Global Warning to increase the prevelance of both Forest and animal diseases? .......The USDA Forest Service’s Western Wildland Environmental Threat Assessment Center and the Pacific Southwest Research Station suggest that climate change will affect forest health, but there is still some uncertainty about the degree of climate change and how it will affect pathogen biology, the potential direct impacts to host species and the interactions between the pathogen, host, and climate...........As the saying goes in the marketplace: BUYER BEWARE of the quickening pace of temperature change

Study examines common western forest diseases under varying climate change scenarios

Will forest pathogens become more common in a warming world?

By Summit Voice

SUMMIT COUNTY — Forest Service scientists say warmer and drier conditions could lead to more Armillaria root disease in some conifers and hardwoods, as well as more Cytospora canker on aspens and dwarf mistletoe, which poses a high risk under drought conditions.

Under a warmer and wet climate change scenario, sudden oak death and other Phytophthora tree diseases could become more common, as the pathogens reproduce and spread quickly under favorable moist and warm conditions. The report from the agency’s Pacific Southwest Research Station the USDA Forest Service’s Western Wildland Environmental Threat Assessment Center and the Pacific Southwest Research Station,

The results suggest that climate change will affect forest health, but there is still some uncertainty about the degree of climate change and how it will affect pathogen biology, the potential direct impacts to host species and the interactions between the pathogen, host, and climate.

Tree diseases shape our forests,” says Susan Frankel, the report’s project leader and a PSW plant pathologist. ”This assessment explains fundamental relationships between trees diseases and climate that will help people determine how local conditions may influence tree survival.”

Funded by the USDA Forest Service’s Western Wildland Environmental Threat Assessment Center and the Pacific Southwest Research Station, the risk assessment was conducted as part of the Climate Change and Western Forest Diseases initiative.

To read the full report, “A Risk Assessment of Climate Change and the Impact of Forest Diseases on Forest Ecosystems in the Western United States and Canada,” go to: http://www.fs.fed.us/psw/publications/documents/psw_gtr236/