Warming Revives Flora and Fauna in Greenland
John McConnico for The New York Times
NARSARSUAQ, Greenland
A strange thing is happening at the edge of Poul Bjerges forest, a
place so minute and unexpected that it brings to mind the teeny plot of
land Woody Allens father carries around in the film Love and Death.
John McConnico for The New York Times
Hans Gronborg, a Danish horticulturist, picked cauliflower at Upernaviarsuk, an agricultural research station near Qaqortoq.
Its four oldest trees in
fact, the four oldest pine trees in Greenland, named Rosenvinges trees
after the Dutch botanist who planted them in a mad experiment in 1893
are waking up. After lapsing into stately, sleepy old age, they are
exhibiting new sprinklings of green at their tops, as if someone had
glued on fresh needles.
The old ones, theyre having a second
youth, said Mr. Bjerge, 78, who has watched the forest, called
Qanasiassat, come to life, in fits and starts, since planting most of
the trees in it 50 years ago. He beamed like a proud grandson. Theyre
growing again.
When using the words growing in connection
with Greenland in the same sentence, it is important to remember that
although Greenland is the size of Europe, it has only nine conifer
forests like Mr. Bjerges, all of them cultivated. It has only 51
farms. (They are all sheep farms, although one man is trying to raise
cattle. He has 22 cows.) Except for potatoes, the only vegetables most
Greenlanders ever eat to the extent that they eat vegetables at all
are imported, mostly from Denmark.
But now that the climate is
warming, it is not just old trees that are growing. A Greenlandic
supermarket is stocking locally grown cauliflower, broccoli and cabbage
this year for the first time. Eight sheep farmers are growing potatoes
commercially. Five more are experimenting with vegetables. And Kenneth
Hoeg, the regions chief agriculture adviser, says he does not see why
southern Greenland cannot eventually be full of vegetable farms and
viable forests.
If it gets warmer, a large part of southern
Greenland could be like this, Mr. Hoeg said, walking through
Qanasiassat, a boat ride from Narsarsuaq, a tiny southern community
notable mostly for having an international airport. Two and a half
acres near here of imported pines, spruces, larches and firs are
plunked in the midst of the scrubby, rocky hillside next to the fjord,
as startling as a mirage. If it gets a little warmer, you could talk
about a productive forest with enough wood for logs, Mr. Hoeg said.
Farther
north, Greenlands great ice sheet, a vast white landscape of 0.695
million square miles covering 80 percent of the islands land mass, is
melting rapidly, alarmingly, with repercussions not only for the
traditional way of life on an island of 56,000 people, but also for the
rest of the world. The more the ice melts, the higher sea levels will
eventually rise.
But here in the subarctic south a land of
icy water, forbidding mountains, rocky hills, shallow soil, sudden
winds and isolated communities slipped in, almost apologetically, along
a network of glacier-studded fjords, the changes are more subtle and
carry more promise.
The limiting factor for human survival
here is temperature, and theres a lot of benefits with a warmer
climate, Mr. Hoeg said. We are on the frontier of agriculture, and
even a few degrees can make a difference.
Greenland, a
self-governing province of Denmark, was settled by the pugilistic
Viking Erik the Red in the 10th century, after his murderous ways got
him ejected from Iceland. Legend has it that he called it Greenland as
a way to entice others to join him, and, in fact, it was.
It was
relatively green then, with forests and fertile soil, and the Vikings
grew crops and raised sheep for hundreds of years. But temperatures
dropped precipitously in the so-called Little Ice Age, which began in
the 16th century, the Norse settlers died out. and agriculture was not
longer possible.
Climate is a delicate matter in a place like
this. A degree more of warmth here, an inch less of rain there; these
can have serious repercussions for a farmer eking out a living raising
sheep on the harsh terrain. But while temperatures here in the south
dipped in the 1980s, they have risen steadily since. Between 1961 and
1990, the average annual temperature was 33 degrees; in 2006, it was 35
degrees, according to the Danish Meteorological
Winter is coming later and leaving earlier. That means there is
more time to leave sheep in the mountains, more time to grow crops,
more time to work outdoors, more opportunity to travel by boat, since
the fjords freeze later and less frequently.
Cod, which
prefer warmer waters, have started appearing off the coast again. Ewes
are having fatter lambs, and more of them every season. The growing
season, such as it is, now lasts roughly from mid-May through
mid-September, about three weeks longer than a decade ago. Now
spring is coming earlier, and you can have earlier lambings and longer
grazing periods, said Eenoraq Frederiksen, 68, a sheep farmer whose
farm, near Qassiarsuk, is accessible by a harrowing drive across a
rudimentary road plowed in the hillside. Young people now have a lot
of possibilities for the future.
Scattered reports of
successful strawberry crops in the odd home garden are heard, although
it helps to keep them in perspective. As Hans Gronborg, a Danish
horticulturist, put it, laughing, They know whether theyve harvested
20 strawberries, or 25. He works at Upernaviarsuk, an agricultural
research station near Qaqortoq, one of the largest towns in the south.
Like everywhere else, it is accessible only by boat or helicopter. As a
rule, no roads connect Greenland towns.
As if visiting the
zoo, people come from all over to gape at the varieties of grass in the
fields and to see what is growing here, among other things, 15 strains
of potatoes and, for the first time, annual flowers: chrysanthemums,
violas, petunias.
Mr. Gronborg plucked a head of cauliflower
from its nest of leaves. It had a rich, almost sweet flavor the
result, he explained, of slow growth, long summer days of 20 hours of
light, and wide swings in temperature from day to night. Its small,
but it means you get all that flavor concentrated in one-third the size
of a regular cauliflower, he said.
Mr. Gronborg loaded a dozen
trays of vegetables into a motorboat to take them to the supermarket in
Qaqortoq. Soon, he said, restaurants will serve Greenlandic vegetables
beside Greenlandic lamb and reindeer.
Greenlanders are hunters,
and it takes time to change their way of living and being, he said.
But I am confident that things can grow in south Greenland.