Photo Visalia Times-Delta
In 2014 it
was less than 4 million, last July it had risen to 66 million it now stands at
more than 100 million.
California
has more than 100 million dead trees in its forests, and there is no consensus
on their impact on the environment or how to deal with them and it has become a
major concern. “The scope and magnitude of the problem is seemingly
overwhelming,” said Janet Upton, a deputy director for the California
Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE).
In
November, the U.S. Forest Service said an aerial survey revealed that 36
million additional trees had died in the midst of a multi-year drought,
bringing the total since 2010 to more than 102 million.
The tree
deaths have been concentrated in the southern and central Sierra Nevada, but
experts warn of increasing deaths in forests all the way up to the Oregon
border.
The
phenomenon raises questions on what causes wildfires as well as the role that
wildfires play in the greater ecological scheme. Officials are also grappling
with logistical, financial and public safety risks associated with the removal
of the trees.
According
to AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Brett Anderson, five years of drought in
California has been the primary cause of the tree deaths. While a series of
potent storms in early 2017 has alleviated the dry conditions, it has not been
enough to undo the damage to the trees or to prevent the die-off from
continuing.
“When you
have severe droughts, trees are going to die,” said Adrian Das, an ecologist
with the U.S. Geological Survey.
Ironically
the California drought could be over!
After a month of huge blizzards and “atmospheric river” storms, the
Sierra Nevada snowpack, a source of one third of California’s drinking water is
now at 177% of the historic average, the biggest in more than two decades.
We have to
go all the way back to February 1st 1995 to equal the amount of snowpack now
accumulated in the mountains.
It’s a breath-taking
turn around after five years of punishing drought.
On Feb. 1,
2014, for example, the state-wide Sierra snowpack was just 9 percent of the
historic average, the lowest ever measured at that time of year and even worse
than the dismal 1976-77 drought, when it hovered in the mid-20s.
More than
25ft of snow has fallen with a new round of storms set to roll into California
bringing a further 3ft of snow by the weekend.
State
officials though are reluctant to cancel the state’s emergency drought
declaration from January 2014 until the full winter season is over.
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2 comments:
We lived 30-50 mile from there, depending on location of the tress. We would go 4-5 times a week, and what the trees looked like was strange. It didn't look like drought killed them as it was a tree just every once in a while, not next to each other but spaced like someone had maybe sprayed and killed them off selectively to prove the global warming/drought idea. do not believe what you hear and only half of waht you see.
Thanks Green Sleeves, some are dying from a beetle disease
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