The drought that recently ravaged California for six years crushed salmon runs, torched hundreds of houses, and sent lawn-care professionals into a deep depression. It was the worst droughts in hundreds of years, and by the time it was finished in 2017, it had killed some 150 million trees in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Many groves lost nearly all of their mature pine trees, turning green forests brown across swathes of the state. Because trees need more water when it’s hot, the scientists estimate that tree deaths will increase 15 to 20 percent in the Sierra Nevada Mountains for every increase of 1 degree Celsius.
— source grist.org | Jul 3, 2019