Northern ecosystems are seeing some of the planet’s most sweeping changes from climate warming. For some animals and plants, that has posed a threat to their very existence and, for humans, a couple complicated questions: Can we — and should we — do anything to save them?
In Alaska, one area where land managers and ecologists are wrestling with those questions is the boreal forest, home to spruce and birch trees, wetlands and many species of animals. But the boreal is warming more rapidly than anywhere on Earth and seeing more intense wildfires, invasive beetles decimating wide swaths and changing rainfall patterns that’ve caused some parts to shift to grasslands.
: The boreal forest is one of the world’s largest biomes. And it is filled with both trees and birds and many other different kinds of species that you can think about like pieces of a biological puzzle. The forest itself encompasses about a third of the world’s forests, but it also holds a lot of freshwater. When trees draw water up from the soil and into their needles, it can billow out as vapor when the needle pores open in the sun. And this is a process called transpiration.