Tennessee climate change is so subtle it's hard to gauge

Anne Paine in the Tennessean: The U.S. Department of Agriculture chief calls climate change "one of the greatest threats facing our planet," but little attention is being paid to it in Tennessee's farming world. More rain is falling in autumn in the Southeast than a century ago. Droughts have increased in spring and summer, and the temperature has made a slight move upward, particularly since 1970.

It's projected to continue to rise, according to the U.S. Global Change Research Program. Increasingly extreme weather is likely, such as heavier downpours and more intense droughts in some areas. Yet change in Tennessee could be difficult to tabulate, according to Joanne Logan, an associate professor of biosystems engineering and soil engineering at the University of Tennessee.

"In Tennessee, everything is pretty subtle," she said, adding that research has not been plentiful when it comes to agriculture and climate change here. If small changes are occurring under the radar, a trigger point could be reached suddenly where ecosystems as a whole could fail, unable to make changes quickly enough to keep up, she said.

…It's difficult for Tennesseans to be alarmed when faraway tundra melts or oceans rise, she said. But there are things worth noting here. "Who would have thought fire ants would make it up this far north?" she said….

The summit of Inadu Knob in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, in the southeastern United States. This view is from the high-altitude helicopter landing area along the Appalachian Trail. Shot by Brian Stansberry, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative CommonsAttribution 3.0 Unported license