Title:

Assessing the Influence of Climate on NH Sugar Maple Quality

Sugar maples are a common tree throughout the Northeast that produces a sugar-rich sap that is turned into delicious maple syrup. This sap is produced during early spring, when temperatures are above freezing during the day, and below freezing during the night. This fluctuation of temperature allows sap within the tree to flow, so that the sap can be collected. Since sap only flows within this specific temperature range, there is a small window in which trees must be tapped. However, with rising global temperature, this window could potentially be getting smaller and smaller every year. Our research involves taking maple sap samples to determine the effect of temperature on the quality of maple syrup, as well as taking tree cores to compare yearly tree health with annual weather patterns. We hypothesize that years with warmer temperatures will show poorer tree health, and poorer quality maple syrup, and that sap collected during warmer times will yield higher levels of phenolic compounds (which are present in late season sap). Our results showed that sap collected later in the season had higher absorbance than that collected earlier in the season when temperatures were lower, which means that the sap had higher concentration of phenolic compounds meaning lower quality sap. In addition, our results on yearly tree health showed that there is a correlation between annual temperature and annual growing conditions of sugar maples, and warmer years showed shorter tree rings meaning harsher growing conditions. As temperatures continue to rise, there will likely be even stronger correlations between tree health and temperature, and sugar maples may soon suffer from the consequences of global warming.

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