Winter Weather Key For NY, WI Loggers: As Season Shortens, Logging & Jobs Shrink As Well
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The Lizottes' clearing is at the center of a mixed stand of birch, beech and hemlock. The site is reached by a mile of gravel-hardened dirt road; when it's frozen the corridor can handle a 100,000-pound tractor-trailer loaded with logs. The Lizottes estimate they have until the end of this week to get their gear out of the woods before this road goes soft. They've already pulled equipment from plots 10 miles deeper in the forest; those stands were reached only by "winter roads," temporary routes created by earth, frost and graders. "It used to be we'd shoot for March 15," Jeannel said, "but we got caught out too many times."
Jeannel Lizotte says he has lost about a month of productive time to warmer winter weather since he started his logging business in 1970. His observations parallel those of a Wisconsin study presented last week at the Connecticut Conference on Natural Resources. "Frozen ground is starting later and it's ending earlier. A trend is evident," said Chadwick Rittenhouse, an assistant research professor at University of Connecticut.
He and Adena Rissman, an assistant professor with the University of Wisconsin's department of forest and wildlife ecology, examined historical weather information from the federal government's National Climatic Data Center for seven counties in Wisconsin. They found that the counties experienced a two- to four-week reduction of frozen ground between 1949 and 2012.
The study also found that midwinter thaws are becoming more common, reducing cold-weather logging from the middle of the season. "Eau Claire County is one of the most dramatic counties: 38 days of frozen ground lost since the beginning of that time series in 1949," Rittenhouse said. "That's only 60 years and we've lost ... five weeks, almost six weeks. What does that mean for forest operations?"
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http://wwwp.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/2013/03/new-york-logging-winters
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