
Trees That Survived California Drought May Hold Clue to Climate Resilience - pseudolus
https://www.npr.org/2019/10/16/766200948/trees-that-survived-california-drought-may-hold-clue-to-climate-resilience
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RosanaAnaDana
Neat. I wonder what they are doing to survey for remnant populations and how
they control for local conditions.

Total aside, but I'm working on a project doing disease mapping for an agency
in California. Its like watching a train wreck in real time. Human influence
and climate change* are rewriting the macroflora of California in real time.
Get your pictures now boys and girls because your state _will not be the same_
in 10 years.

Whew. California is pretty much toast.

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throwaway1777
Genuinely curious, in what ways will it not be the same?

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RosanaAnaDana
The biggest contributing factor (imo) is disease. I think the general public
lack an understanding for the subtleties of _how_ and _why_ climate change,
even a touch of it, is such a big deal for plant communities. Couple this with
anthropocentric influence and you've got a bit of a dogs breakfast.

I'm not a beetle expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm going to
use the case of the golden spotted oak borer to demonstrate why these factors
combine to become far more impactful than either would be singularly. The
golden spotted oak borer (GSOB) is a oak specific beetle disease that is
native to north america (northern extent of its native range is apparently
Arizona, majority in n. Mexico). In its native range, nights are very cold,
summers are very hot. This results in enough generational dieback that it does
not become a devastating disease.

Some time in the early 2000's it was introduced to eastern San Diego county.
The generally accepted assumption here is that it was moved on firewood from
Arizona. The mountains in San Diego have seen a massive decrease in the
overall coldness of winters, and amount of winter snow. Likewise, oak is a
very popular wood for home heating, and in eastern San Diego county, many
people rely on burning wood for winter heating.

So lets spell this out: more mild winters: less generational dieback of the
disease; more disease: more dead trees; more dead trees: more 'free fire
wood'; more free firewood: more people moving around the disease.

The winters aren't cool enough (any longer; this could be argued about) in San
Diego county to knock back the disease. People grab up firewood and move it
around. The result is that the GSOB disease state has been moving like wild
fire throughout the state. Some early estimates of habitat suitability
indicate that its northern extent is likely some where north of Humboldt
county/ south of Oregon.

Now, couple this with sudden oak death (moving south to north), fusarium
dieback (north to south), and you've got a relative shitnado coming at the
California oak woodlands. What happens when GSOB gets into some sudden oak
death infected trees? Or if it becomes a vector for fusarium dieback? Humans
have moved this disease into places that don't get cold enough or hot enough
to kill it. Likewise, in areas where it _may_ have gotten cold enough to knock
back the disease, it just doesn't get as cold any more (a few degrees colder,
a couple times during the winter would do the trick).

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olivermarks
Do you have a link to the project?

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RosanaAnaDana
[https://ucanr.edu/sites/gsobinfo/](https://ucanr.edu/sites/gsobinfo/)

The above is a good resource for information regarding the disease. The work
I'm doing is related to this, and we aren't making any of our results public
at the moment.

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olivermarks
thank you

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tito
Get Ginkgo Bioworks on the case! They've been curious about tree
cloning...this is the chance.

[https://www.ginkgobioworks.com/2010/04/13/ginkgo-tree-
falls-...](https://www.ginkgobioworks.com/2010/04/13/ginkgo-tree-falls-in-
japan/)

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dpflan
"Inside a greenhouse at her Tahoe City field station, Maloney shows off a sea
of young green trees in their own containers. These 10,000 sugar pine
seedlings grew from seeds Maloney and her team collected from 100 of the
surviving sugar pines."

This is interesting; seems like artificial and natural selection combined. It
does _seem_ to solve the current problem, but what would be the implications?
Aren't the dying trees beneficial to the ecosystem in some way (clearly they
are food for the pine beetles, which are food for other animals...)?

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hinkley
A typical problem with invasive species is that their predators don’t also
make the trip. It’s not a given that anything is eating them, micro or macro.

Dead wood left on the forest floor can help improve soil quality and water
retention though, and the decay microbes and invertebrates do have their own
food chain that goes as high as foxes and bears. It’s an old idea we haven’t
practiced much, in part because of misguided fire suppression, and
miscategorizing it as waste, instead of fodder.

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pstuart
The blocker being the contingent that considers the forests as nothing more
than a potential strip-mine, being that said contingent has the reins
currently.

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jwilk
Archived copy without GDPR nag screen:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20191017140046/https://www.npr.o...](https://web.archive.org/web/20191017140046/https://www.npr.org/2019/10/16/766200948/trees-
that-survived-california-drought-may-hold-clue-to-climate-resilience)

