A type of tree that thrives in soggy soil from Alaska to Northern California and is valued for its commercial and cultural uses could become a noticeable casualty of climate warming over the next 50 years, an independent study has concluded.
Yellow cedar, named for its distinctive yellow wood, already is under consideration for federal listing as a threatened or endangered species.
The study published in the journal Global Change Biology found death due to root freeze on 7 percent of the tree's range, including areas where it's most prolific.
By 2070, winter temperatures in about 50 percent of the areas now suitable for yellow cedar are expected to rise and transition from snow to more rain, according to the study.
Yellow cedar began to decline in about 1880, according to the U.S. Forest Service, and its vulnerability is viewed as one of the best-documented examples of climate change's effect on a forest tree.
The trees are in the cypress family and are not true cedars, which are part of the pine family. They have grown to 200 feet and can live more than 1,200 years. The slow-growing trees historically found a niche near bogs. Those wetlands provided openings in the forest canopy but poor soil rejected by other trees.
"Elsewhere, it (yellow cedar) generally gets out-competed by spruce, which grows faster, or hemlock, which can grow in lower light conditions," Buma said. The study by Alaska, Washington, California and British Columbia researchers documented the magnitude and location of yellow cedar mortality in Canada and the United States.
The effect of climate change on yellow cedar has led to research on other shallow-rooted trees that could be vulnerable, such as sugar maple and yellow birch, said Paul Schaberg, a Forest Service research plant physiologist from Burlington, Vermont. No climate change effects on U.S. trees have been as well-documented as research on yellow cedar, he said. "Projections are that other species could be negatively impacted, but other species, at least in some places, could be positively impacted," he said.
