SAD Sudden Aspen Decline
I’m Susan Allen welcome to Open Range, It has been a beautiful Fall out west and the perfect way to celebrate it’s glory for me is to be on the back of my little zebra dun AQHA riding through stands of vivid yellow aspen. It simply doesn’t get any better, except that in recent years, like lodge pole pine, aspen has been rapidly dying off throughout many western locations especially in Arizona, New Mexico and Wyoming . When I return, good news, the phenomena of SAD or Sudden Aspen Decline appears to be ending. For aspen lovers like myself it has been disheartening that the most widely distributed species in North America has been declining at an alarming rate since 2004. The tree with a relatively short life span of several generations has been found to be extremely venerable to rapid changes in climate. One reason Scientists who’ve have been working to solve the puzzle of dying Aspens attribute their demise to the severe drought we experienced earlier in this decade. For a tree that thrives in cooler weather and needs water the heat wave took it’s by killing groves of aspen and weakening remaining stands. James Worrall a forest pathologist for the USForest Service believes the tree will still be in peril if long-term climate projections that show great fluctuations prove true . On a positive note if you have to be a tree struggling to survive, far better to be a prolific aspen sending out shoots and suckers than a lodgepole dependant on seed reproduction