This story was originally Appeared in Guardian is part of climate desk collaboration.
Scientists have found a record number of dead fir trees in Oregon. It’s a harbinger of how drought and the climate crisis are ravaging the American West.
A recent aerial survey found that more than one million acres of forest contain trees that have succumbed to stressors exacerbated by years of drought. Images released by the U.S. Forest Service show Oregon’s lush green expanses dotted with ominous red bands.
“It’s amazing,” said Daniel Depinte, the Forest Service’s aerial survey program manager who led the agency’s Pacific Northwest region aerial survey, noting that this year saw the highest ever fir mortality in the region. pointed out that it was seen These evergreen conifers are less able to survive drought conditions than other trees that line the landscape.
He and his colleagues scanned the slope several times from an airplane between June and October, documenting the devastation details on a digital map. Meanwhile, it’s revealed that this year will be unlike anything he’s seen before. The data, first reported by Columbia Insight, an environmental journalism nonprofit, is still being finalized, but dead trees have been found in his 1.1 million-acre area of Oregon forests. Scientists call it “Pharmageddon”.
“This size is crazy big,” DePinte said. “Many people think climate change is only affecting ice caps and low-lying islands, but it’s actually affecting our backyards,” he said. “If this drought continues with climate change and we continue to ignore what nature has to offer us around the world, it doesn’t bode well at all.”
Ongoing drought coupled with recent extreme heat has left vulnerable trees like fir struggling to adapt. The loss of these trees indicates that forests may already be beginning to change.
“It will be another forest with a different feel, and it will happen across the landscape as nature dictates,” Depinte said. Over time, fir trees will be eliminated from those areas.”
Scientists had expected to see signs of stress in the forests, but the sudden spike in mortality was alarming. Prior to this year, the largest area of recorded deadwood in Oregon was in 1952, when deadwood was found on about 550,000 acres.
“It’s not surprising that this is happening, but it’s worrying to see such a peak within a year.” The underlying conditions that caused the spikes of high temperatures and record rainfall records had compounded impacts on forests due to their timing, duration and frequency.
“Hot droughts are a double whammy for trees,” she said, explaining that the roots of drought-stressed trees die off, making it difficult for them to recover even when water becomes available. Water deficit harms the vascular tissue of trees, which trees use to take up water, especially during the growing season when rainfall is again abundant.
