forests are dying
January 23, 2009 by cshells58
Filed under climate change
The death rate of the most stable and resilient forests in western North America has doubled during the past few decades as the climate has warmed, according to The Daily Climate.
The study focused its research on Western states and was comprised of data from 11 scientists. The conclusion: Western forests are becoming more susceptible to wildfire, disease and invaders such as bark beetles. Average tree size is shrinking; creatures dependent on large, old-growth trees will increasingly find themselves out of a home.
And as conditions get worse, the trees ability to trap CO2 will get less and less, making them carbon sources instead of carbon sinks.
The study started in 1955 and track growth rates and mortality until the present. The data showed that while death rates are increasing, birth rates are decreasing. It also concluded that rising temperatures are the sole cause.
Unfortunately, this becomes a double edged sword: as more CO2 (and other greenhouse gases) are put into the air, the temperatures rise. As the temperature rises, more trees are susceptible to death making them unlikely to absorb more CO2. As they stop absorbing CO2, more is released into the air and the cycle starts all over again.
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Lottie on Mon, 9th Feb 2009 12:42 pm
Have you ever stopped to think that the reason forests are declining and dying because they are not being cared for by the very humans who say they are dedicated to preserving the forests? Prior to human existence there were wildfires to clear old growth and dead growth, due to the vast increase in human population and outgrowth of human living areas, these wildfires are put out before they can be effective. In the 1950′s when these forests were beginning to be tracked, the lumber industry was still in its heyday, controlling out of control growth and culling diseased trees and forests, Since then, due to poor management, “environmentalists” have reversed a lot of the damage that the lumber industry wrought but they have also reversed the process of selective harvesting of trees, eliminating the week and the underbrush and allowing trees to grow up big and strong, also eliminating the need for overwhelming wildfires. When a happy medium is reached again and the “environmentalists” realize that their way of doing things is not the ONLY way of doing things, and that with the expansion of human existence, mother nature needs a hand, then we will reach a truce and have a healthy, happy forest again.