On Feb. 2 the groundhog saw his shadow, and on Wednesday snow returned to NIU. With the holidays mostly behind us – no more peppermint cocoa and gift exchanging – sometimes it’s hard to appreciate winter weather.
We’ve all spent time clutching frozen toes and grumbling about the “insufferable” length of the season. But Illinoisan winters will melt away into a flower-filled spring as early as March, so give pause to your cold weather blues.
Winter has plenty of overlooked love to share.
COLD WEATHER LOVES ECOLOGY
There are countless environmental reasons why we shouldn’t want our winters to end any earlier than they do.
Seasonal snow maintains soil health, serves as a large-scale water reservoir and reflects solar energy – helping regulate the Earth’s temperature.
Many ecological cycles are reliant on cold weather too, as NIU biology professor Jennifer Koop explained.
“There are plenty of organisms that thrive in cold weather, including a lot of our native species, right? So there are plants and insects and animals that are all really well adapted to cold weather, and they count on it as part of their annual cycles,” Koop said. “There are seeds that need to essentially freeze before they can germinate, and there are mammals and birds that have learned to thrive in the winter when they don’t have to compete with as many other organisms for food. So it is a really important time in the annual cycle.”
An active undergraduate research program Koop heads relates to another argument in favor of frigid degrees.
The research focuses on faucet snails, an invasive species of snail – originally native to Europe – that are significantly impacting duck populations and native snail species in the Upper Mississippi River region.
“The faucet snails are also really good at reproducing. So just by sheer volume or numbers, they can out-compete native species,” Koop said. “(But) the effect that they are having that drew our attention to the system in the first place is that they invaded along with a trematode parasite.”
The trematode parasite, a type of fluke that infects faucet snails, has fatal effects on the ducks that eat their hosts.
“We were seeing these huge die-offs of a couple different duck species in the Mississippi River, like tens of thousands of birds. And when they went and did necropsies on the birds, what they found were an infection by these trematode species that hadn’t been recorded in North America until the faucet snail came with them,” Koop said.
To address the problem, researchers investigate how different environments affect the parasite’s transmission cycles – or how and when a parasite moves between hosts, a common strategy for understanding the spread of invasive species.
“One thing that cold weather does is it often disrupts the transmission cycle,” Koop said. “We don’t have ducks hanging out here year round because it’s too cold, so they are flying south, right? So all of a sudden that host species is gone for part of the year, and for some parasites, that’s enough of a disruption that they die out. They can’t persist because their hosts have gone away.”
In this case, the seasonal disruption hasn’t been enough to drive away the trematode parasite, but for the ducks, winter weather still provides a critical break from a very real threat.
And for many other native species, facing other invasive threats, maintaining a cycle of cold and warm weather may be a crucial factor in protecting their habitats.
COLD WEATHER LOVES YOU!
Frolicking too long in the snow and ice will obviously have consequences for your health, but healthy exposure to cold weather can be beneficial for the human body, stimulating mental alertness.
The season’s shorter daylight hours promote more sleep, which college students tend to neglect.
Spring will come sooner rather than later, with its rainfall-scented air and violet-covered pastures.
In the meantime, keep your face toward the winter sun – it provides a special kind of warmth when the rest of you is cold, and embrace what winter weather can offer your soul.
Find a patch of perfectly crunchy ice to prance upon.
Marvel at the crystallized mists you produce with each breath, your body’s magnificent ability to process oxygen creating art.
Look for flurries of animal prints, they’ll tell secret stories you wouldn’t be privy to without the snow: A hop there, a sprint there, a waddle there.
For the planet, for the ducks and the native species they represent, or for your own sense of joy, you can find something to appreciate about this cold. The grass is always greener in summer, but the world sparkles in winter.
