Robert Celt
New Member
For an example of what El Nino is doing to spring crops in the Pacific Northwest and California, consider marijuana. In Washington, growers are hoping the warmer-than-normal conditions expected in spring 2016 can repair damage caused by surprise snowstorms that hit the region this past November.
"It caused a bunch of our crops to freeze before we could harvest. We lost about half our crop. Economic damages were probably half a million dollars," said Grant Guelich of American Farms in Entiat, Washington. "There's so much extra snow this year. Usually you have ample time to winterize your farms, but we didn't really have time this year."
Guelich expects November's freeze to hurt the supply of recreational cannabis in Washington, raising its price, but he wonders if the snow might hurt product quality overall.
Further south in California, extra rainfall from El Ni̱o is welcome relief for drought-stricken land Рand the environmental strain caused by cannabis farms. Marijuana fields boomed in Northern California around the same time the state's four-year drought began, said Scott Bauer, a senior environmental scientist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Around 2010, he and his colleagues started noticing a substantial increase in marijuana cultivation in the hills of Humboldt, Trinity and Mendocino County, a region already nicknamed the Emerald Triangle because of its reputation for cannabis production. This team ultimately discovered that these extra farms were straining the region's streams. Using satellite imagery, low-altitude aircraft flights and field surveys, they found three out of four watersheds in the Emerald Triangle were almost sapped dry by marijuana cultivation. They published the findings in March.
Bauer says the precipitation brought by El Niño might not rectify the situation. Storms are currently fortifying snowpacks in the Sierra Nevada mountains, but this major water source for California "isn't a big influencing factor for streamflow in the Emerald Triangle," Bauer said. He is also worried that heavy rain will wash away dirt roads constructed by farm owners.
"We're talking about weed being grown on hills that are very steep. It's highly erosive soils, and you see a lot of amateur construction activities," Bauer said "Some roads fail and then all that sediment washes into the stream and harms the habitat."
If precipitation from El Niño plows into late spring, as expected, it may relieve some of the burden caused when cannabis planters start their growing season in April, but there's a catch. The last two super El Niños were immediately followed by its counterpart, La Niña, which tends to trigger drought in California.
"Two is a small sample size, but it wouldn't be surprising to see a rapid development of La Niña, which comes with the enhanced risk of hot, dry summers in some part of the U.S.," Rippey said. "This could bring a risk of perhaps expanding droughts in various areas as we move on through next winter and into 2017."
But for now, Rippey is enthusiastic about El Niño and the prospects for agriculture in the coming year.
"From a positive standpoint, we have our lowest level of U.S. drought in about five years Рsince the tail end of the previous El Ni̱o in 2009 to 2010. We entered a period of elevated drought starting in 2011, and we're finally easing away from that," Rippey said. "Less drought is always good for agriculture."
News Moderator: Robert Celt 420 MAGAZINE ®
Full Article: Think El Niño is weird now? Just wait for this summer
Author: Nsikan Akpan
Contact: PBS Newshour
Photo Credit: None found
Website: PBS Newshour
"It caused a bunch of our crops to freeze before we could harvest. We lost about half our crop. Economic damages were probably half a million dollars," said Grant Guelich of American Farms in Entiat, Washington. "There's so much extra snow this year. Usually you have ample time to winterize your farms, but we didn't really have time this year."
Guelich expects November's freeze to hurt the supply of recreational cannabis in Washington, raising its price, but he wonders if the snow might hurt product quality overall.
Further south in California, extra rainfall from El Ni̱o is welcome relief for drought-stricken land Рand the environmental strain caused by cannabis farms. Marijuana fields boomed in Northern California around the same time the state's four-year drought began, said Scott Bauer, a senior environmental scientist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Around 2010, he and his colleagues started noticing a substantial increase in marijuana cultivation in the hills of Humboldt, Trinity and Mendocino County, a region already nicknamed the Emerald Triangle because of its reputation for cannabis production. This team ultimately discovered that these extra farms were straining the region's streams. Using satellite imagery, low-altitude aircraft flights and field surveys, they found three out of four watersheds in the Emerald Triangle were almost sapped dry by marijuana cultivation. They published the findings in March.
Bauer says the precipitation brought by El Niño might not rectify the situation. Storms are currently fortifying snowpacks in the Sierra Nevada mountains, but this major water source for California "isn't a big influencing factor for streamflow in the Emerald Triangle," Bauer said. He is also worried that heavy rain will wash away dirt roads constructed by farm owners.
"We're talking about weed being grown on hills that are very steep. It's highly erosive soils, and you see a lot of amateur construction activities," Bauer said "Some roads fail and then all that sediment washes into the stream and harms the habitat."
If precipitation from El Niño plows into late spring, as expected, it may relieve some of the burden caused when cannabis planters start their growing season in April, but there's a catch. The last two super El Niños were immediately followed by its counterpart, La Niña, which tends to trigger drought in California.
"Two is a small sample size, but it wouldn't be surprising to see a rapid development of La Niña, which comes with the enhanced risk of hot, dry summers in some part of the U.S.," Rippey said. "This could bring a risk of perhaps expanding droughts in various areas as we move on through next winter and into 2017."
But for now, Rippey is enthusiastic about El Niño and the prospects for agriculture in the coming year.
"From a positive standpoint, we have our lowest level of U.S. drought in about five years Рsince the tail end of the previous El Ni̱o in 2009 to 2010. We entered a period of elevated drought starting in 2011, and we're finally easing away from that," Rippey said. "Less drought is always good for agriculture."
News Moderator: Robert Celt 420 MAGAZINE ®
Full Article: Think El Niño is weird now? Just wait for this summer
Author: Nsikan Akpan
Contact: PBS Newshour
Photo Credit: None found
Website: PBS Newshour
