As Elmira Maple Syrup Festival goers know all too well, Mother Nature has a way of making her presence known at the annual springtime event. Not only can rain or snow put a damper on the festival day, erratic weather conditions throughout the season can take its toll on syrup production.
This is the topic of interest for a small group of researchers from Wilfrid Laurier University who have spent the past few years conducting interviews, gathering data, and synthesizing a wealth of information in order to assess the importance and value of maple syrup to community wellbeing and the potential impact climate change may be having on the industry.
“Virtually no research has been done on maple syrup,” explained WLU researcher Brenda Murphy. “There was work done on the technical end; biology and syrup grading and all that kind of stuff, but nobody was looking at the value of maple syrup to communities, the effect that climate change would have on syrup and what’s actually happening to the trees. There was a huge gap in the literature.”
Murphy, alongside a group of educators, masters students and other researchers, have spent a large portion of the past few months chatting to anyone whom they thought might be able to shed some light on the syrup festival; its history, the methods of sap extraction, anything which may be applicable to their study. Festival organizers and volunteers, farmers, equipment salespeople, business owners and township representatives were among those interviewed.
“It’s amazing to see the social network that has formed around the maple syrup industry here,” said Murphy. “It’s incredible to see the amount of volunteerism, the way it brings community together, the way it gives economic opportunity for people to get their product out there, the way it brings out all the different service groups. And it all revolves around maple syrup.”
Climate change, however, may play a larger role than simply forcing festivalgoers to dress accordingly; research shows that it may threaten the region’s ability to produce syrup at all.
“My family makes maple syrup from a very traditional context and people keep telling me that the trees are dying,” said Annette Chretien, who is of Métis heritage and who is also working as a researcher on this project.
According to a study done at the University of Vermont Proctor Maple Research Center, changes to the industry to date are relatively small and subtle but will have major ramifications in the not-too-distant future.
The maple sap flow season is starting and ending earlier. The growing season is somewhat longer. Although on the surface, these would seem like positive effects, the distribution of plants is dictated primarily by two climatic factors, temperature and precipitation. If the forecasts of models of temperature and precipitation are correct, and the northeast regional climate continues to warm as projected, researchers expect that the maple industry in the U.S., and similarly areas in southern Canada, will become economically unsound during the next 50-100 years as the conditions for sapflow become less prevalent.
“If the projections are correct, we are going to lose the trees in the south; the lower range of the maple syrup producing area,” said Murphy. “The trees will migrate north but by the time you reach the Canadian Shield, you have a mixed-forest area with rocks and acidic soils and conifer trees. They will no longer have the lovely area for maple trees that we have here.”
But despite a growing concern about the effects of climate change on production, the team has found local producers of syrup and the community that surrounds the truly Canadian product to be quite resilient. Since starting the Elmira portion of their study this past summer, the team is even more motivated to pursue the research and publish applicable findings.
“We want to understand what maple syrup is to us. It is part of our Canadian identity, it’s part of our heritage, part of our legacy,” said Chretien. “And the thought of losing that is something that we need to explore, it’s important.”
