Climate Change is Already Decimating our Forests

According to the American Museum of Natural History:

In many places, spring comes earlier and fall comes later, meaning fire season is longer. Annual variation in the number of fires is linked to spring and summer temperatures. In the American West, spring and summer temperatures averaged 0.87°C (1.6°F) higher between 1987 and 2003 than in the previous 15 years. That same span saw four times as many wildfires—many at higher elevations.

The wild fires are also getting bigger.

The warming of the climate is melting the mountain snow packs earlier. It is drying the underbrush more directly, and the lack of mountain run offs adds to the problem. The longer fire season is complicated by dryer underbrush during much of that season. Those problems are compounded by a century of misguided fire control policy which allowed deadwood to accumulate in our forests.

Not only do we have more and larger fires, they often burn hotter. Trees that evolved to weather the low intensity fires of the past are being killed by the climate-warming induced, high-intensity fires. Even the soils are being sterilized and depleted. As a result, many of the forests will not return for centuries or ever.

And of course the Carbon sequestered in these forests is being released in the atmosphere, contributing further to global warming.

It has been estimated that half of the forests in the American West may be lost in the next century!

I can not refrain from mentioning that we lost a decade in confronting the problem because the Bush administration denied the scientific evidence that it existed!