Changing the Flow

Winter has always been one of my favorite seasons of the year. The crunchy ground, the snow on the branches, the different shades of gray and the chill that turns your cheeks and nose red. But my favorite activity I love during winter is making maple syrup. I have many warm weather loving friends that call Maple Sugaring Season the start of Spring. I have always thought of it as Winter’s Grand Finale. As someone who has taught how to make maple syrup for almost 20 years, I have witnessed the changes in maple season in the Cincinnati Area. When first starting, maple season had been February into mid-March. For sap to rise and flow from a sugar maple tree you need cold nights below freezing and warm days above freezing. That causes sap to rise and pressure to build for the sap to flow. We are seeing a big shift in winter of when the ideal temperatures are for sap to rise. Maple Producers in the Cincinnati Area are tapping in January. Kentucky is also getting into the maple season and is tapping trees in December. If the change in climate continues, we can face shorter and earlier maple seasons. With Cincinnati being on the southern end, we might face down the road no maple season at all.

Sugar concentrations in the sap are changing. If a summer is hot, sugar storage is reduced. Typically sugar maple sap has a brix of 2.4 sugar. Brix is the measurement we use for the amount of sugar in sap. With the warmer temperatures, we are seeing a decline of 0.1 brix, and this is projected to drop even more each year. While that might not seem dramatic, a decrease in sugar means more sap is needed. With the season ending sooner, the increased need cannot be attained. Maple Folks are facing sap that changes to “buddy” sooner than expected. Buddy sap is sap that is produced once the buds are swelling and ready to emerge. The syrup produced as an off taste compared to the maple syrup, we are accustomed to. When we reach that point, maple season is over. This past winter, we achieved that over President’s Day weekend. In years past, that has been a time of a run of sap coming in. Perfects temperatures of cold below freezing nights and warm above freezing days. 2022, we found that all of gallons of sap collected had already changed to buddy. So, we are currently moving our maple season up into late January. I am sure at some point soon; we will need to start in early January. We need to change the mind set of the public that maple season in the Cincinnati Area is a February/March activity. It is now becoming late December/January and ending in mid-February activity. I am saddened as others in our field are that we may face a season without Maple Sugaring in the not-so-distant future. If we as Earth’s citizens address climate change, will we be able to tell if maple season will go back to its normal range? Only time will tell. So, for now, we adapt and change and hope our precious sugar maple sap will continue to flow.

Written by Olivia Canada, Cincinnati Parks Naturalist