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06 July 2004

VANCOUVER: New analysis of climate change in western North America suggests the sustained regional drought, which began in 1996, is comparable to bone-dry climate trends 400 years ago that decimated BC's coastal forests, says Global Forest Science.

According to the international research agency based in San Francisco (formerly from Vancouver), the North Atlantic Ocean is warming and the tropical Pacific Ocean is cooling - dynamic environmental forces that are shifting the regional climate from wet to dry. In conjunction with tree-ring analysis, the current climate trends are strikingly similar to the 1580s when regional forests last faced a drying threat as dire.

"The present extreme dry conditions along coastal B.C. are beginning to indicate that our coastal forests could potentially be entering into a natural 400-year fire cycle event," explains Global Forest Science founder Dr. Reese Halter. "Certainly the very early fire season in BC is indication enough that 2004 is going to be a bigger fire year than 2003. If the 900,000 hectares that are burning in Alaska are any indication, we may be in for an explosive ride."

Halter says the forest floor is perilously dry and already the north coast, traditionally very wet, has experienced June fires along the Copper and Stikine Rivers.

Also, the pine bark beetle population is proliferating - a harbinger of the rapidly drying climate and a function of a 100 years of artificial fire suppression. The infestation extends into southeast U.S. where the southern pine bark beetles have decimated US$1billion of loblolly plantation wood.

Tuscon and Banff-based Global Forest Science (www.globalforestscience.org) is a forest biology research institute. With an international multi-disciplinary team of 165 scientists, Global Forest Science is a world leader in forest science research and has often been likened to the Red Adair's of the forest biology world. Global Forest Sciences' many victories ranging from legislation to protect the threatened westslope cutthroat trout of British Columbia, protection of the world's largest ant colony, opening an international insect quarantine facility and helping to save New Zealand's multi billion dollar forestry and agriculture industries from the Australian painted apple moth. Global Forest Science is also dedicated to children's ecological education - visit GFAwesome.
(www.gfawesome.org)

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