Citizen Scientist and Climate Change

This is the title of an article in BACKPACKER magazine, September , 2007 issue, "I, Citizen Scientist". It is an issue dedicated mostly to the future of wilderness, it examines global warming, talks about looking at gear in a more planet friendly way, etc. Alaska is one of the oft studied and reported on areas, of course, regarding glacier meltdown and there is quite of bit of information in this issue.

I particularly liked this article as it is much of what we do in our daily walks here in Wisconsin. We walk the trails, check for foot prints, scat, etc... take a daily inventory of happenings within our 80 acres.

The opening sentence is: (p.115), "At the front lines of climate change research, regular hikers are starting to pull their weight. For our correspondent, that means getting very, very excited about fox droppings, road kill and the world's most expensive mousetraps." (sounds like mornings around here, although our only mouse trap is a very protective cat).

The Editorial Notes for this issue go on to say: (p.13) "The eyewitness testimony in this issue is damning in its uniformity, but it's just a start. You and I need to do more. As backpackers, we are the advance scouts of global warming. the ones who will see its effect first and can report its progress. Get out there, take notes and testify about what you see... and back up every word with meaningful changes in your daily life."

It certainly is true for the sled dog drivers as well ... we see later training times , changes in terrain, plants (trees are growing faster in our area, warmer soil?). Of course some of this is cyclical/ aging, but some is also what seems to be a noticeable increase in temperatures and precipitation.

Today is September 5, 2007. It was 90 degrees this afternoon. This morning on the trails we found fox scat, some unidentifiable scat which intrigued the dogs, diggings of skunks in the dry mosses, some more overturned logs (possibly the bears are still around). There was a slight rain early in the a.m., just enough to tamp down some of the dust. Our trail camera did not catch anything last night but two dogs were so excited about something outside their pen that they broke through the chain link. We spent much of the day repairing that so I won't find them on the front porch again tomorrow morning (hopefully).