by Playfuls Staff |
28th February 2007
Photographs taken 137 years apart in a
U.S.
cemetery present a pictorial reminder of the effects of global climate change.[more]
The first, taken at a Lowell,
Mass., cemetery on Memorial Day 1868, shows
mourners in heavy winter clothing gathered under leafless trees near the graves
of two brothers killed in the Civil War.
The second photo was taken at the same spot on Memorial Day
2005, showing cemetery visitors wearing light spring clothes and trees in full
flower.
Four years ago, Boston
University biology Professor
Richard Primack and graduate student Abraham Miller-Rushing started gathering
data, such as the photographs from the hobbyist who collects cemetery photos,
records of flowering plants, bird watchers' migration reports and even
Thoreau's Concord, Mass.,
diaries with his painstaking observations of 600 species. They found many of
nature's events are occurring earlier and earlier.
"This is not about glaciers or extinct frogs in the
mountaintops of Costa Rica,"
Primack said. "This is a way people can see for themselves that climate
change is affecting the organisms living in our gardens and the birds visiting
our bird feeders."
The researchers will present their findings during the April
21-29 Cambridge Science Festival.
© 2007 UPI
