Photo taken in Valyermo, California. Edward Tovmassian / EyeEm / Getty Images
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Two new studies highlight the vulnerability of California forests. Climate change, mainly caused by the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels, has heated the atmosphere faster than conifer forests in the Sierra Nevada mountains can adapt, shifting their ideal elevation 600 feet above where it was nearly a century ago, according to a study published in PNAS Nexus.
That heating has left nearly one-fifth of conifer forests in the Sierra Nevada mountains mismatched to the current climate, including 8% that are “severely” mismatched. This mismatch makes the so-called “zombie…
Read the full article originally published at www.ecowatch.com.