Climate Change Is Killing the Cedars of Lebanon
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/07/18/climate/lebanon-climate-change-environment-cedars.html
Source: By Anne Barnard, the New York Times Beirut bureau chief for the past six years, and Josh Haner, a Times photographer.
Excerpt: The ancient cedars of Lebanon have outlived empires and survived modern wars. Clinging to shrinking patches of territory, these trees stand for Lebanon’s resilience. Now, global warming could finish them off. ...As temperatures rise, the cedars’ ecological comfort zone is moving up the mountains to higher altitudes, chasing the cold winters they need to reproduce. But here in the Barouk forest, part of the Shouf Biosphere Reserve, south of Beirut, there isn’t much farther up to go. If the climate warms at the rates expected because of the continued rise of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere, some scholars say that by 2100 cedars will be able to thrive only at the northern tip of the country, where the mountains are higher. In the north, though, there are different problems. Lebanon’s densest cedar forest, the Tannourine Cedars Forest Nature Reserve, has lost more than 7 percent of its trees to insect infestations unknown before 1997. They are directly tied to a warming, drying climate....
Source: By Anne Barnard, the New York Times Beirut bureau chief for the past six years, and Josh Haner, a Times photographer.
Excerpt: The ancient cedars of Lebanon have outlived empires and survived modern wars. Clinging to shrinking patches of territory, these trees stand for Lebanon’s resilience. Now, global warming could finish them off. ...As temperatures rise, the cedars’ ecological comfort zone is moving up the mountains to higher altitudes, chasing the cold winters they need to reproduce. But here in the Barouk forest, part of the Shouf Biosphere Reserve, south of Beirut, there isn’t much farther up to go. If the climate warms at the rates expected because of the continued rise of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere, some scholars say that by 2100 cedars will be able to thrive only at the northern tip of the country, where the mountains are higher. In the north, though, there are different problems. Lebanon’s densest cedar forest, the Tannourine Cedars Forest Nature Reserve, has lost more than 7 percent of its trees to insect infestations unknown before 1997. They are directly tied to a warming, drying climate....