Climate change affecting trees, streams in the West

SALT LAKE CITY — Around the same time the American West started heating up five years ago, Colorado started losing its lodgepole pine forests to a beetle infestation.

“The population built up rapidly and exploded. It takes out the mature trees,” said Ingrid Aguayo, an entomologist for the Colorado State Forest Service, which estimates that about 60 percent of the lodgepole pines have turned red and brown.

Read the story here:

http://www.greatfallstribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080327/NEWS01/80327011&GID=wC8rj9K0O+qKCNdokaUcFz3cPvs/pLmSExOglTsVxPk%3D