The Washington Post story “Imaging shows drought’s effects on California trees” that was published in the Dec. 29 Columbian is useful information as far as it goes, but here’s the “rest of the story.”
Most definitely, drought directly affects trees, thus making mass numbers of such a greater risk for wildfire as their needles and leaves begin to thin out and they gradually die. But, what the story does not explain is the other half of the equation; that being, with the loss of water comes a decrease in sap flow, which is what the trees use to repel boring insects, such as the pine bark beetle and others. Under normal rainfall conditions and colder winter temperatures, a normal insect infestation is held “in check” at endemic levels, but with less water coupled with drier than normal winters, such infestations elevate to epidemic levels, like we now have throughout 13 Western states, where millions of acres of forested lands become dead zones waiting for the eventual catastrophic wildfire that will consume all habitat and negatively affect water quality in every stream.
So, it is the combined impact of less water and epidemic infestations that are now presenting us with megacatastrophic wildfire potential, costing upwards of a billion dollars to contain each and every year, and little is being done to counter this condition through good forest management on all lands.
