{"id":1444,"date":"2015-05-06T10:35:40","date_gmt":"2015-05-06T17:35:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/?p=1444"},"modified":"2022-08-01T12:45:38","modified_gmt":"2022-08-01T19:45:38","slug":"drought-kills-12-million-trees-in-californias-national-forests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/2015\/05\/06\/drought-kills-12-million-trees-in-californias-national-forests\/","title":{"rendered":"Drought kills 12 million trees in California’s national forests"},"content":{"rendered":"

Millions of trees continue to die in California due to drought and bark beetle invasion<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Source of this article: The Los Angeles Times, May 6, 2015<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Rangers in the San Bernardino National Forest call them \u201cred trees.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Pine<\/a>

Pine tree mortality in the San Bernardino National Forest, south of Idyllwild.<\/p><\/div>\n

Instead of the typical deep green color, large swaths of pine trees now don hues of death, their dehydrated needles turning brown and burnt-red because of the state\u2019s worsening drought.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnlike back East, where you have fall colors, here it\u2019s because the trees are dying,\u201d said John Miller, a spokesman for the San Bernardino National Forest.<\/p>\n

Years of extremely dry conditions are taking a heavy toll on forest lands across California and heightening the fire risk as summer approaches.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe situation is incendiary,\u201d William Patzert, a climatologist for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told The Times recently. \u201cThe national forest is stressed out.\u201d<\/p>\n

A new study by the U.S. Forest Service tried to assess the scope of the problem. Researchers estimated that the drought has killed off at least 12.5 million trees in California\u2019s national forests during the drought.<\/p>\n

\"Scattered<\/a>

Scattered Jeffrey pine tree mortality, foreground, on Laguna Mountain in the Cleveland National Forest, with a recent fire scar in the background. Gray trees are dormant black oak or possibly dead oak.<\/p><\/div>\n

The scientists expect the die-off to continue. \u201cIt is almost certain that millions more trees will die over the course of the upcoming summer as the drought situation continues and becomes ever more long term,\u201d said biologist Jeffrey Moore, acting regional aerial survey program manager for the U.S. Forest Service.<\/p>\n

Moore and other researchers conducted an aerial survey of more than 8.2 million acres of forest last month.<\/p>\n

Using a digital aerial sketch-mapping system, researchers flew in a fixed-wing aircraft about 1,000 feet above ground level and surveyed areas in the Cleveland, San Bernardino, Angeles and Los Padres national forests. Some private lands and Pinnacles National Park in Central California were also surveyed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Researchers also examined the Tehachapi range, Stanislaus, Sierra and Sequoia national forests, as well as Yosemite and Sequoia-Kings national parks.<\/p>\n

Researchers found 999,000 acres of dead trees, Moore said. In the Stanislaus areas, tree deaths have doubled since July.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s pretty rough,\u201d said Moore, adding that a statewide survey is planned later this year. \u201cIt is cause for concern \u2014 but there is not too much to do about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The scarcity of water is not the trees\u2019 only enemy amid the drought.<\/p>\n

Weakened and dehydrated, many of the trees are being finished off by bark beetles \u2014 tiny brown insects that thrive in dry conditions, chewing away at pines and making them brittle.<\/p>\n

\"Mixed<\/a>

Mixed pine tree mortality in the Los Padres National Forest, north of Frazier Park.<\/p><\/div>\n

Officials say they are seeing an uptick in bark beetles amid the drought. In the San Bernardino forest, bark beetle infestations were considered a factor in deadly fires that devoured swaths of mountainside in 2003.<\/p>\n

The trees\u2019 natural defense against the beetles lies in their sticky resin, said Timothy Paine, an entomologist at UC Riverside who has studied the beetles and their environment.<\/p>\n

The water in properly hydrated trees creates pressure internally that pushes the resin out to the tree\u2019s surface, deflecting beetles that don\u2019t want to get caught in it, Paine said. When a tree is dried up, it can\u2019t produce additional resin that protects it from the beetles, making a perfect opportunity for them to colonize, Paine said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you have a drought, you get large numbers of trees that are susceptible,\u201d Paine said. \u201cThe beetles build up their populations.\u201d<\/p>\n

The increasingly brittle trees are part of an increasingly dangerous equation \u2014 including a dwindling snowpack and warmer temperatures \u2014 that is creating extreme fire danger in the state\u2019s forests, according to Patzert.<\/p>\n

Traditionally, by spring, the forest is green and lush after the rainy season. But the drought and warm temperatures have taken their toll. Dead trees, parched chaparral and dried-out grass are building up in the forests, creating potential fuel for fires.<\/p>\n

\"Pine<\/a>

Pine trees in the Monterey Ranger District of the Los Padres National Forest.<\/p><\/div>\n

The dangerous conditions statewide have forced firefighters to augment their staffing because any small fire can explode into a devastating blaze, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.<\/p>\n

In Pinnacles National Park, officials have banned fires about six to eight weeks earlier than usual because of the \u201cvery dry conditions,\u201d said Jan Lemons, a park spokeswoman. There, the gray pines and chaparral are dying, she said.<\/p>\n

Scott Stephens, a fire science professor at UC Berkeley, said fire suppression and harvesting have made forests more dense over the last 100 years. The increased density has made trees more vulnerable as they compete for limited amounts of water, with the weaker trees more susceptible to bark beetle infestations, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the drought continues for another two years or longer, I expect this mortality to move throughout the state,\u201d Stephens said. \u201cForests that once burned frequently with low-moderate intensity fire regimes are the most susceptible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moore, of the Forest Service, said the last time researchers saw so many trees dying was during the great drought of the 1970s. At that time, the National Park Service did not conduct aerial surveys in California, only ground reports, he said.<\/p>\n

An estimated 14 million trees or more died between 1975 and 1979.<\/p>\n

If the drought continues, the number of tree deaths could surpass that era, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe situation,\u201d Moore said, \u201cis pretty severe.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Millions of trees continue to die in California due to drought and bark beetle invasion Source of this article: The Los Angeles Times, May 6, 2015 Rangers in the San Bernardino National Forest call them \u201cred trees.\u201d Instead of the typical deep green color, large swaths of pine trees now […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,24,7,46,32,23,8,53,9,59,57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-california","category-drought","category-environment","category-federal-blm","category-nps","category-fire-hazard","category-global-warming","category-us-forest-service","category-water-shortage","category-wilderness-area","category-wildfire"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1444"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3539,"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1444\/revisions\/3539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}