When Sam Funk walks his family’s farm near Holcomb, he sees golden fields of wheat, sorghum and hay and green stretches of alfalfa. What the KU senior doesn’t see is corn, the second-most common crop grown in Kansas. He said his family quit growing it because it cost too much to water and they could no longer profit from it.

Birdwatcher and KU assistant professor Philip Wedge normally hears birdcalls of local birds like the American robin and house sparrow, but this year he heard the call of the Northern Saw-whet Owl, which doesn’t usually call outside its breeding range in Canada.

Floyd Ott grows apples, nectarines, apricots, pears, peaches, plums and cherries on his 25-acre orchard south of Eudora, but last April a harsh freeze killed his fruit buds and cost him his entire crop.

Scientists widely accept that greenhouse gases are changing the climate, and Kansans like Funk, Wedge and Ott are already seeing some of the effects of higher temperatures and less water. The shrinking water supply will make it harder to grow corn. Disappearing surface water will make it harder for trees like sugar maples and bur oaks to survive, and birds like the red-headed woodpecker that rely on them may also disappear. The changes will make seasons unpredictable, disrupting the natural life cycles of honeybees and the flowers and fruits they pollinate. Each change will make life more difficult for humans, raising the prices of food and eliminating the state’s biodiversity.

A CHANGING CLIMATE

Johannes Feddema, professor of geography, said Kansas was expected to get almost one degree Fahrenheit warmer per decade, which by 2100 could mean a nine-degree increase. In 2000, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported the average May temperature in Lawrence was 66 degrees, but the predicted warming would raise it to 75 degrees by 2100.

Feddema said rain would come less often but in more violent bursts, which wouldn’t allow the ground to absorb as much moisture and could cause flooding.

Western Kansas would especially be affected by this change, increasing water need six inches by the year 2100. Garden City, which is about 10 miles from Funk’s family farm, experiences an average rainfall of 20 inches, and increased temperatures would mean the environment would need 26 inches to stay the same in the year 2100. Feddema said rainfall in Kansas was hard to predict because it was between different patterns in the environment.

Donald Worster, professor of environmental history, said the climate change Kansas was experiencing now was similar to what happened during the Dust Bowl in the 1930s.

Worster said in the ’30s farmers plowed under native plants, which left the ground exposed to strong winds and dust storms. He said many people migrated out of the state to find more jobs, and some towns in western Kansas never recovered from the population drain.

“Now we’re facing what is the worst period of Kansas history,” Worster said. “It’s not a matter of belief. It’s a matter of scientific research.”

Worster said some food production would move north toward Canada as surface water disappeared in the west and water for irrigation was depleted. He said some land could go out of production within 20 years.

Worster said these predictions matter because Kansas would not come out of the drought period as it did from the Dust Bowl. The land would stay dry and hot for a long time.

Sam Funk’s farm, which his family has owned for four generations, is right in the middle of the area the Dust Bowl hit. He said his family was very conscious about saving water and growing mostly dry land crops, which don’t need to be watered. He said his family was willing to adjust to the changing climate to continue to stay in the farming business.

CROPS

Chuck Rice, professor of soil microbiology at Kansas State University, said warming would make farming more expensive and change the crops farmers grow.

Rice said the changing climate led to predictions of more thunderstorms and hail, which could ruin whole harvests. He said milder winters could also allow pests to survive, which would increase the cost of production with more expensive pesticides.

According to the National Agriculture Statistics Service, wheat is the largest cash crop in Kansas, valued at $1.3 billion in 2006. With higher nighttime temperatures, some wheat would not be able to heal from extreme heat during the day and may die, he said.

“You’ll see more cost, greater risk and more uncertainty in food production,” Rice said.

He said water was disappearing from the Ogallala Aquifer, which supplies water for irrigation to western Kansas and seven other states, and that wells would become more expensive each foot deeper they must be dug to reach the water.

Rice said that if farmers couldn’t afford to dig deeper wells, some of their land might go back to non-irrigated crops, like wheat, grain sorghum and even natural grasses. The loss of crop land to grass might increase prices of basics foods like bread and pasta.

Corn, the second-most revenue producing crop in Kansas, brought in $1.1 billion in 2006. Since corn is used to feed livestock and also to produce ethanol, higher corn prices means hamburgers, steak and ethanol-based fuel would become more expensive. Corn cannot grow in much of Kansas without being irrigated, and Rice said farmers, like Sam Funk’s family, may not want to pay the costs of digging deeper wells.

Funk said his family members already dug their wells 100 feet deeper than they used to and get only half the water. He predicted other farmers would soon give up corn, as his family did, because changing growing seasons might require even more water.

“Nebraska won’t be the Cornhuskers anymore,” Funk said. “It will be the South Dakota Cornhuskers.”

Rice said some crops could deal with the increasing temperatures, such as sorghum, a grain that can feed animals and also be made into gluten-free flour. With temperatures warming in Kansas, could the Kansas Jayhawks become the Kansas Sooners?

PLANTS

Sharon Billings, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, said even a slight change in water availability would make it difficult for some hardwood trees to grow in Kansas.

She said Lawrence was on the western edge of the Eastern Deciduous Forest, so many trees already won’t grow west of the area. The sugar maple, which inspires the Maple Leaf Festival in Baldwin City with its flaming orange colors, grows only on high-quality land with lots of moisture and good soil. They grow more readily north and east of Kansas, and Billings said even a slight change in the amount of rain would make them unable to grow.

She said that many trees in western Kansas already grew only near creeks and reservoirs. She said these trees, like the bur oak, would die out if the water disappeared. Billings said it was hard for trees to adapt to warmer weather.

“It’s not like trees can just pick up and walk north,” she said.

Billings said if the oaks started to die, animals that depend on the trees’ acorns would suffer, such as turkeys, deer and squirrels.

Fruit trees, like the ones on Ott’s farm, are introduced species which farmers must water because they don’t naturally grow in Kansas. Billings said the fruit buds had a better chance of freezing because the seasons were so unpredictable.

“The trees are being lured into thinking it’s OK to flower earlier,” she said.

Last April, a harsh freeze caught Ott by surprise. Trees budded early in a mild March then temperatures dropped below freezing at night during the first weeks of April. The thaw and freeze also resulted in poor crop conditions for 41 percent of the state’s winter wheat.

Ott said he lost at least $9,000 worth of fruit sales and his loyal customers at the Lawrence Farmers’ Market were unable to buy his usual bounty of homegrown apples, peaches, apricots, nectarines, cherries and plums.

Craig Freeman, curator in charge of botany at the Natural History Museum, said that when populations of plants like snapdragons lost one year of producing seeds, a whole generation of plants was lost and there was a chance the whole population eventually would decline.

INSECTS

Orley “Chip” Taylor, professor of insect ecology, said warmer winters were a big problem for bees because there was less snow cover and predators could find the wintering bees more easily. He said a warmer winter would also keep the bees’ metabolic rates high and they wouldn’t have enough food or energy to live though the entire winter.

Taylor said virtually all insects were dependent on plants and vice versa. He said 90 Kansas crops were dependent on honeybees for pollination, including almonds, plums, apples, cherries, pears and various berries. When bees disappear, the efficiency of producing these products goes down and their prices go up.

Taylor said bees and other insects had a difficult time adjusting to unpredictable seasons. He said that in Lawrence, plants were usually at full bloom on April 14. Last year, that day was April 2, a full 12 days early. This year, flowers reached full bloom yesterday, seven days later than the norm. Normally, the bloom days vary only by three or four days.

If plants flower early but bees don’t emerge, the bees miss the prime time to collect pollen and nectar and some starve. If the season starts early but then an extreme freeze hits, the vegetation freezes and there is no pollen or nectar because blooms die, Taylor said.

Richard Bean, owner of Blossom Trail Bee Ranch, raises about 60 colonies of bees for honey to sell at the Lawrence Farmers’ Market. He said last year, when the freeze killed many fruit buds, his bees weren’t able to collect nectar for more than a month and had already gone through their winter stores of food.

“They really struggled,” Bean said. “They had more mouths to feed.”

He said the queen bee slowed down laying her eggs when there was less food, which was the opposite of what he needed for honey production.

Chip Taylor said many yellowjackets, bumblebees and paper wasps didn’t survive the late freeze last year and that their numbers were still small.

He said that when the insects die, they can’t pollinate the plants and the plants then can’t reproduce or bear fruit, also affecting other insects that rely on that food.

FISH

Keith Gido, associate professor of biology at Kansas State University, said drier streams and rivers were eliminating some species of fish, although scientists didn’t know yet how fish will react to higher water temperatures.

Gido said irrigation in western Kansas caused streams to dry up and the Arkansas River also had considerably less water. The Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks listed the spotted sucker, which lives in the Arkansas River, as one species already in need of conservation. Gido said species like the plains minnow, the Arkansas River Shiner and the green sunfish were disappearing. He said droughts were the biggest problem for fish.

“There’s not much fish can do when it gets completely dry,” Gido said.

He said stream fish couldn’t move into lakes because they weren’t adapted to the still water of a lake.

Gido said that stream fish spawn and their eggs wash downstream to develop. Long stretches of moving water are necessary for the eggs because the constant current makes it harder for predators to eat them.

He said when stream species’ populations wane, it upset the stream’s whole ecosystem. The plains minnow is an herbivore and eats algae. He said the amount of algae played a strong role in the stream’s ability to retain nutrients, so the fish’s disappearance could upset the health of the stream and its surroundings.

Gido said fish had different ideal temperatures and scientists don’t really know how fish will react to warmer weather. He said most streams in Kansas flowed west to east, which made it more difficult for fish to escape warming weather by heading north like other animals do.

REPTILES AND AMPHIBIANS

Linda Trueb, curator in charge of herpetology at the Natural History Museum, said reptiles were tough and independent from their environment. They are more likely to adapt to warmer temperatures, but that drought would affect amphibians.

She said the biggest problem reptiles faced was that they were cold-blooded and couldn’t regulate their own body temperatures. However, warmer temperatures make reptiles more active, so they would be more aware of what is going on around them.

Trueb said most amphibians in Kansas were tolerant of high heat, especially native toads, but that many other amphibians that need moisture would go underground and wait for more water to come. She said the amphibians that would be most affected would be those already in small numbers across the state, like the crawfish frog, which lives in the Haskell-Baker Wetlands in south Lawrence. The Eastern Narrowmouth Toad lives in the southeastern corner of the state on the Ozark Plateau, most of which is in Missouri.

BIRDS

Bill Busby, a scientist at the Kansas Biological Survey, said migratory birds were arriving in the state earlier than normal and some of their ranges were expanding.

When Philip Wedge, an assistant professor of English, heard the Northern Saw-whet Owl in his yard a block away from campus, the bird was thousands of miles away from where it normally whistled its mating call. Last winter Wedge helped with the annual Audubon Society’s Christmas Bird Count in Lawrence, and he helped count 15 yellow-rumped warblers. These birds previously didn’t winter in Lawrence because it was too cold, but milder winters had allowed the warblers to stay in the state.

Busby said the big problems for birds were synchronizing their food supply and the changing weather. If the birds miss when plants flower or insects come out, they miss their food source. Many birds use weather and natural events to time their lives. The whip-poor-will broods when the moon was full, and Busby said many birds had a reproductive cycle tied to changes in weather.

If certain trees disappear because of weather, like the bur oak, Busby said birds that rely on them for food and shelter would become scarce. The red-headed woodpecker feeds on the oak tree’s acorns during winter, so when the tree produces less, there is less food for the birds.

He said roadrunners once associated with deserts used to be scarce in Kansas because of harsh winters, but people were now spotting them as far north as Wichita because the winters were milder.

The Canada goose is also appearing in greater numbers in the state and staying for milder winters and cornfields.

MAMMALS

Robert Timm, curator in charge of mammalogy at the Natural History Museum, said mammals might not be affected as much by climate change as they would be from humans destroying their habitats. If mammals are affected, it may happen to them last because they are at the top of the food chain and eat birds, insects and plants.

Since humans are at the apex of the food chain, the effects of climate change may affect people later but greater. Whether it is the crops we grow, the birds we feed and watch, the trees that shade us in the summer and entertain us in the fall, the fish we catch or the bees that pollinate our crops and share their honey with us, can Kansans look to Oklahoma for a preview of the future of the hotter, drier environment of Kansas?

­— Edited by Jeff Briscoe