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Vol. 6 No.3
The Voice of North Grenville
January 17, 2018
A naturalist's view of the ice storm
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Aleta Karstad's ice storm journal page by Hilary Thomson Fred Schueler and Aleta Karstad remember the ice storm twenty years ago all too well. They were living in their current home in Bishops Mills and survived the fourteen days without power thanks to their wood-burning stove, outside freezer and a bathtub full of water (which they had filled before the power went out). They watched and participated as the community came together to support each other in the extreme weather event in Eastern Ontario that rocked the beginning of 1998. As naturalists and observers, Fred and Aleta used the ice storm as an opportunity to gather information about how the ice storm affected the
flora, fauna and habitats of the area. “I measured the excess diameter of the twigs caused by the ice,” Fred remembers. “There was 50 mm of excess diameter on everything.” Throughout the duration of the storm, Fred noted that the temperature remained roughly the same, between -2 and +0.5. When it ended the temperature plummeted into a deep freeze, further solidifying the ice that had built up on the trees, bushes and ground. While in some cases the excess ice made a bush more structurally sound, when it came to some trees the ice weighed them down and caused them to snap. “In the wind the poplar trees would break in half,” Aleta remembers. “It sounded like artillery
in the distance.” Forests were ravaged during the ice storm with trees falling down and bent in all sorts of different directions. “It looked like photographs from World War 1,” Fred says. Fred and fellow researchers David and Carolyn Seburn were employed by the Ministry of Natural Resources to look at how the extra layer of ice may have affected small mammal populations in Eastern Ontario. The trio sampled 90 different places within the area affected by the ice storm which were evenly divided between four habitats: old fields, fence rows, coniferous forests and deciduous forests. They found that the average thickness of the ice lens was
8-9 cm thick and this did not differ between the different habitats. Fred and his colleagues found that it was hard to tell how most small mammals, including mice, shrews and moles were affected by the storm. However, they found that voles, who make tunnels under the snow to move around during the winter, were restricted in terms of where they could go because of the ice. They were also unable to dig their ventilation holes up to the surface to allow them to breathe under the snow. Because of this, their report speculated that the ice storm may have added to the continued on page 2
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