Drought stress, dying forests, and climate change

hill slopes covered in sick forest
Credit:
Daniel Griffin
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Several researchers associated with the Laboratory of Tree Ring Research are co-authors on a paper to appear in Nature Climate Change. Their work disentangles the climatic conditions that have killed or sickened unusually large numbers of trees in forests during past centuries, patterns of drought stress in particular.  With the patterns of change predicted by climate models, this suggests serious impacts on forests across entire landscapes in the American Southwest over the coming decades.