How Climate Change Could Wipe Out the Western Forests

An interesting article published online at The Atlantic and reported by Sarah Garland is a staff writer at The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan education-news outlet based at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Some excerpts

"By mid-century, it's hard to see how the current dominant trees are going to be able to continue to grow in these sites. The climate will have changed too much."

   "Like the hurricane season, statistics suggest the burn season is becoming longer and more severe. A recentstudy of fires on U.S. Forest Service land by Climate Central, a nonprofit research group that reports on the impacts of global warming, found "the first wildfires of the year are starting earlier and the last fires of the year are starting later, making typical fire years 75 days longer now than they were 40 years ago." Compared to the 1970s, the number of fires covering more than 10,000 acres has increased sevenfold. At the same time, a study published in the science journal Nature Climate Change in September predicted that by the 2050s, forests will experience the worst droughts in 1,000 years.
   "The result will likely be more fires, but also more beetles, and more trees that just can't stand the heat. Soon, the landscape of the American West may be unrecognizable. In some cases, trees will regrow, although probably in sparser patches. Some may be replaced by different species. But especially in drier, hotter areas like New Mexico and Arizona, the forests are on course to disappear altogether."

link http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/01/how-climate-change-could-wipe-out-the-western-forests/267457/