1. Oak Creek Watershed Meeting. Join us for our December meeting! Our last meeting of the year is this Thursday, December 12th. Stay up to date on issues in the watershed. Then, discover our accomplishments this year and what being an Oak Creek Ambassador entails. Learn about The Nature Conservancy’s work in lower Oak Creek with Tres Hermanas Ranch. Then, celebrate a year well done with brunch on us. Please join us for our upcoming meeting from 9:30am to 11:30am this Thursday, December 12th at Red Rock State Park. At the park, let employees know that you are attending the Oak Creek Watershed Council meeting and receive free entry into the park. Join us for a special presentation from our OCWC Ambassadors. Then, learn about the local Tres Hermanas Ranch and their work with The Nature Conservancy on lower Oak Creek in Cornville, AZ. We’ll then celebrate a successful year with a light brunch.
2. Tucson Grease Collection and Recycling Event-January 4, 2020
Fats, Oils, and Grease (FOG) from your kitchen should never be poured down the drain. Instead, store it in containers and bring it to the 15th Annual Grease Collection and Recycling Event. The Pima County Regional Wastewater Reclamation Department and its partners, Grecycle, The Town of Sahuarita, Jacobs, and Gold Star Pumping invite you to start the year off right by taking your leftover holiday grease to one of the six collection sites listed below on Saturday, January 4, 2020 from 9:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
The collected grease will be recycled into biodiesel, a cleaner-burning fuel that can reduce our dependence on crude oil.
The collected grease will be recycled into biodiesel, a cleaner-burning fuel that can reduce our dependence on crude oil.
Store it, don’t pour it!
You can always recycle your grease at the year-round location listed below:
a. Nueva WRF/Jacobs
b. W. Calle Agua Nueva, Tucson, AZ 85745 (520) 405-043
3. What’s The Most Sustainable Way To Have A Christmas Tree? How to avoid toxic holiday chemis-tree. Is it more sustainable to buy a real Christmas tree or reuse an artificial one? My family has always used the same artificial tree. I used to assume it was more environmentally friendly since it was reusable, but now I realize that some of the materials may contain harmful toxic chemicals. Also, wouldn’t commercially farmed Christmas trees absorb more CO2 during their lifetimes as opposed to other crops?
Yes, farmed Christmas trees store carbon. But it’s complicated: According to one study, driving 10 miles each way to get a tree offsets the carbon it sequesters. Also, some are sprayed with pesticides. Fake plastic trees are not recyclable, and some of their labels say to avoid inhaling toxic lead dust from the tree’s vinyl. Now that’s some toxic chemistree!
Looking to avoid toxic holidays? Studies show that what makes us happy are good relationships and volunteering. Healthy communication can’t hurt too. So why not make a tree out of self-help books? Mine would be 100 used copies of Unf*ck Your Brain, because I’m subtle!
If your family doesn’t need self-help books, then consider adopting a tree from Friends of the Urban Forest. The organization plants trees in underserved neighborhoods. Or buy potted, native, locally grown, organic trees that won’t die in warm homes, so no pine or fir. The point is to keep your tree alive so you can plant it. Go to sc.org/fir-real for tips.
If you really need a single-use tree, at least buy cut, locally grown, organic trees, such as those recommended by Beyond Pesticides (sc.org/organic-xmas-trees). Later, you can feed them to rescued goats or donkeys at animal sanctuaries. Or find out where to recycle your tree at Earth911.
Now let’s talk about the forest and not just the trees: Why cut trees if you don’t have to, and then put gifts wrapped with dead trees under them? Maybe give gifts people need, like plastic-free deodorant. Instead of buying ornaments, decorate with what might be the only vegan, certified 98 percent USDA biobased petroleumfree floss with reusable shiny dispensers called FlossPot Gold by KMH Touches. Better yet, give the gift of bodywork like Somatic Experiencing that can heal emotional and physical trauma. It might be even more effective than 100 self-help books. Source: Sierra Club
4. Glendale Glitters Tis the time of the year when one of the state’s premier events light up. The lights are on every night from now to January 11th from 5 to 10 p.m.. The best time to visit downtown Glendale is on the weekends to experience the 1.6 million lights.
Get into the Christmas spirit and spend a little time immersed in the joyous lights of Christmas in downtown Glendale.
And if you want more, go to Glendale’s Westgate area and do some ice skating on a real ice rink, listen to live bands, take a free horse and buggy ride and more cool struff.
5. Recycle Correctly This Holiday. Merry Christmas and Recycle Correctly. Remember, no Christmas wrapping paper or artificial Christmas trees in recycling. Get it right!
6. Climate Change Is Making the Future of Cranberry Growing Uncertain. The unpredictable effects of climate change on cranberries are creating ups and downs and troubles for the industry’s growers
One morning in mid-September, Jed Colquhoun, an expert in fruit and vegetable production systems, hopped on the phone to discuss the state of cranberries and climate change in the state of Wisconsin, our country’s most bountiful producer of that tart indigenous berry.
“Today’s a great example of what we’re dealing with,” he said from his office at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he teaches and conducts research. “A hundred miles northwest of me, towards cranberry country, some areas just got six inches of rain. That’s two Septembers’-worth of rain in a morning.”
Since whatever public consciousness exists of the cranberry industry likely starts and ends with a flooded marsh (a.k.a. bog, if you hail from Massachusetts, our second top cranberry-producing state), a day of downpours may seem a shrug-worthy affair. But as Colquhoun explains, everything from how farmers could (or couldn’t) complete scheduled work, to whether soil remained intact in the runoff, was impacted by this weather anomaly.
Climate Change Ups and Downs
In fact, unseasonal deluges are just one of the many variable effects of climate change on cranberries that are “creating ups and downs and leading to an inability to predict the weather, which is very troublesome for the industry’s growers,” Colquhoun says
What Cranberries Need
Cranberries are an amazingly hardy fruit that thrive within an optimal cold-producing range that stretches latitudinally from Canada to New Jersey; in addition to Wisconsin, they’re also grown commercially in Oregon and Washington. Like grapes, they grow on woody vines. Like lowbush blueberries, they prefer acidic, sandy soil. Like both these fellow North American natives, they can stay productive for a long time under the right conditions.
“We actually don’t know how long they’ll live,” says Colquhoun. In both Wisconsin and in Massachusetts, 100-year-old cranberry vines are still bearing fruit and “don’t have an endpoint that we know of.”
Cranberries do have special needs, though. One is several acres of supporting wetland or forest for every acre of marsh, to store water for cranberry production and filter out impurities. Another is “chilling hours,” accrued during winter’s frigid dormancy period. Yet another is ice, a thick covering of which helps protect those still-growing vines from cold — in Wisconsin, temperatures of -40 degrees Fahrenheit are common. Ice also makes it possible for growers to drive buggies over their marshes every few years to spread sand, to rejuvenate the vines and control pests
Unsurprisingly, erratic weather is a threat to the delicate balance between what a cranberry vine requires and what it receives from its surrounding ecosystem.
Climate Change Necessitates Changes
Water Irregularities: For starters, no amount of deluge, which only temporarily wets the soil, can temper the needs of a marsh for consistent water levels in its surrounding lands, which is something that used to be a lot more of a given. “Annual rainfall totals might be higher, but epic, less-frequent downfalls mean we have to change the ways we irrigate our crops,” says Ghantous. Since cranberry marshes are flooded for ease of harvest — the low-to-the-ground hollow berries float — “changes in available water change the way we harvest, too.”
Fluctuating Temperatures: There’s also the issue of how fluctuating temperatures affect numerous interrelated species. For example, earlier springs or later winters mean ecological mismatches—times when a cranberry plant may flower to find no bees available to pollinate it or, conversely, insects hatch too early to find forageable flowers.
Less cold and less consistent cold have their own ripple effects. “Lots of invasive species, like kudzu, are moving north so there’s a chance we could have an influx of new pests, weeds, fungi, bacteria,” Ghantous says. “Things that were previously nudged out of the region by cold can now sweep in.” In fact, Wisconsin cranberry growers have already been contending with increased insect and weed influxes, according to the Bergen Record.
Loss of Ice: In Massachusetts and New Jersey, where Ghantous says “loss of ice is significant for us already,” growers are sanding by retrofitting manure- or salt-spreaders to drive over dry marshes. Wisconsin still gets good ice but it doesn’t necessarily last the winter anymore; temperatures can veer rapidly from January thaw to polar vortex, exposing crops to inhospitable cold. “In summer, we see winter injury with plants browning and dying off in places,” says Colquhoun. The plants may survive but “there’s yield reduction and overall stress.”
With conditions now difficult if not impossible to predict, growers are scratching their heads about how to manage their marshes from year to year on multiple fronts. And experts like Ghantous and Colquhoun are at a loss for how to authoritatively advise them. “Not knowing what that variability is going to look like over the next 10 years makes it hard to pose a hypothesis that’s testable,” Colquhoun says. “And if we don’t know what we’re mitigating against, we’re being asked for an answer before we see the question.”
Building a Better Marsh and a Hardier Cranberry
That doesn’t mean researchers aren’t trying to piece it all together with what resources they’ve got.
Ghantous says that although money for cranberry-specific studies is more limited than in some other sectors (cranberries are a $2 billion drop in the $1 trillion bucket of U.S. agriculture), the industry is able to draw parallels from ecologists, agronomists, and others looking at the impacts of climate change on similar woody crops with similar growing needs.
She’s been encouraging growers to develop better water management practices, support native bee species, and reduce pesticide use in controlling for insect invaders. “I would hope improving ecological functions would help stave off some of the effects of climate change, but there are so many unknowns,” she says. She’s also been looking south, to New Jersey, the state that contended with warming first and where cranberry specialists have been developing new, hopefully more resilient varietals.
And as most cranberry farmers are generational growers “who are thinking about the farms they are going to leave to their kids,” says Ghantous, she hopes wide-ranging best practices will help them prepare for whatever’s in store. “And who knows? Maybe we’ll find that cranberries have more resistance built in than we know.” Source: Civil Eats
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