Scientists: Aspen trees in West dying

[Kadie]

Scientists: Aspen trees in West dying
By CHASE SQUIRES, Associated Press Writer
3 minutes ago



DENVER - Something is killing the quaking aspen trees of the Rocky Mountain West. The slender, white-barked trees that paint the hills gold every autumn are dying, some scientists say, leaving bald patches across the Rockies. Experts are scrambling to figure out what's happening.

"As soon as we understand what's going on, then maybe we can do something about it," said Dale Bartos, a Forest Service restoration ecologist based in northern Utah.

Bartos thinks a fungus may be to blame, while others suggest everything from hungry caterpillars to drought to man's interference with the natural cycle of forest fires and even resurgent herds of hungry elk nibbling saplings to death.

snip...
Aspen grow differently than other species. Rather than spreading through seeds, aspens send out shoots, called suckers, from giant, interconnected root systems. Each stand, or "clone" system, can live hundreds of years and some consider them the world's largest living things.

The trees themselves are just an aboveground manifestation of the communal root. A tree may die, but beneath the soil, the stand lives on, the root sends out fresh shoots, and the cycle begins again.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060812/ap_on_sc/dying_aspen_1



ok, this story reminded me of this...


Libby's Letter to Miller: I Miss Your Reporting

snip...
You went into jail in the summer. It is fall now. You will have stories to cover – Iraqi elections and suicide bombers, biological threats and the Iranian nuclear program. Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them. Come back to work – and life. Until then, you will remain in my thoughts and prayers.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/libbys-letter-to-miller_b_8185.html

[Critters2]

1. Well, you know, their leaves turn in clusters

or something.

[KittyWampus]

5. they're connected at the roots?

[sweetheart]

7. populus tremula

The popular's spread through suckers, or long roots like crabgrass, and include
a whole variety of trees, of which i find the aspen to be the most beautiful.

Climate change unfreezes the ecosystem for new bugs and unfrozen old bugs, how
tragic, but someone'll replant them. Some day the land will get a good manager
who will care for her, a beaten and scarred pack horse, needin some lovin'.

[Critters2]

9. Hehehe nt

[stop the bleeding]

2. terrible

but not surprising

the largest living organisms on the planet - tragic

[eleny]

3. May I cross post this in the Colorado forum - or can you?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=142

[Kadie]

4. Sure...

I can post it over there right now.

[eleny]

12. Thanks!

[Canuckistanian]

6. They've always seemed to be a very sensitive species

The last tree to get leaves and the first to shed them in the fall (in our area).

Interesting fact about the root system. Maybe the dead Aspen in the back of my property will see new life.

[Endangered Specie]

8. Trees? Who cares about Trees?... Football is almost on!

:sarcasm:

[eleny]

10. One researcher went to the Rumsfeld school of communication

""It'll be a visible blip, but the reassuring part is that the younger trees are faring better than the older ones. Unless I'm wrong, and it's not drought," Binkley said. "It's the sort of thing that we won't be surprised if we're surprised.""

[malaise]

11. Before or after they spread

Kenron's ashes :D

[bleedingheart]

13. The are absolutely beautiful trees...they shimmer when a breeze

blows through them...