're there,
Speaker 2: and so they actually moved in that sense, which is
Speaker 2: really surprising because plants are what are known as sessile organisms.
Speaker 2: They don't move from place to place individually as organisms,
Speaker 2: but as a species they can actually move around like inchworms.
Speaker 2: Pretty good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty cool. I didn't really know much about this.
Speaker 1: We're talking about plant migration and the idea, well not idea,
Speaker 1: the very real fact that just like humans and animals
Speaker 1: will go to more hospitable climbs as the climate may
Speaker 1: change or just i don't know, just to seek a
Speaker 1: better place to be, plants and trees and things on
Speaker 1: mass do the same thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's all sorts of ways that they do
Speaker 2: that too. So they do it by dispersing their seeds
Speaker 2: or their spores in that case, fern spores or single
Speaker 2: cell organisms. They're not like a seed technically, but they
Speaker 2: do the same thing. Right. They show up in a
Speaker 2: place and set up shop and they start rocking out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. And ferns, you know, it depends and
Speaker 1: we'll get all into this stuff. But how fast this
Speaker 1: happens depends on different factors. How far these plants can
Speaker 1: migrate depends on different factors. Why this is happening is
Speaker 1: generally climate change. Yeah, and plants are in trees, and
Speaker 1: things are generally moving north or up in elevation if
Speaker 1: they hit mountains.
Speaker 2: Or south in the southern hemisphere exactly.
Speaker 1: So that's sort of the general pattern. And we mentioned
Speaker 1: ferns because, like you said, those spores can really haul.
Speaker 1: Ferns also mature very quickly, and you know, the wind
Speaker 1: can just that's that's why I got a fern forest
Speaker 1: at my camp probably.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So they check both of the boxes that you
Speaker 2: need to be a fast migrating plant species. They produce
Speaker 2: seeds or spores at a very young age, and their
Speaker 2: seed or spore can travel very far distances, right right,
Speaker 2: so they can move around. And also it doesn't hurt that,
Speaker 2: like I said, ferns are adaptable. Trees and other plants
Speaker 2: still move quite so fast. But they move, especially if
Speaker 2: you look at the fossil record, a lot faster than
Speaker 2: they actually should so if you pay attention to a
Speaker 2: single organism saying oak, Those acorns don't travel terribly far.
Speaker 2: They may get a little further away from the drip
Speaker 2: line if a squirrel happens to bury it somewhere and
Speaker 2: a new oak tree grows.
Speaker 1: Sure.
Speaker 2: I think it was Ander Samberg who described acorns as
Speaker 2: solar powered factories for producing more oak trees.
Speaker 1: Whoaa Andy Samberg said that?
Speaker 2: No, Anders Sandberg. Oh, okay, he's a philosopher at Oxford.
Speaker 1: That makes a lot more sense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Andy Samberg. He ate his lime accidentally in
Speaker 2: his Corona bottle. That's that's what he's got.
Speaker 1: You knew he's married too.
Speaker 2: Patricia Arquette. No Arquette, You've.
Speaker 1: Been guessing Patricia Arkette for a lot of things. Slightly.
Speaker 1: I feel like he's married to Yeah, I feel like
Speaker 1: that's come up before.
Speaker 2: Maybe I don't know her name just rolls off the tone.
Speaker 1: I know a big fan of hers. He is married
Speaker 1: to what's her name, Joanna Newsom, the singer and harpist
Speaker 1: oh Neatice. And if you like, if you're into architecture
Speaker 1: and homes, you should seek out I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's architectural digest or something. But someone did a spread
Speaker 1: on their home and it is really something else.
Speaker 2: Okay, so that's Andy Samberg per Yeah.
Speaker 1: That would just checked a quick detour.
Speaker 2: U Wait wait I wasn't done.
Speaker 1: Oh no, good, go ahead.
Speaker 2: So if you look in an individual tree, an oak tree,
Speaker 2: those acorns don't go particularly far away from the tree,
Speaker 2: as the old saying goes, But the fact that they
Speaker 2: do fall away from the tree moons that very slowly
Speaker 2: some of those seedlings are going to grow up a
Speaker 2: little more northward or a little more southward. Then it's
Speaker 2: mother plant, and very very slowly, the whole group of
Speaker 2: oaks can move southward or northward right.
Speaker 1: Over hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands.
Speaker 2: Of years so long. The thing is, if you look
Speaker 2: at the fossil record, they moved way faster than they should.
Speaker 2: And there's actually a paradox that was named by a
Speaker 2: guy named Clement.
Speaker 1: Red right reads paradox.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's got a great, great title for it.
Speaker 1: Of rapid plant migration. That's the full title.
Speaker 2: It sounds almost like snake oil from the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it kind of.
Speaker 2: So what is it?
Speaker 1: Oh? Okay, I didn't ever seen me up. We're still
Speaker 1: tight after all these years.
Speaker 2: For sure.
Speaker 1: So what he found from the fossil record, like you
Speaker 1: were talking about, and as we'll see that that's one,
Speaker 1: like you know, pretty good way to study this stuff,
Speaker 1: especially pollen fossils.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, because they're so hardy.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So he saw that trees were migrating a lot
Speaker 1: faster than like the rate that you would think, and
Speaker 1: so he like those oaks I think was one example
Speaker 1: you gave on the British Isles after the last glacial period,
Speaker 1: over a span of like ten thousand years or so,
Speaker 1: they traveled about six hundred miles and it would normally
Speaker 1: take about a million years if the steeds, if the
Speaker 1: seeds were just dispersed in a typical way. But what
Speaker 1: he figured was that what may be happening here is
Speaker 1: like some weird weather event happens that sent things much
Speaker 1: farther than usual, or like some deer or something eats
Speaker 1: something and then poops out something really far away from
Speaker 1: where it started, and so all of a sudden, this
Speaker 1: animal has spread it via their poo poo.
Speaker 2: Right, And this is how like large scale migration happens,
Speaker 2: or I should say, rapid migration over long distances.
Speaker 1: Right right, Yeah, it's the.
Speaker 2: It's the unusual, not just the acorn falling and hitting
Speaker 2: the ground. It's not just gravity assisted. It's animal assisted,
Speaker 2: which is called zoochorey, or it's wind assisted, which is
Speaker 2: called a nema corey, or water assisted, which is called hydrochory.
Speaker 2: And that's just the way that some plants dispersed their seeds.
Speaker 2: That's kind of on top of the normal way they
Speaker 2: dispersed it, which is just dropping it from their leaves
Speaker 2: or the spores blowing on the wind, which I guess
Speaker 2: is one type of corey.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So like if a squirrel loaded up its mouthful
Speaker 1: of things m h and somehow found its way into
Speaker 1: your camper, as you said off for Arizona.
Speaker 2: That would be a freak event.
Speaker 1: Sure it probably wouldn't be en mass, but you know,
Speaker 1: that's a way a dree coud move.
Speaker 2: All it takes is that one oak to make it
Speaker 2: sure to just survive, and then it starts its own
Speaker 2: new part of the range.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, And we al should should point out when
Speaker 1: when was redoing this. This is a while ago, like
Speaker 1: one hundred plus years ago, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was a geologist. I don't know if we said,
Speaker 2: but his reads Paradox of Rapid Plant Migration came out
Speaker 2: in eighteen ninety nine and it was a smash hit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so people, I mean for at least that long,
Speaker 1: science has been sort of curious about this, this migration
Speaker 1: happening at a rate that they would not expect.
Speaker 2: Right. The thing is is it's really hard when you
Speaker 2: throw in that X factor to calculate how fast and
Speaker 2: actual species can migrate. And there's a few ways that
Speaker 2: you can study that kind of thing. One, as you said,
Speaker 2: is studying the fossil record, which is super helpful, but
Speaker 2: it's not showing you what's going on contemporaneously or within
Speaker 2: the last couple decades. This is ten thousand, a million
Speaker 2: years ago something like that, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So if you wanted to study something a little
Speaker 1: closer to home timeline wise, you would maybe set up
Speaker 1: what's called a permanent vegetation plot, so you would mark
Speaker 1: off an area and you would go back there, you know,
Speaker 1: every so often, like every six months or every year
Speaker 1: or so, and just sort of chart what's happening. That's
Speaker 1: one really good way. I think they've been doing this
Speaker 1: for about one hundred years since in nineteen twenty, So
Speaker 1: we've got a pretty good data set there. Something else
Speaker 1: you could do is go somewhere, like, let's say you
Speaker 1: dug up some cool scientific journal from a scientist from
Speaker 1: you know, two hundred years ago that went and explored
Speaker 1: some island, and while they may not have like charted
Speaker 1: everything out exactly like you would in today's science, they
Speaker 1: may have a really nice diary about all the plant
Speaker 1: life there and things that they saw there and where
Speaker 1: it might be. And you could go back to that
Speaker 1: place and it's not quite as tight of a record,
Speaker 1: but you could still get a pretty good idea of
Speaker 1: what's happening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, depending on whose journal you're working from. And back.
Speaker 2: In twenty twelve, a Danish team of scientists followed the
Speaker 2: record left by a nineteenth century geologist named Alexander von
Speaker 2: Humboldt from Germany, who was just an interesting dude in
Speaker 2: and of himself. Yeah, he called coffee concentrated some beams.
Speaker 2: So he's that kind of guy.
Speaker 1: Oh man, that's great.
Speaker 2: They went back to Chimborazo Volcano in Ecuador, which Humboldt
Speaker 2: studied in detail, and not only did he study the
Speaker 2: vegetation there and he classified all sorts of new plants
Speaker 2: that Europeans didn't know about at that point. He also
Speaker 2: noted exactly where they were on the mountain as far
Speaker 2: as the elevation went.
Speaker 1: Super helpful, super helpful.
Speaker 2: So based on this information, the twenty twelve Danes were
Speaker 2: able to go back and recreate his trip, and then
Speaker 2: they were able to note what plants were where, and
Speaker 2: they found that everything, all species, on average, had moved
Speaker 2: up the mountain by about an average of about five
Speaker 2: hundred meters, which is significant. It's like almost a mile,
Speaker 2: it's like eight tenths of a mile.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's the average. Yeah, there was a lot
Speaker 1: of aeriation within that, but that's that's a long way
Speaker 1: for sure. And what we found out, and I guess
Speaker 1: this comes up a little later, but a plant can
Speaker 1: find more hospitable climbs going up five hundred meters than
Speaker 1: they might by going let's just say north, like ninety
Speaker 1: to one hundred miles. Yes, so like a much quicker
Speaker 1: road to better climbs if you just go up that
Speaker 1: mountain for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's kind of two ways they move is longitudinally yeah,
Speaker 2: or altitudinally.
Speaker 1: You gotta be in shape though, Oh, for sure, you're
Speaker 1: gonna climb that mountain. Should we take a break?
Speaker 2: I think we should. But just to wrap it up
Speaker 2: real quick, there's a bunch of ways you can study
Speaker 2: the movement of trees. But it's so slow and it
Speaker 2: happens over such long timelines, longer than a human timeline,
Speaker 2: that it's harder to do than you'd think. But we
Speaker 2: still have figured out some ways to do it.
Speaker 1: All Right, we'll be right back and we'll talk about
Speaker 1: all this stuff in more detail.
Speaker 2: Right for this.
Speaker 1: One other way we failed to mention. Probably would have
Speaker 1: been better to just say that before the break, But again,
Speaker 1: still learning after sixteen years. Satellite images is another way
Speaker 1: that you can study on the short term. You know,
Speaker 1: the fossil pollen is much longer, and those plant plots
Speaker 1: and things like that, vegetation plots our shorter term. But
Speaker 1: satellite images can also help.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you want to catch like a venus fly
Speaker 2: trap and the act of leap frogging over some other planet,
Speaker 2: satellite image is going to help you with that. Fossil
Speaker 2: record won't show you that.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing with all this, though, it's not like
Speaker 1: we're going to talk a lot about climate change because
Speaker 1: that's what's spurring a lot of the movement right now.
Speaker 1: But the Earth's climate has changed a lot over the
Speaker 1: you know, over the years, and this is not some
Speaker 1: new thing. There used to be periods of time where
Speaker 1: the Sahara desert was quite green and there was grasses
Speaker 1: growing there and tropical plants growing there, and elephants roaming
Speaker 1: the Sahara and wildlife living there. And they've learned that
Speaker 1: this is actually one of the things that helped move
Speaker 1: you know, humans around, Like humans could actually migrate through
Speaker 1: the Sahara with much more ease than they could before
Speaker 1: during these green Sahara periods.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's so fascinating that, you know, who knows when
Speaker 2: we would have migrated out of Africa into Europe and
Speaker 2: the ages had the green Sahara not happened. And isn't
Speaker 2: that just nuts?
Speaker 1: Yeah, like hundreds of miles it says here that they
Speaker 1: would find tropical plants growing where they shouldn't be, growing
Speaker 1: alongside you know, the desert stuff that survived. So that
Speaker 1: was this weird sort of mixed up biome for a time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the Green Sahara period there were a few
Speaker 2: of them that had been documented, but they figured out
Speaker 2: that they happened about every twenty three thousand years, right,
Speaker 2: We're due for one in about twelve thousand years something
Speaker 2: like that. And it's based on the tilt in Earth's axis.
Speaker 2: That's neither here nor there. But the point is is
Speaker 2: during these these periods where this was just a humid
Speaker 2: kind of tropical forest, there was a mixture kind of
Speaker 2: what you touched upon, of different like you said, a
Speaker 2: hybrid biome of stuff that wouldn't necessarily live together under
Speaker 2: normal circumstances, but got along just famously in the couple
Speaker 2: thousand years that the Sahara was green and those plants
Speaker 2: were growing together.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just amazing to think about.
Speaker 2: And then in North America we have another example too.
Speaker 2: After the Laurentide Glacier, which is way up in the
Speaker 2: Arctic right now, used to be down in Indiana and
Speaker 2: northern New Jersey. Yeah, and when it retreated, it took
Speaker 2: everything with it. It took bowlers, it carved out lakes,
Speaker 2: it did all sorts of neat stuff. But what it
Speaker 2: didn't leave behind was vegetation. So it left it was
Speaker 2: like a giant ice cream truck basically. Yeah, it left
Speaker 2: nothing behind, and it was just a great place for
Speaker 2: plants to pioneer and colonie.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean that's why you have pine trees in
Speaker 1: New Jersey, right.
Speaker 2: I would think so, yeah, or in the south because
Speaker 2: they were too far they were trapped below or yeah,
Speaker 2: below the Laurentide Glacier down in the southeast, even though
Speaker 2: they normally would have been growing in the north, right,
Speaker 2: And as the glacier retreated, the climate changed in that area,
Speaker 2: and so the trees has moved on up. So that's
Speaker 2: an example of migration as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Oh wait, I thought they but I thought they
Speaker 1: were It was more hospitable in the south for these trees,
Speaker 1: and that migration sent them north. Yeah, that's what I said, right,
Speaker 1: Oh okay maybe Yeah. The other thing we should talk
Speaker 1: about as far as climate change goes, because, like I said,
Speaker 1: we're going to mention that a lot is the rate
Speaker 1: of change of the climate is increasing, as most people
Speaker 1: agree on, and that is kind of where we are
Speaker 1: now in discussing this is like, is the rate of
Speaker 1: climate increasing too fast for the plant migration to catch up,
Speaker 1: or in some cases are the plants migrating ahead of
Speaker 1: that pace? And that's really sort of you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of this episode is about this rate of change.
Speaker 1: In the two hundred years since the beginning of the
Speaker 1: Industrial Age, no coincidence, the temperature of the Earth has
Speaker 1: increased more than one degree. And again, yeah we all
Speaker 1: know now that you know, one degree is like a huge,
Speaker 1: huge deal.
Speaker 2: It's one point eight degrees fahrenheit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, But zero point three seven of that change
Speaker 1: over the past two hundred years has come since twenty eleven.
Speaker 1: So it's people. Have you know, someone has stepped on
Speaker 1: the gas here. Yeah, and it's happening much much faster,
Speaker 1: and seemingly in many cases, fasting faster than these plants
Speaker 1: can catch up.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So plants are used to migrating, like they've been
Speaker 2: migrating through our Earth's history, but these conditions are different.
Speaker 2: It's not like it was before. Even when the Earth
Speaker 2: was heating up after the last Ice Age, I think,
Speaker 2: did you say that it took about an hour average
Speaker 2: of fourteen hundred years to increase by one degree after
Speaker 2: the last glacial period?
Speaker 1: No, No, that was the setup. That would have been
Speaker 1: very helpful.
Speaker 2: Actually, I mean, think about it. So we've achieved one
Speaker 2: degree in two hundred years, and after the last glacial
Speaker 2: period ended the earth heated one degree every fourteen hundred years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's called a rapid increase.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like you said, somebody's put their foot on the gas,
Speaker 2: and that's somebody is Western industrialized nations, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So that's one thing that's really kind of putting the
Speaker 2: heat on plants literally is their southernmost ranges or their
Speaker 2: northernmost ranges, depending on what I guess, they're equatorial pointing
Speaker 2: ranges where it's hotter. Those are the ones that are
Speaker 2: really at stake. So are those plants ranges big enough
Speaker 2: that they'll be able to survive that change in climate
Speaker 2: and just keep moving northward or are they going to
Speaker 2: be outpaced by the movement of the climate because the
Speaker 2: climate is racing towards the poles, just like the plants are.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, So who's faster.
Speaker 2: Well, it turns out if you talk about New England's trees,
Speaker 2: they move something I think red oaks is what it
Speaker 2: was that this University of Vermont group was studying. They
Speaker 2: move something like a tenth to three tenths of a
Speaker 2: mile a year, right, Yeah. The climate is moving something
Speaker 2: like four to six miles a year. So the climate
Speaker 2: is really kind of showing up as kind of the
Speaker 2: Usain Bolt of this race. And I don't know the
Speaker 2: plants are like me racing Usain Bolt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that lab group in Vermont, they all have t
Speaker 1: shirts that just say you do the math exactly. It's
Speaker 1: very smarty, but they get their point across for sure.
Speaker 1: There's another example of and you know, we've kind of
Speaker 1: been talking about northern movement, which is generally the pattern,
Speaker 1: but not always. There's a rece Purdue name song Lend Fay.
Speaker 1: I think Fay or Fhi. I don't know Fi. I
Speaker 1: bet it's Fie who studied eighty six species of trees
Speaker 1: in the eastern US over about thirty years from the
Speaker 1: mid eighties to twenty fifteen. And it depends on what
Speaker 1: the tree is. Hardwoods, scarlet oaks, red maples, magnolias are
Speaker 1: moving west at about one and a half kilometers a
Speaker 1: year because the Midwest is becoming more wet and the
Speaker 1: conditions are good for those trees to grow. Soft woods,
Speaker 1: shortleaf pines, red pines, bald cypress. They're actually moving north
Speaker 1: about a kilometer of the year, a kilometer a year.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: Different plants and trees are moving in different directions at
Speaker 1: different rates.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very much akin to a neighborhood that's this
Speaker 2: old settled in neighborhood with a bunch of mix of
Speaker 2: people that's being gentrified. It's being pushed out and separated.
Speaker 2: Not everybody, just the whole neighborhood doesn't just move. This
Speaker 2: neighborhood breaks up and goes in different directions. And so
Speaker 2: to ecologists in arborous like this is very concerning because
Speaker 2: for a long time we've looked at groups of plants
Speaker 2: as communities, like some some plants go with other plants,
Speaker 2: like I think was it beach and uh, hickory, where
Speaker 2: is it?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I like hickory, though.
Speaker 2: We can't we can't leave that in there. Oh yeah, hemlocks.
Speaker 2: I knew it was an h. H. Tree. Beach and
Speaker 2: hemlocks go together like peanut butter and chocolate, so to do,
Speaker 2: like firs and spruces. Right, So when you find one
Speaker 2: of these, you usually find the other one. And there's
Speaker 2: also a bunch of other plants that kind of interact,
Speaker 2: and usually some types of animals that hang out in
Speaker 2: those same types of forests. So if you've got the
Speaker 2: hemlocks going north and the beach going west, Who are
Speaker 2: the hemlocks going to mix with and who are the
Speaker 2: beach going to mix with when they start to set
Speaker 2: up these new communities, And that was really troubling to ecologists,
Speaker 2: but I think palinologists, these fossil pollen scientists have said
Speaker 2: it's always been this way. Communities aren't permanent, they're kind
Speaker 2: of instable. They just seem permanent to us because our
Speaker 2: life years there are lifespans on the order of like
Speaker 2: seventy eighty years, right right, This is it's a much
Speaker 2: slower process, but it's a constantly changing turnover, so it's
Speaker 2: not that big of a deal. But again, because of
Speaker 2: the pace of climate change, when these hemlocks get further
Speaker 2: north and the beach get further west, they're going to
Speaker 2: have far less time to develop new connections and networks
Speaker 2: with the new plants that they set up communities with.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the other thing too, you know earlier when
Speaker 1: I mentioned that a series of trees might move up
Speaker 1: a mountain side because it's a way quicker way to
Speaker 1: get to a more hospitable climate than moving that ninety
Speaker 1: miles north. Yeah, when they and this happens in other
Speaker 1: cases as well, it's not just like up a mountain side.
Speaker 1: But when they get to the place where they're going,
Speaker 1: it may be a better place, may be more hospitable
Speaker 1: climate wise, but other things aren't so great. So if
Speaker 1: you move up that mountain slope, let's say you have
Speaker 1: a shallower soil, and so those trees move up there
Speaker 1: because the climate's better. But then they get there and
Speaker 1: the soil is in as great, so they get squeezed
Speaker 1: into where they can grow, maybe into like a tiny
Speaker 1: little narrow band that's you know, potentially choking off the
Speaker 1: rest of the forest.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've figured out it's kind of like hiding in
Speaker 2: a closet during a house fire, Like you're going to
Speaker 2: be safe in the short term, but in the long
Speaker 2: term it's not a great strategy. But it's not like
Speaker 2: the trees have any choice. They can't go back down.
Speaker 2: It's too hot there, they can't move further up. There's
Speaker 2: the soils in hospitable, so they're trapped and they're eventually
Speaker 2: going to become a thinner and thinner band until they
Speaker 2: just pop out of existence.
Speaker 1: That's right. And the other thing that can happen when,
Speaker 1: like you said, when they get to a new place,
Speaker 1: and they don't have enough time to make new friends.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, that can open the window for
Speaker 1: bad friends to show up. Yeah, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: invasive species are there, and then you've got a whole
Speaker 1: other set of problems.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the ones that were like leather jackets with the
Speaker 2: little silver studs on their shoulders, those are the ones
Speaker 2: you gotta watch out for. Those plants.
Speaker 1: If this all seems very kind of on too long
Speaker 1: of a timeline for you to care, First of all,
Speaker 1: you probably don't care much about climate change because that's
Speaker 1: the whole name of the game there. Sure, but maple
Speaker 1: syrup is a good example that Livia found Lyvia helped
Speaker 1: u out. She did great job with this. The maple tree.
Speaker 1: Which species is that? The sugar maple is one of
Speaker 1: the two main species that we use to get that
Speaker 1: delicious maple syrup.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, this isn't a side. Sugar maple are two
Speaker 2: beautiful words that form an even more beautiful.
Speaker 1: You are right on the money, my friend. You know,
Speaker 1: sugar maple. It just sounds nice coming out of my mouth. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They have been migrating north into Canada, and you might say, well,
Speaker 1: that's great Canada is a fine place to live, and
Speaker 1: I'm sure they love their maple serve up there too.
Speaker 1: But in Quebec, the researchers have found that they're not
Speaker 1: gonna go beyond their current range up there because they're
Speaker 1: boreal forests up there. So the soil again, they the
Speaker 1: climate might be better, but then they get up there
Speaker 1: and the soil pH and the microbe content in the
Speaker 1: soil is not what they're used to and not what
Speaker 1: they work well with and grow well with. So they're
Speaker 1: not doing well up there in the forest.
Speaker 2: No, No, And that's it's the exact same position as
Speaker 2: the trees that are trying to go up the mountain
Speaker 2: are running into. Eventually, these trees that are moving into
Speaker 2: the boreal forest areas, they're like they can't go any further,
Speaker 2: Like they're not adapted to that.
Speaker 1: Over a long enough timeline, yeah, maybe.
Speaker 2: Those sugar maples could, like a few of them, could
Speaker 2: land in the border royal forest and end up surviving
Speaker 2: in that kind of soil and then they would be
Speaker 2: adapted for and they'd start reproducing. And then as the
Speaker 2: boreal forest moved closer to the Poles or the Arctic,
Speaker 2: those trees would move where the boreal forest used to be. Right,
Speaker 2: totally not a problem over a long enough time span. Again,
Speaker 2: climate change has so drastically shortened that timespan that there's
Speaker 2: probably not going to be time for this, and those
Speaker 2: sugar maples will just run into that boreal soil and
Speaker 2: just they it'll be like hitting a brick wall for
Speaker 2: their species.
Speaker 1: Yeah, another issue that can happen. And I know this
Speaker 1: all just seems like doomsday stuff, kind of is it?
Speaker 1: Kind of this though, Let's say, like the Amazon episode
Speaker 1: that we talked about, when trees are moving out there,
Speaker 1: they might be replaced by something and it may not
Speaker 1: be an invasive species, but it may just be weeds
Speaker 1: or grasses or something. Those aren't as good at capturing
Speaker 1: carbon as those trees were, So then that accelerates the
Speaker 1: problem even more.
Speaker 2: Right, And then there's another if you want to keep
Speaker 2: talking about these stay scenarios. Those boreal forests, they actually
Speaker 2: are if you look at a map or if you
Speaker 2: look at planet Earth from outer space, they're dark, which
Speaker 2: means that they absorb more sunlight, more heat, more UV radiation.
Speaker 2: Then the polar caps the ice that reflects it back
Speaker 2: into space. So as those boreal forests advance further and
Speaker 2: further north toward the toward the Arctic or the North Pole,
Speaker 2: and there's less and less ice to reflect that there's
Speaker 2: more and more heat for them to trap, which is
Speaker 2: just going to heat the earth that much faster. It's
Speaker 2: a positive feedback loop that's super duper negative.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very negative. Maybe we should cover tropical things moving
Speaker 1: north and then take a break.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I got some good stuff on that, man,
Speaker 2: I'm super exciting.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean it goes both ways. So you can
Speaker 1: have like tropical plants and tropical zones like Florida, where
Speaker 1: you know, the earth is warming, so they can move
Speaker 1: further and further north, and all of a sudden, these
Speaker 1: plants that are native to tropical zones are ending up
Speaker 1: in areas where it's you know, not necessarily a tropical zone.
Speaker 1: I can't remember which zone Atlanta.
Speaker 2: Is, Atlanta's seven B and aight a seven.
Speaker 1: I love that you know that stuff. But the point
Speaker 1: is like these these like kill kill frost that you
Speaker 1: might get that happen to I love that name kill frost,
Speaker 1: Like it'll get really cold and frost over and like
Speaker 1: kill things. Maybe that shouldn't be there if that's happening
Speaker 1: less and less, and there's even less in the way
Speaker 1: of those tropical plants moving northward.
Speaker 2: Right, and so I guess climatologists are expecting that by
Speaker 2: the end of the century, which seems like a long
Speaker 2: way away. But buddy, that's like less than that's like
Speaker 2: eight decades, seventy something years, maybe even seventy seven you
Speaker 2: could say to be exact, But in seventy seven years,
Speaker 2: climatologists expect all of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico,
Speaker 2: Arizona and California, guessing the southern half to be tropical.
Speaker 2: Those are subtropical. Now, if you want an example of
Speaker 2: what a tropical country is, go to Ecuador, go to Guatemala.
Speaker 2: Those are tropical, and Alabama and Arizona are going to
Speaker 2: be like Guatemala by the end of the century. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's insane.
Speaker 1: I know, it's really and it's happening. It's not like
Speaker 1: they've shown that it's currently happening.
Speaker 2: Yes, and it's happening because, like you were saying, those
Speaker 2: extreme cold events are becoming rarer and they're becoming warmer.
Speaker 2: So the coldest day of the year is not as
Speaker 2: cold as it used to be.
Speaker 1: In other words, I think the scientific term is kill Frost.
Speaker 2: I love that. That is definitely a band name.
Speaker 1: Oh for sure, Mike. What are they though?
Speaker 2: Oh? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think it's kind of heavy or something, right.
Speaker 2: I don't know. Remember Destroyer they were great, They didn't
Speaker 2: really destroy They had like kind of like a belying name,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: No, that's true, so it could be like that. I
Speaker 1: think he named the band that for that reason is
Speaker 1: a bit of a tongue in cheek thing.
Speaker 2: Maybe I knew I liked that.
Speaker 1: Kay, yeah, Beharts who we're talking about?
Speaker 2: Not Joy Tony.
Speaker 1: I know it's a Dan I think.
Speaker 2: Right, I don't know. I just know a couple of
Speaker 2: Destroyer songs. I don't have to know the guy's life story,
Speaker 2: do I Well?
Speaker 1: Settle down? No, I wanted to look it up because
Speaker 1: he is. He's also a part time member of maybe
Speaker 1: my favorite all time band, the New Pornographers, like modern band.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, he's He's on most of their albums,
Speaker 1: but hasn't done the past few.
Speaker 2: Who was the singer for New Pornographers? Was it Nico case.
Speaker 1: Well, she sings and Carl Newman sings, and also the
Speaker 1: great Catherine Calder, who is the stuff you should know listener.
Speaker 2: Oh Nat, oh wow, Yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Found that out and I was like, oh, I got
Speaker 1: to get in touch with her, and I did, and
Speaker 1: now we are email buddies. And on the last New
Speaker 1: Pornographer show in Atlanta, she's kind enough to meet me
Speaker 1: behind the bus, as they say, in the back parking lot,
Speaker 1: and we chatted for a while and she's just wonderful.
Speaker 1: And she also gonna plug her other band because she
Speaker 1: has put out a great album last year with her
Speaker 1: band front person, So get front person. If you like
Speaker 1: CYNTHI goodness and like a beautiful angelic voice, then get
Speaker 1: front person.
Speaker 2: Speaking of CYNTHI goodness, that's so funny you bring that up.
Speaker 2: Just today I discovered an entirely new genre of music
Speaker 2: called dungeon synth. Have you heard of it?
Speaker 1: What? No?
Speaker 2: Okay, okay. It's a really well named genre. But it
Speaker 2: is synth super like cynthy synth, like eighties a synth.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 2: But the kind of synth that you would find is
Speaker 2: like the score to a seventies hobbit, like cartoon movie,
Speaker 2: animated movie, it's super wizardy and fantasy. It just evokes
Speaker 2: all that stuff. It does such a good job of it.
Speaker 2: But I've only heard one album. I can't remember whose
Speaker 2: it was. But check out Frost. Checkout Dungeon Synth. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Kill Frost is a Dungeon Synth band.
Speaker 1: Nice work, all right, Dungeon Synth and the front Person album.
Speaker 1: Their most recent Parade.
Speaker 2: Is great, very nice. I think it time for a break.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's take a break. We'll be back with more
Speaker 1: album reviews right after.
Speaker 2: This, So, Chuck. One thing you can say about humans
Speaker 2: is that we are action oriented. Sure, in a lot
Speaker 2: of ways, I will give you that we sit around
Speaker 2: in bicker and complain and moan and undermine one another.
Speaker 2: But when the chips are down, we can invent our
Speaker 2: way out of a lot of problems. And invention doesn't
Speaker 2: have to necessarily mean that we, you know, put some
Speaker 2: metal on metal and made it go on its own.
Speaker 2: It can be something like inventing new areas for species
Speaker 2: that are in danger of being lost to climate change
Speaker 2: to settle and make another part of their range out of.
Speaker 1: Well, sir, it sounds like you were talking about forest
Speaker 1: assisted migration by God.
Speaker 2: I am that's right.
Speaker 1: And that is basically and we'll talk about the good,
Speaker 1: the bad, and the ugly of this. That is human
Speaker 1: being scientists getting involved in the ecosystem and nature and
Speaker 1: spreading seed and sort of getting ahead of the pace
Speaker 1: if the pace isn't where it should be to keep
Speaker 1: up with climate change, saying well, let me give you
Speaker 1: a little little help forward. And this can be kind
Speaker 1: of thorny because it's it's humans, like I said, getting
Speaker 1: involved in the ecosystem in ways that science has long said,
Speaker 1: let nature work it out, and that's the best way
Speaker 1: to do it, because you don't know what can happen
Speaker 1: once you start messing around.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like nature finds a way it does. These guys
Speaker 2: are saying, the people who are in favor of this
Speaker 2: are saying that made sense before July twenty twenty three,
Speaker 2: which is probably the hottest month in Earth's history, at
Speaker 2: least as a kid far as since it cooled basically,
Speaker 2: and that followed the hottest June ever. Right, So they're
Speaker 2: these ecologists that are like, no, we need to take
Speaker 2: much more of an active hand in this, are saying,
Speaker 2: like it's our obligation to do something. Not doing any
Speaker 2: thing is going to be more destructive. It's like saying like, yeah,
Speaker 2: we shouldn't move these people out of this house that's
Speaker 2: being bulldozed over because we don't know what they're gonna
Speaker 2: do in their new neighborhood. So we're just gonna stand
Speaker 2: there and watch them die as the bulldozer crushes them
Speaker 2: inside of their house. That's the that's a pretty good analogy.
Speaker 2: If I do congratulate myself here, it's very much akin
Speaker 2: to that. And so those of colleges have a pretty
Speaker 2: good point, like it's like, yeah, it's not a great,
Speaker 2: perfect solution, but it's way better than doing nothing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But and they're not they're not doing it willy
Speaker 1: nilly though. They're very aware of the potential pitfalls like
Speaker 1: you know, spreading disease and introducing something to an area
Speaker 1: that could be really bad for other things in that area.
Speaker 1: So they're not just out there, you know, with a
Speaker 1: seed cannon blasting stuff all over the place, like like
Speaker 1: Dolph Lunderin or something wearing.
Speaker 2: Bike coat shorts.
Speaker 1: There's a couple of different kinds though. There's there's forest
Speaker 1: assistance migration. The one that's really sort of thorny is
Speaker 1: assisted range expansion. So like, if you're spreading something within
Speaker 1: the zone where it might still normally grow in like
Speaker 1: two hundred years, that's one thing. If you're moving something
Speaker 1: completely out of that range, like you know, they do
Speaker 1: forecasting and stuff, and they're like, what might this area
Speaker 1: look like one hundred miles from here one hundred years
Speaker 1: from now? If they're moving something completely out of a
Speaker 1: range that it would even potentially grow, that gets way
Speaker 1: way trickier. And I think there's less of that happening.
Speaker 2: Right, yes, for sure, Like, but you hit it on
Speaker 2: the head. They're saying, like, Okay, by twenty one hundred,
Speaker 2: what is this area going to be, Like is it
Speaker 2: going to be like where these red oaks like to
Speaker 2: live now in twenty twenty three? And if so, maybe
Speaker 2: we can give them a head start and hope that
Speaker 2: some of them will survive and adapt and start colonizing there. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: it gets even prett clear than assisted range expansion. There's another,
Speaker 2: even more radical one called species rescue or assisted species migration,
Speaker 2: and that is where you take a plant completely out
Speaker 2: of its normal range, out of what you would even
Speaker 2: predict would be its normal range, and just move it
Speaker 2: somewhere it would never be right. This is considered the
Speaker 2: riskiest of the three by ecologists because you can easily
Speaker 2: take something that's totally innocuous and benign under normal circumstances
Speaker 2: and make it into an invasive species when you move it.
Speaker 2: And the critics of this typically point to the Monterey
Speaker 2: Pine as a good example.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. It's endangered in California. It is native
Speaker 1: to California, but they have introduced it in Australia and
Speaker 1: it's it's well, I don't know about wreaking habit, but
Speaker 1: it's damaging the It's an invasive species in Australia.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. They consider it a weed and where
Speaker 2: they see it, they pluck it. They do not like
Speaker 2: those in New South Wales and Victoria, I believe states.
Speaker 1: Now that's a weed, right, I don't know.
Speaker 2: No, I'm gonna have to agree with you on that.
Speaker 2: I think you just you just came up with a
Speaker 2: brand new type of accent. Frankly, Yeah, can we hear
Speaker 2: it again? No, Okay, I'm just gonna go back and
Speaker 2: replay it.
Speaker 1: You know what's funny though, is I use my the
Speaker 1: lady on my phone that talks to me. What's it
Speaker 1: called on Apple. I guess I don't use Siri, but
Speaker 1: I still have a voice for maps and stuff, and
Speaker 1: I use a I usually go between an Irish woman
Speaker 1: and a Kiwi A New Zealander. Oh yeah, and the
Speaker 1: New Zealander says rye and it always cracks me up.
Speaker 2: That sounds like Matthew McConaughey.
Speaker 1: It does. At the next street, take a rye.
Speaker 2: I gotta hear that. Yeah, I didn't know you could
Speaker 2: do something that. Gee whiz to an Apple iPhone make it.
Speaker 1: Talk out, okay, some some regular old thing I don't do.
Speaker 2: I'd like sounds. Digital sounds are one of those. Like
Speaker 2: I don't have mesophonia, but if I do, it's for
Speaker 2: a digital sound. Like when I get a new computer,
Speaker 2: the first thing I do is turn off all sounds
Speaker 2: on it. Like anything I have to go, Like I
Speaker 2: have to change my text sound every month or so
Speaker 2: because I'll just get like anxiety from it. I can't
Speaker 2: stand text sounds, so I have to come up with
Speaker 2: a new one. I do not like them.
Speaker 1: Do you know what I do is I record? I
Speaker 1: record my own text and phone rings and stuff. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I record my voice like when my phone rings. I
Speaker 1: never had my ringer on, but if it ever does,
Speaker 1: it's me going ring ring, ring, ring thoughts. And if
Speaker 1: I get a text, it's me going text.
Speaker 2: Man, that's great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I get strange looks, but who cares?
Speaker 2: Can I just use yours?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll say to you if you want, thank you? Yeah,
Speaker 1: or you can like you can make one specific for
Speaker 1: you me, which is like maybe just her sweet voice
Speaker 1: saying hello, hello, my love.
Speaker 2: I used to have a ring tone with her singing
Speaker 2: that part from What's Love Got to Do with It?
Speaker 1: That?
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, but she just kept saying that over and
Speaker 2: over again. It's pretty great.
Speaker 1: Oh, I'd love to hear that. It's also kind of maddening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it never was. Actually, I never got sick
Speaker 2: of that one. I think that says a lot.
Speaker 1: But it's better than deludoo doo.
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, you just stressed me out. Sorry you got
Speaker 2: anything else?
Speaker 1: Uh? Now, I had a joke about your dislike of
Speaker 1: digital sounds, but your love of craft work flies in
Speaker 1: the face of that. But I won't even say it.
Speaker 2: That's more a statement than a joke.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it is true.
Speaker 2: It's quite accurate. I think that's it. Chuck.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I got nothing else. This is uh, this is
Speaker 1: a good one. Look out, you know, if you're in
Speaker 1: if you're in New Mexico and you see a palm
Speaker 1: tree growing, then watch out.
Speaker 2: That's right. It means that you've gone tropical and you're
Speaker 2: in trouble now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not in a good way.
Speaker 2: Uh. If you want to know more about plant migration,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of interesting stuff out there on the
Speaker 2: internet to read and go do that and maybe go
Speaker 2: become an ecologist and figure out how to save the planet.
Speaker 1: Please and I agree.
Speaker 2: Since Chuck's had agreed, it's time for a listener mail.
Speaker 1: This is from William Lloyd. We did a shorty on
Speaker 1: the NATO phonetic alphabet, and what we didn't consider was this.
Speaker 1: Hey guys, being a pilot and prior Air Force, I
Speaker 1: was glad that you did one on this topic. It's
Speaker 1: not a correction. You guys did a good job, but
Speaker 1: you missed what I think is the best part the numbers.
Speaker 1: The NATO alphabet is kind of a misnumber because it
Speaker 1: actually also includes number zero through nine. But you can't
Speaker 1: really make a word starting from a number, so it's
Speaker 1: purely pronunciation. Most numbers are the same with a notable
Speaker 1: exception of niner. We use niner instead of nine because
Speaker 1: over garbled radio it sounds like five, but mainly because
Speaker 1: NATO countries speak German nine No in German nice. Three
Speaker 1: is pronounced tree to not be confused with the antiquated
Speaker 1: prefix three. SR. Four is two syllable syllables rhymes with lower,
Speaker 1: so you'd say four sounds kind of funny to differentiate
Speaker 1: it from you know, fo r and five is five
Speaker 1: to keep the word fire distinct in some dialects. Huh,
Speaker 1: all right, this is good stuff. I feel dumb that
Speaker 1: we miss that. That's all interesting, but you're probably thinking,
Speaker 1: does anyone actually say it like that? It depends. Niner
Speaker 1: was pretty universal, plus we think it makes it sound cool,
Speaker 1: which it does. Of course. The rest are much less common,
Speaker 1: but depending where you are in the world and what
Speaker 1: dialects are involved, they're useful from time to time. Signed
Speaker 1: Tailwinds Decker.
Speaker 2: That's awesome and also what a great nickname too. I
Speaker 2: hope that's your nickname and your parents wouldn't actually name
Speaker 2: you tail wings Well.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, Decker is the name Tailwinds was the.
Speaker 2: Oh the sign of yeah. The cheers are the one
Speaker 2: love exactly. So Decker's the first name.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't know it just a Decker Decker maybe
Speaker 1: a call sign.
Speaker 2: Actually, all right, well I love that. Thanks a lot, Decker,
Speaker 2: much appreciated. I say Niner whenever the occasion arises, you know,
Speaker 2: I like that.
Speaker 1: You know, our our good friend, Joe Randazzo, formerly of
Speaker 1: the Onion and at Midnight Fame, our our comedy writer friend.
Speaker 1: He signs his emails yours with a comma Joe Joe Endazzo.
Speaker 2: That's great, that's very well.
Speaker 1: I think yours is. It's very very warn as is Joe.
Speaker 2: Sure, that's perfect for.
Speaker 1: Him and as always high to the kids. Yeah, Joe's kids.
Speaker 1: So listen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the Randazzos there listening. Family, the flying Randazzos. They're
Speaker 2: trepeze artists. Family, just waiting will happen? They should be Well,
Speaker 2: we'll see a lot's gonna happen by the end of
Speaker 2: the century apparently, so who knows.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: Well, if you want to get in touch with this
Speaker 2: like Decker did and confuse me with your sign off,
Speaker 2: I'd appreciate it. So with Chuck too, he loves that
Speaker 2: kind of thing. You can wrap it up, spend it
Speaker 2: on the bottom and send it off to stuff podcast
Speaker 2: at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.