![]() They’re creating the future so the rest of us know what to expect.Įveryone who studies forests knows trees have been dying in massive numbers, especially out west. He and his colleagues are simulating the conditions that will soon prevail along the world’s marshy shorelines: warmer temperatures, higher sea levels and elevated levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. That early summer storm was part of an extraordinary series of experiments that Megonigal is overseeing at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. This article is a selection from the November/December 2022 issue of Smithsonian magazine Subscribe Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine now for just $15 Smithsonian ecologist Patrick Megonigal fell in love with wetlands in his college-student days when he worked as a tour guide in the Great Dismal Swamp on the Virginia-North Carolina border. ![]() In this case, TEMPEST stood for Terrestrial Ecosystem Manipulation to Probe the Effects of Storm Treatments, and the magician was Patrick Megonigal, a laid-back 62-year-old wetland ecologist in a flannel shirt, baseball cap and hiking boots. Like the deluge in Shakespeare’s play, conjured by the duke-turned-magician Prospero, it was a human creation. In this part of Maryland, near the Chesapeake Bay, downpours of such magnitude happen just once every ten years.īut this tempest was no natural disaster. Floods of salt water from the nearby Rhode River soaked the roots of the maples, beeches and tulip poplars. It hadn’t rained for days, and by late afternoon, the forest floor had been drenched with 70,000 gallons of precipitation. The tempest began at 7 o’clock one morning this past June.
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