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Is Climate Change Hiding the Decline of Maple Syrup?

from Nature News

The burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil releases carbon dioxide that alters the balance of carbon isotopes naturally found in the environment--an effect that is now being found in food, reveals a US study.

Modern methods for tracking the origins of processed foods use isotopes--atoms of the same element that have different numbers of neutrons. Of the most common naturally occurring isotopes of carbon ... the heavier carbon-13 isotope is rarer.

... As part of an undergraduate project intended to show how isotope analysis works, geochemist William Peck at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, got his students to analyse maple syrup from different parts of the northeastern United States. "Our intent was really just to see if isotope values varied by geography or if anyone was putting in sweeteners," says Peck.