'Largest living thing,' an 80,000-year-old Utah forest, is dying, scientists warn

Last time I’ll post today. I promise. This one is heartbreaking and we need to turn this situation around. It’s bad enough we’re killing each other as fast as we can. We have no right to take the Earth down with us.

'Largest living thing,' an 80,000-year-old Utah forest, is dying, scientists warn

An ancient forest in Utah considered to be the largest single living thing in the world is dying, according to scientists.

The Pando aspen, a gigantic expanse of 40,000 trees that are are all clones with identical compositions, has long been known as the "trembling giant" and covers over 106 acres in Utah's Fishlake National Forest.

The vast expanse is assumed to have one connected underground root system and is thought to be approximately 80,000 years old.

However, recent years have placed the Pando under enormous stress, which includes the impact of extended drought, fire suppression, human development and the encroachment of hungry deer, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal PLOS.

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"It would be a shame to witness the significant reduction of this iconic forest when reversing this decline is realizable, should we demonstrate the will to do so," Rogers told USA Today.

https://www.foxnews.com/science/largest-living-thing-an-80000-year-old-u...

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snoopydawg's picture

Aspens are my favorite trees especially in the fall. The wiki page on them talks about their distinctive white bark and markings.

Here's the ones that the article is talking about. It's hard to believe that everyone of the trees are connected and have the same roots. I hope that Utah will get its act together and find a way to keep them alive.

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These are from my neck of the woods.

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This is one of the first pictures I took over 40 years ago when I got my first camera. I was doing darkroom work at the hospital I worked at and it was the first print I did.

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Utah is officially in a drought, but we've been in one for a few years already. We had the worst ski season on record last year and if storms don't start coming soon it won't be the last one. The Great Salt lake affects our storms and it is very low because water is being diverted for agriculture and because of the growth of huge corporations moving into the area. We already have the humongous NSA fusion center which takes two millions of gallons of water a day to cool the computers and now Farcebook has moved one of its fusion centers here. The government is also building a huge inland port system which will see a big increase of trucks, trains and planes. Utah has the worst air in the country during the winter because the mountains trap pollution in the valley.

Thanks, Amanda.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Amanda Matthews's picture

@snoopydawg
I don’t hold out much hope for anything anymore. The oligarchs have hijackefd everything of value.

The third world war is at our gate, and it will be about water, if we don’t do something about this crisis.

- Rajendra Singh

https://qz.com/691254/world-war-iii-will-be-fought-over-water/amp/

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

divineorder's picture

@Amanda Matthews abd friends.

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

Amanda Matthews's picture

@divineorder

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

dance you monster's picture

@snoopydawg

Aspens are a colonizing species, one of the first to take up residence in disturbed or poor soil. We have a tiny colony of quaking aspens on our nascent farm. They are in the exact wrong spot -- where we most likely will need to situate a workshop and prop house. They are also sitting in at most two inches of soil atop crumbling bedrock, so would face a precarious future from storm winds as they grow, anyway. But for now we are leaving them to be beautiful until we need to take their space away for other purposes. We even removed the invasive Russian olives and Japanese honeysuckles that were competing with them.

We just now are learning about ancient clonal plants, mostly because the genetic research is only comparatively recently making it feasible but also because the real frontier is underground -- where extraordinary plant, animal, fungal, and bacterial activity has been taking place every minute for eons on end. There's a multi-acre fungus, underground, in the northern Midwest and just above ground a multi-acre 8,000-year-old box huckleberry in Pennsylvania, the oldest plant east of the Rockies.

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divineorder's picture

@snoopydawg lovely pics.

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

Hawkfish's picture

I believe the problem is that the deer have no population controls. Probably because we interfere in ecosystems to build housing and kill all the top predators (and hunting can’t make up the difference). Oh and some of the deer appear to have a prion disease. It isn’t harmful to humans. Yet.

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