![]() Likens and other scientists briefed President Reagan on the issue, kicking off the political process that led to amendments to the Clean Air Act in 1990. “We actually tried to follow, in small airplanes and vehicles on the ground, plumes from the Midwest,” Likens remembers. He also helped establish the baseline for what rain pH should be by measuring acidity for ten years in remote places all over the globe, and link acid rain in the Northeast, to power plants upwind. He led the team that found acid rain at the Hubbard Brook research forest here in New Hampshire. “There has been a very major decline in precipitation pH,” says Gene Likens, who perhaps knows acid rain better than anyone. And then things like trees starting to die mysteriously.”īut the story doesn’t end the way many feared it would. Things like, literally, infrastructure degrading. “Until then things started happening,” says Schaberg, “Things like marble monuments in cemeteries melting away. This is like lime juice water shouldn’t be like this!” Schaberg explains.Īcid rain became a big headline in the early seventies, but then says for ten or so, many people sort of forgot about it. “Researchers at Hubbard Brook started to measure the pH of the rain in their samples, and realized these are really acidic. Schaberg is with the US forest service and was not one of those scientists, but the discovery shaped his career. A little farther South at a place called at a place called Hubbard Brook, between Thornton and Woodstock. Researchers first stumbled onto acid rain in 1963. “Which means not only will you lose the foliage, but you lose the new shoots that were coming from those buds.” “When it’s very cold even the buds will die,” says Schaberg,” So you can see the little bud in there. NHPR Researchers discovered acid rain by measuring rainfall and runoff in brooks like this one, in the Hubbard Brook Research Forest in Thornton and Woodstock. With no new needles, the trees would get weaker and eventually die. The acidity was basically weakening the tree’s needles, so they would freeze off during the winter. Schaberg says Red Spruce was the "canary in the coal mine" that showed the problems acid rain was causing. Red spruce used to be a very high-value timber crop in the US, and still is in Canada, but from 1965 to 1986 it declined by around 65 percent. The story of the red spruce hints that with a changing climate, there will be some species that are winners while others are losers. ![]() Red spruce, a tree species that researchers thought was doomed because of acid rain, is now growing faster than ever, and it’s not the only tree growing like gangbusters. There’s a dramatic recovery underway in New England. ![]() ![]() “We’re just seeing green needles,” hollers back one of his helpers. “So what are you guys seeing, are you seeing any injury yet?” he calls out. Paul Schaberg marshals a small team of scientists, surveying a stand of red spruce in Colebrook for frost damage from last winter. ![]()
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