Alaska the ‘poster state’ for climate concerns – USA Today
The spruce budworm, aspen leaf miner and the spruce bark beetle, pests once kept in check by winter cold, are flourishing here. Statewide, insect outbreaks have killed more than 4 million acres of forest in a decade and a half, says John Morton, a biologist at the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge in Soldotna.
Fires, long an integral part of the forest ecology here, are burning millions of acres as summers get longer and hotter, says Scott Rupp, a University of Alaska-Fairbanks professor of forestry. And with each wave of fires, trees have a harder time coming back in the increasingly warm and dry landscape.