[audio:http://wamcradio.org/EarthWise/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/EW-02-28-12-Maple-Sugar.mp3|titles=EW 02-28-12 Maple Sugar]
It will soon be spring—warmer days and cold nights. Along the back roads of New England states, you can see that the maple sugaring season has begun.
Tapping the exceptionally sweet sap from sugar maple goes back to pioneer days, when maple sugar was often the only type available. Today, many of us enjoy maple syrup on pancakes, or even fully distilled maple sugar candy.
Whether you see the traditional gray sap buckets hanging tree-side, or a maze of plastic vacuum hoses stretching through the woods to collect the sap, the maple sugar industry is alive and well. Small operations concentrate the sap by boiling away the water under a wood fire. Large, modern operations use a reverse osmosis process to save energy.
But strange things are happening in the woods, and forest scientists worry that the maple sugar industry may be in for rough times. First, a trend toward milder winters has allowed pests and pathogens of the maple to persist in the soil over the winter. The distribution of sugar maple is well correlated to temperature—particularly to cold winter temperatures.
“The production of sugar from the tree is very much a weather-dependent process,” says Brian Chabot of Cornell University. “It’s a purely physical interaction that occurs within the tree in response to freezing temperatures at night and thawing temperatures during the day. So if we have warmer winters with fewer nights that are below 32 degrees, we will be reducing the ability of the tree to produce the pressures that allow us to collect sugar from the trees.”
With the temperatures warming, at least one map shows the future distribution of sugar maple moving northward into Canada.
Some worry that the ideal season of warm days and cold nights during the early spring will be lost. Others suggest the favorable time will simply move earlier in the year. For now, treat yourself to a bottle of pure maple syrup, the good stuff, and enjoy.
Photo, taken on October 28, 2010, courtesy of Keene and Chesire County (NH) Historical Photos via Flickr