From AP via The Salt Lake Tribune:
Other researchers compared the current drought and rising temperatures to a similar episode 13,000 years ago. Mountain forests died off or were wiped out by fire, to be replaced by woodlands, grasslands and desert scrub that had been prevalent at lower elevations or farther south.
“Yet another spate of disturbance-driven plant migrations may be looming in the West,” the researchers reported.
Scientists still don’t know how much climate stress forests can withstand before massive die-back kicks in. Without that knowledge, researchers can’t begin to realistically predict how much of the West’s forests will die, nor gauge the resulting effects on the environment or society.
The effects of drought are compounded by the ravages of tree-eating beetles that are killing entire forests from Alaska to Arizona. Not only may a lack of water weaken trees, but warmer temperatures may help the bugs survive and multiply into what Jesse Logan of the U.S. Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station called widespread and intense outbreaks.
Around Santa Fe the loss of piñons is already more than 60% and it’s not a pretty picture.