A little announcement at the National Arboretum in DC, about a new version of the handy climate zone maps that the USDA and its Agricultural Research Service publishes to help home gardeners and others know whether figs, peonies, or passion flower vines will do well in the yard, included a delightful round of fast-talking. That is, if the AP‘s Seth Borenstein got it right, and he’s a diligent reporter. AP has a video by Lee Powell on the news, too.

Now, he could have written portentiously that the affair reflects recognition by a federal agency that global warming is making a practical impact, and compared the kibosh laid down on such revisions when they were considered during the administration of George W. Bush.

Instead, one gets a delightful vignette in which a USDA spokeswoman insists that the map should not be taken as evidence of global warming (was she also there during the Bush administration and still feeling the sting? Yes, if this press release from 2002 is any indication) . Seth immediately follows his sketch of the evasive tap dance with quotes from several horticultural authorities who say of course it’s global warming, sheesh and wottayathinking? The USDA woman had one good point, one thinks. What wipes out many plants is cold weather, so the maps rely only on a region’s cold extremes, not the average temp. But, one bets, there is a pretty strong correlation between the two in how they change.

   There is more to this, one suspects after hunting around for the previous map, pasted here. the colors are a bit different so it’s hard to be sure whether zones are heading north without a  ponder.  Go to this site where I found it and see that there was a 2006 edition of the map too. But USDA didn’t publish it. The National Arbor Day Foundation, apparently stepping into the breach, did that one. It includes a swell subtraction-comparison of zones to show the migration north that was apparent even then. See the arbor day group ‘s own posting of the 2006 effort and the press release it had that year. Nobody that I’ve seen in this weeks news round gives any credit toe NADF for its intermediate map, which sure looks as nicely done as the USDA’s. The Tracker had a brief post on it at the time.

The USDA is not going to make printed posters of the new map, reports say, relying on the web to circulate it. Maybe the nice people at the arbor day organization will step into this breach, too, and run some off.

Other stories on the USDA’s 2012 catch-up hardiness map:

• NPR – Dan Charles: Gardening Map of Warming U.S. Has Plant Zones Moving North ;
• San Francisco Chronicle – Stacy Finz: USDA releases new Plant Hardiness Zone Map ; Gives a plug to Sunset Magazine – a source says it does better job on its maps, for the western US,  than does the USDA.
• Newsday – Jessica Damiano: New Plant Hardiness Zone map released today ;
• USA Today – Janice Lloyd: New USDA climate zone map reflects northward warming trends ;
• Washington Post – Adrian Higgins: New plant map shifts area to warmer zone ;

Grist for the Mill: USDA Ag.Res. Service Press Release, Oregon State U. Press Release ;

- Charlie Petit

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 26th, 2012 at 3:27 pm and is filed under Environment & Energy Stories, Science Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.