Debilitating drought, insect infestations and wildfires all driven by climate change are rapidly killing off trees in Rocky Mountain forests, conservationists have said in a new report.
The next half-century will be crucial for trees including the aspen in Colorado, which could diminish by 45 percent in the next 45 years under these conditions, USA TODAY reported.
"So far, we have had relatively modest climate changes, but they have already jolted our forests," said Stephen Saunders, report co-author and president of Rocky Mountain Climate Organization, as quoted by USA TODAY. "If we continue changing the climate, we may bring about much more fundamental disruption of these treasured national landscapes."
The report included projections from the U.S. Forest Service, which predicts that a continued rise in greenhouse gases will have devastating effects on the area's trees. By 2060, lodgepole pine trees in the Rocky Mountains could decline by as much as 90 percent; ponderosa pine may decline about 80 percent; Engelmann spruce by about 66 percent; and Douglas fir by about 58 percent.
In the past 15 years, "tens of millions" of trees have been lost in connection with the effects of a warming climate, according to the report from the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization.
Rising temperatures are altering the patterns of winter snowmelt along with encouraging pest infestations, the Missoulian reported.
"What we're seeing is unprecedented," University of Montana entomology professor Diana Six, who participated in the report, said of a jump in mountain pine bark beetle numbers.
"We've had bark beetle outbreaks in the past, but these are different, and they're directly attributed to increases in temperature and drought," Six told the Missoulian. The current outbreak is 10 times bigger than any outbreak recorded in the past. That practically screams something is really different and very, very wrong."
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