The College Fix

Educational garden will test climate change in laboratory setting over time for correctness

Some scholars are convinced central New York’s climate will continue to heat up as a result of global warming, and that perhaps by 2050, northeastern states’ summers could be as warm as they are today in Virginia and North Carolina, causing untold damaging effects on ecosystems.

One university is calling that bluff, sort of.

Syracuse University scholars have planted a “Climate Change Garden” on campus to track what effects, if any, climate change will have on central New York’s ecosystem, calling the undertaking the first of its kind.

By planting different species of plants and trees from around the world, researchers will examine how the garden responds to any central New York climate changes over time, said Jason Fridley, the associate professor of biology who is overseeing the project.

Rather than assuming that climate change exists, Fridley insists scholars will use the garden to simply test climate change in a laboratory setting over time for correctness.

“Anything could happen,” Professor Fridley said in a phone interview with The College Fix.

They called it the “Climate Change Garden” because the “public perception is that this is one of the biggest environmental threats of our time,” he said. 

The garden is comprised of about 100 woody plants – including pines, oaks, maples, birches, and magnolias – divided into three groups: local species, those that want a warmer climate, and those that want a drier climate.

Each group reflects the theme of the garden, “imagining how local forests in Syracuse might change in the coming century,” Fridley said, adding he predicts that, over time, the warm-loving plants will do quite well depending on what the climate does over the next few decades.

He also predicted that the southern species – those that desire a warmer and drier climate – will do best over time in central New York, which as of now has a cool and moist climate.

Over time, the professor added, he and other researchers hope to “build a long-term dataset of the health of these plants” and how quickly they are growing.

He and his team are currently working on a fundraising project in an attempt to buy more equipment for students to use, notably specialized probes in the trunks of the trees which can measure in real time how water moves up the trunks.

There have not been many controversies surrounding the garden, either. Fridley is not surprised.

“It’s a pretty liberal place here in central New York,” he said. “But regardless of what happens to the climate here in New York, the climate fluctuates.”

This alone, he says, will give him and his colleagues a wholesome dataset.

In addition, he says, the garden is completely funded by the university, installed as part of a campus construction project in a plot of land along the new Life Sciences Complex quadrangle.

“This will give our students hands-on experience thinking about how our future landscape is going to change” on the basis of climate and species, he said, adding he’ll take students outside the classroom setting for more engaging lessons on ecosystems in the quad’s educational garden.

Doug Frank, a professor in the Department of Biology, stated on the university’s website that “we are unaware of any other on-campus facility literally feet away from the classroom that allows students to study, firsthand, the consequences of climate change.”

“The beauty of the garden is that its value will only increase over time for the benefit of many future generations of students.”

College Fix contributor Andrew Desiderio is a student at The George Washington University.

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