Koren Nydick is the ecologist for Kings Canyon-Sequoia National Park. They did this using data from moisture measuring instruments deployed throughout the Sierras and satellite photographs from 1985 to 2015. Researchers measured what they’re calling the wetness and greenness of sequoia groves and the surrounding forest. Yet the giant sequoias are probably less susceptible to the drought impacts because they’re in areas that are preferentially wetter than the surrounding forest.”

Roger Bales, founding professor of engineering at UC Merced and director of the Sierra Nevada Research Institute that conducted the research, said that “the real takeaway from this research is that the forests in the southern Sierra overall are experiencing stress as the droughts come, and the droughts are hotter. But the study found that following the latest drought, some of those groves are increasingly vulnerable to stress impacts. Their resilience is in part because giant sequoia groves retain more moisture than surrounding forest areas. Giant sequoias are found only in 70 groves spread over 55 acres of the western slope of the Sierra Nevada, and for more than two and a half million years there they have survived dramatic variations in climate. The research was done by scientists at Kings Canyon- Sequoia National Park, the Sierra Nevada Research Institute and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. A new study of California’s Giant Sequoia groves shows the largest trees on earth are surviving effects of the most recent multiyear drought but are increasingly vulnerable to the continuing impacts of climate change.

Wetter fresno