A Canadian best seller: David Walker’s Where the High Winds Blow

Shifts in disturbance patterns across the Northeast are of increasing concern as the climate continues to change. In particular, changes in patterns of frequency, severity and extent of disturbance event may have detrimental cascading impacts on forest ecosystems and human communities. To explore how changing disturbance regimes might impact future forest health and management it is necessary to understand the historical trends and impacts of disturbance in the region. Although individual types of disturbance have already been analyzed, there is a need for a consolidated overview of the current state of disturbance in northeastern forests. To address this need, the Forest Ecosystem Monitoring Cooperative (FEMC) developed the FEMC: Tracking Shifts in Disturbance Regimes web portal for users to explore changes over time of key disturbance drivers, identify important disturbance responses, and discover where monitoring is happening for both drivers and responses. In collaboration with our advisory committee, we identified key disturbance drivers—flood, high winds, fire, drought, pests—and responses—macroinvertebrates, cold-water fisheries, invasive plants—that are of particular concern in the region. For each of the drivers we identified a suitable regional dataset and analyzed changes over time in frequency, severity, and extent. We also created a structured framework to catalogue programs across the region that are monitoring for these disturbance drivers and responses. Version 1.0 of the FEMC: Tracking Shifts in Disturbance Regimes (https://uvm.edu/femc/disturbance) web portal, first released in October 2021, contains 272 data programs, 11 drivers and three responses. Through the web portal users can browse programs by state, driver type or response type, and explore where monitoring is happening across the region. Driver-specific analyses allow users to quickly see the trends in severity, frequency and extent of selected disturbances and compare the impacts in selected states to regional data. We hope that this collection of programs and the analysis of trends provide researchers and land managers with an easy way to understand the current state of disturbance in northeastern forests that enables them to analyze and plan for future impacts.

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The Influence of High Winds on the Barometer at the Ben Nevis Observatory

Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh ◽

10.1017/s0370164600007331 ◽

1892 ◽

Vol 18 ◽

pp. 88-94

Author(s):

Alexander Buchan

Keyword(s):

Wind Velocity ◽

Henry James ◽

Not Given ◽

Simple Construction ◽

The South ◽

South West ◽

Spiral Spring ◽

High Winds

The question of the effect of wind on the readings of the barometer was first examined by Sir Henry James in a paper read to the Society on March 15, 1852. The observations were made during the succession of gales from the south-west which occurred in January and February of that year, at his house in Granton, with an aneroid barometer, laid horizontally in succession on the table of his room in the cottage, on the seat of the open summerhouse, and on the surface of the ground close to the summer-house, all at the same level. The anemometer employed was of a very simple construction, being on the same principle as the instrument used for weighing letters, the weight or pressure being indicated by the compression of a spiral spring in a tube. A table of results is added, giving the depression of the barometer in decimals of an inch for the velocity of the wind from 14 to 40 miles per hour. At 14 miles the barometric depression was 0.010 inch, and increased gradually to a depression of 0.045 inch at 40 miles per hour. Unfortunately, the number of observations on which the depression for each wind-velocity has been deduced are not given, and the observations in the cottage and those at the open summer-house are combined into one result.

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