Thank you for this interesting piece! One of my concerns with the term is that it's like calling the desert a "wasteland"--it eventually helps justify extractive practices (mining in the desert, clear cutting forests, etc) because these places are now viewed as "useless." While it's catchy to call these areas "zombie forests," public opinion can have a big impact on public policy.
You're entitled to your opinion, but the science supports the finding that type conversions from forest to non-forest are rapidly increasing, largely as a result of warming/drying climate. I agree that rx fire could have been more than mentioned in NYT piece but almost all reporting presents a biased or incomplete view on what is a multi-faceted issue. If you look at the media reporting across the board over the last ~5 yrs, the primary causative factor for altered fire regimes that is most often ignored or downplayed is not suppression/rx fire, but the impact of past (and in many cases, current) logging that reduces fire resiliency and increases potential for intense fire behavior. Saying there are "too many trees" (often true in terms of smaller stems) without also stating there are too few large/old/fire-resistant trees is an example of incomplete reporting.
Yes I'm very familar with D. Six's work, numerous bark beetle sp are endemic to western conifer forests and have always been outbreaks but the scale and intensity of outbreaks has increased significantly with warming/drying, especially in dry frequent-fire forests that are under the most climate stress -- I didn't write that outbreaks are entirely due to climate, but it is a primary factor. Tree density is also involved, but alone does not account for beetle-related mortality. Those of us doing scicomm need to be highlighting all primary factors involved in forest decline and loss -- climate change, suppression, logging/forest mgmt, loss of cultural burning. They are all important to varying degrees in different forests.
Yes the issue of increasing tree mortality is multi-faceted but ecologically, your narrative here is flawed, on a number of levels. In the West zombie forests are those standing but not regenerating on warm/dry sites and lower elevations, which is primarily due to climate/heat/drought factors -- not the others you propose. The increase in bark beetles as mortality agents is largely tied to elevated tree stress caused by the warming/drying/competition and not an independent variable. Even in places with low/historic levels of tree density, tree mortality is still elevated. Yes there are too many *small* trees on many sites but a huge deficit of large/old trees -- which have always been the cornerstone of these ecosystems and have been lost primarily due to logging. See Davis et al. 2023 that just came out, provides supporting evidence that many dry forests are not regenerating and climate fingerprint is primary driver bc seedlings cannot survive.
Love this - excellent article. The article on grasslands is very important. Have believed for a long time that humans (and other animals) would be better off with grassland ecosystems restored.
Thank you for this interesting piece! One of my concerns with the term is that it's like calling the desert a "wasteland"--it eventually helps justify extractive practices (mining in the desert, clear cutting forests, etc) because these places are now viewed as "useless." While it's catchy to call these areas "zombie forests," public opinion can have a big impact on public policy.
You're entitled to your opinion, but the science supports the finding that type conversions from forest to non-forest are rapidly increasing, largely as a result of warming/drying climate. I agree that rx fire could have been more than mentioned in NYT piece but almost all reporting presents a biased or incomplete view on what is a multi-faceted issue. If you look at the media reporting across the board over the last ~5 yrs, the primary causative factor for altered fire regimes that is most often ignored or downplayed is not suppression/rx fire, but the impact of past (and in many cases, current) logging that reduces fire resiliency and increases potential for intense fire behavior. Saying there are "too many trees" (often true in terms of smaller stems) without also stating there are too few large/old/fire-resistant trees is an example of incomplete reporting.
Yes I'm very familar with D. Six's work, numerous bark beetle sp are endemic to western conifer forests and have always been outbreaks but the scale and intensity of outbreaks has increased significantly with warming/drying, especially in dry frequent-fire forests that are under the most climate stress -- I didn't write that outbreaks are entirely due to climate, but it is a primary factor. Tree density is also involved, but alone does not account for beetle-related mortality. Those of us doing scicomm need to be highlighting all primary factors involved in forest decline and loss -- climate change, suppression, logging/forest mgmt, loss of cultural burning. They are all important to varying degrees in different forests.
Yes the issue of increasing tree mortality is multi-faceted but ecologically, your narrative here is flawed, on a number of levels. In the West zombie forests are those standing but not regenerating on warm/dry sites and lower elevations, which is primarily due to climate/heat/drought factors -- not the others you propose. The increase in bark beetles as mortality agents is largely tied to elevated tree stress caused by the warming/drying/competition and not an independent variable. Even in places with low/historic levels of tree density, tree mortality is still elevated. Yes there are too many *small* trees on many sites but a huge deficit of large/old trees -- which have always been the cornerstone of these ecosystems and have been lost primarily due to logging. See Davis et al. 2023 that just came out, provides supporting evidence that many dry forests are not regenerating and climate fingerprint is primary driver bc seedlings cannot survive.
Love this - excellent article. The article on grasslands is very important. Have believed for a long time that humans (and other animals) would be better off with grassland ecosystems restored.