Save the California Fog
A new study shows declining levels of fog on the California coast, a development which means trouble for the giant redwoods. Brad Plumer explains:
[R]edwoods rely very heavily on moist air hitting their needles and dripping down onto the ground; this fog drip provides anywhere from 25 percent to 40 percent of the trees’ water. Indeed, that’s a big reason why redwood roots are relatively shallow but often extend out over one hundred feet from the base—so they can collect the dripping fog.
Now, the reason for the fog decline seems to be that the temperature difference between the coast and the California interior has been narrowing. The researchers stressed that they’re not certain whether the vanishing fog is part of a natural cycle or due to broader climate-change trends—to do that, they’ll have to look more closely at redwood tree-ring data to reconstruct the region’s climate over the past century, as well as analyze fog patterns elsewhere in the world. This study’s mainly notable because the redwoods have enough problems as is (only about 5 percent of the original forests survive today), and they certainly don’t need a dry spell on top of it all.
“Only 5 percent of primary growth redwood forests survive today; the rest has been logged or developed,” reports Jeremy Hance. “According to Save the Redwoods League, eighteen percent of the remaining coastal redwood forests are protected, the rest lies either on private land or in natural forests, which could be logged in the future. Save the Redwoods League, along with Berkeley Atmospheric Sciences, funded the study.”
The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Via Brad Plumer.
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