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veggie

Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,504
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[DEU] Truffle-Hunting Dog Finds Jackpot in Unexpected Place
#14348860 - 04/25/11 12:28 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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Truffle-Hunting Dog Finds Jackpot in Unexpected Place April 25, 2011 - Wired
A specially trained dog may have discovered the latest refugee affected by climate change: Truffles.
“Buffo” the truffle-hunting dog discovered his bounty while roaming the forests of southern Germany. That region is seeing milder winters and changing weather patterns, and isn’t known to grow Burgundy truffles — a subterranean fungal delicacy that can fetch $1,800 per pound. It, and other rare European varieties, typically grow in Mediterranean forests at least 100 miles south and west of Buffo’s find.
The discovery, described April 4 in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, will certainly interest truffle-hunters and gourmet chefs. But it may also hint at ecological instability.
“Fungi such as truffles help plants absorb water and nutrients. Without fungi, plants don’t work,” said fungal ecologist Lynne Boddy of Cardiff University, who wasn’t involved in the study. “We know climates are changing and that fungal habitats are shifting. What we’re not certain about are the effects.”
Symbiotic fungi, including truffles, soak up water and nutrients, and deliver them into the roots of plants. In exchange, fungi get sugars from the plants. Some varieties of truffles are prized for their taste, yet are difficult to find because they grow underground on tree roots. Pigs and Lagotto Romagnolo dogs, however, can smell oils secreted by truffles’ bulbous spore-spreading fruiting bodies.
Ulf Büntgen, a paleoclimatologist at the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research, was out with Buffo when he detected the Burgundy truffle mother lode.
“This wasn’t a small find, but a big and expensive truffle with lots of smaller ones around. It was strange to find it in an area where, so far, this truffle’s existence has never been reported,” said Büntgen, leader of the new study. “The season, early November, was also unusual. This led us to ask, ‘what is driving truffle growth here? Is it connected to climate?’”
Over the last century, harvests of Burgundy truffles have declined by a factor of hundreds in their traditional Mediterranean habitats, possibly because of unusually long and severe droughts. Over-harvesting may also be responsible. The reluctance of secretive truffle hunters to share their own data makes it harder to untangle cause-and-effect.
However, the case for climate impacts on truffle habitat north of the Alps seems stronger. These typically cool regions are seeing milder winters and more precipitation, and the presence of truffles there seems to be on the rise. Boddy, who has studied the response of fungi and their plant hosts to climate change, said she wouldn’t be surprised to know climate change is largely responsible for the shift in truffle habitats
Büntgen and his colleagues say it’s too soon to be certain why the truffles’ range is shifting. They see the new study as a starting point. “Very little in general is known about truffles because of their high price. It makes people very secretive,” he said. “So, we’re spending a year to nail down everything we can about the conditions they require and how different climates affect them.”
According to Boddy, a change in fungal ecology could very well have ripple effects. “When you change the environment, you change a fundamental balance for plants,” she said.
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Humility
Working on it



Registered: 10/07/08
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Re: [DEU] Truffle-Hunting Dog Finds Jackpot in Unexpected Place [Re: veggie]
#14349087 - 04/25/11 01:37 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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I've always been very concerned about the views of "climate change" and "ecological change".
A disaster is a disaster. No one is arguing that it was good for the Exxon-Valdez or BP to spill unfathomable quantities of oil into the ocean and gulf respectively.
That said, I'd figure scientists of all people would realize that climates and ecologies change and are as subject to chaos as any other phenomena.
Too much "change" probably isn't good, but overall I think a warmer earth would be good. Obviously it'd be preferable for uninhabitable lands like antartica and greenland and vast swathes of Russia and Canada to be hospitable but you wouldn't want tropic regions to become inhospitable.
Overall though it just seems like every jot and tittle is blown far out of proportion. It needs to be kept in mind that humans, though small, are incredibly ingenious and if for instance the tropics became inhospitable we would begin to develop industry around proto-terraforming, starting right here on earth.
Seems like good practice anyway.
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Joolz


Registered: 09/19/10
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Re: [DEU] Truffle-Hunting Dog Finds Jackpot in Unexpected Place [Re: Humility]
#14349441 - 04/25/11 02:44 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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The only problem is that if the Earth gets warmer, the ice caps get smaller. The ocean will raise even more if the earth gets warmer. I'm happy I live in the middle of the USA tbh. I'm not even in tornado alley. Luckily, nothing happens here except that it'll go from hot to cold on a dime. But nothing else.
-------------------- Prohibition didn't work for God; Eve ate the fruit.
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whitelight7
Sr.



Registered: 02/17/09
Posts: 1,250
Loc: Washington
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Re: [DEU] Truffle-Hunting Dog Finds Jackpot in Unexpected Place [Re: Joolz]
#14349594 - 04/25/11 03:10 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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jumping the gun a little assuming the cause.
-------------------- Staunch supporter of spontaneous generation
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SHRAMANN
Entomologist


Registered: 03/09/10
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Re: [DEU] Truffle-Hunting Dog Finds Jackpot in Unexpected Place [Re: whitelight7]
#14349639 - 04/25/11 03:20 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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PICS!! .. or it didnt happen.. lol
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bait_
AllSpice


Registered: 04/24/07
Posts: 2,292
Loc: This Cannot Be Happening
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Re: [DEU] Truffle-Hunting Dog Finds Jackpot in Unexpected Place [Re: Humility]
#14350722 - 04/25/11 06:31 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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Quote:
Humility said: I've always been very concerned about the views of "climate change" and "ecological change".
A disaster is a disaster. No one is arguing that it was good for the Exxon-Valdez or BP to spill unfathomable quantities of oil into the ocean and gulf respectively.
That said, I'd figure scientists of all people would realize that climates and ecologies change and are as subject to chaos as any other phenomena.
Too much "change" probably isn't good, but overall I think a warmer earth would be good. Obviously it'd be preferable for uninhabitable lands like antartica and greenland and vast swathes of Russia and Canada to be hospitable but you wouldn't want tropic regions to become inhospitable.
Overall though it just seems like every jot and tittle is blown far out of proportion. It needs to be kept in mind that humans, though small, are incredibly ingenious and if for instance the tropics became inhospitable we would begin to develop industry around proto-terraforming, starting right here on earth.
Seems like good practice anyway.
this is the most retarded thing i've seen in a while... as it stands right now every place on earth is habitable (AKA able to sustain life).. ecological change is a direct response to climate change
a warmer earth will cause the permafrost to melt and that cold siberia you want to turn into a resort will be swampy as fuck
and an argument against global climate change is because antarctica has an ice cap that is actually growing (not shrinking) but this argument is easily refuted by taking into consideration warmer oceans. its a giant 'lake effect' going on down there
our misuse of land causes the desertification of 20,000mi^2 each year. this will probably be accelerated in a 'warmer earth'. i dunno about you but a desert is pretty uninhabitable to humans.
what does chaos have to do with anything? this isn't a catastrophic event or disaster it's a slow uniform change brought about by us. (global climate change IS anthropocentrically influenced and anyone who doesn't believe that cannot follow logic)
in regards to your terrafarming idea -- sure humans are an ingenious bunch -- we are so smart that we came up with a phrase Keep It Simple Stupid. technology is not always the best way; much of the time simpler is better
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treal
Skillet
Registered: 10/26/09
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Re: [DEU] Truffle-Hunting Dog Finds Jackpot in Unexpected Place [Re: bait_]
#14351163 - 04/25/11 07:36 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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too true bait. Humans having done away with a quarter or more of the green surface area on Earth is a prime part of the climate equation that is all too often neglected. This is all the more important as the more and more we can build soil, we are taking the most economical path to climate mitigation at the same time producing other crucial socioecological benefits.
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Purple_spore
Compulsively Skeptical OG



Registered: 09/11/05
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Re: [DEU] Truffle-Hunting Dog Finds Jackpot in Unexpected Place [Re: Humility]
#14351228 - 04/25/11 07:46 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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It is the earths will to change, but you can't dismiss natural change as a reason to not worry about what, and how much we consume, along with an age of the deletion of land and resources we are ushering in for the future 5 or 6 generations from now.
The term global warming is tossed around so much it has little meaning anymore. But even if we could some how fix what we've done, and completely control the earths climate how we se fit, it's still no excuse to over use resources, or argue that it's the sole reason to not over use them. There are much better reasons to conserve and diversify.
But who's to say they don't grow there in cycles once every 100 years from the fluctuation of the local and global climate shifts? Or every 1000?
-------------------- Safety first children
Edited by Purple_spore (04/25/11 07:50 PM)
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Vitalux
Stranger from the next universe



Registered: 02/15/11
Posts: 2,695
Loc: Canada
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Re: [DEU] Truffle-Hunting Dog Finds Jackpot in Unexpected Place [Re: veggie]
#14358297 - 04/26/11 10:25 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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I love truffles
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