New Maps Show Spread and Impact of Drought On California Forests (latimes.com)

An anonymous reader writes: According to a new study 58 million trees are dead or dying due to the California drought and hundreds of millions could die if the conditions persist. The LA Times reports: "The researchers used an airplane, high-tech remote sensing technology and satellite imagery to produce the first maps that show how much water the state's trees have lost. Virtually every forest has been affected in some way, said study leader Greg Asner, an ecologist at the Carnegie Institution for Science at Stanford University. Asner said he was struck by the 'sheer degree of loss and mortality' in Southern California forests as he flew over the depleted trees."

Comments

Trees in desert die?

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG, trees in a desert are going to die?

Re:Trees in desert die?

[phantomfive]

OMG, trees in a desert are going to die?

Most of California isn't a desert, and most of the desert parts of California don't have trees (because, you know, it's a desert).

Re:Build the Yellowstone pipeline

[MightyMartian]

The days when California could rely on taking other jurisdictions' water are long long gone. It was pretty much an undeclared war when Southern California began redirecting every significant source of fresh water its way eight decades ago, but this time around I think it would get even more violent. California's agriculture industry has been on an unsustainable path for the last hundred years.

Gobbling up natural aquifers that took millions of years to form to grow fucking almonds. I can't imagine a surer sign of the sheer stupidity of humanity than that.