These maps show how alarmingly fast California is losing trees as climate warms
California’s forests are in rapid retreat, which bodes ill for the future. Using satellite data, researchers from the University of California, Irvine found that trees in the state’s mountainous regions declined 6.7 percent between 1985 and 2021 thanks to wildfires, drought and other climate-related sources of stress. The drop was even steeper in the Sierra Nevada, which suffered 8.8% tree cover loss during that time period. … ”We’re a little worried that relying on these forests as a means for protecting water quality or erosion protection or carbon sequestration (is) becoming more and more at risk as a result of these increasing fires,” said Jon Wang, a postdoctoral researcher at UC Irvine and lead author of the study.