Sugar maple, giving maple syrup, may not cope with global warming

Sugar maples, from the juice of which maple syrup is made, is threatened by danger: trees are difficult to adapt to anincreasingly dry and warm climate. If the climate changes in the worst scenario, in the next 80 years the world can remain without sugar maples.

As a rule, studies that study the effect of climate change on living creatures take into account only one factor - increasing average annual temperatures or contaminating water, air or soil.

However, even additional nitrogen will not save maples from coming droughts. Researchers from the State of Michigan modeled climate change in two scenarios; according to the first, the average annual temperature in the areas of growth of sugar maples will grow by less than 1 ° C by the end of the century.

Both models showed that an increase in the mean annual temperature and a decrease in humidity slowed the growth of maples, and in the course of events under the second scenario, the growth of trees will come to naught even with a constant increase in the concentration of nitrogenous compounds in the soil.