Trees - more are dying

First it was the pinon pines, now it's the aspen: http://www.rense.com/general73/aspen.htm

jo/nm

Oh, no. So sad when the babies don't make it.

I don't know about aspen all over the Rockies, but I can tell you that they are doing very well in the mountains around Los Alamos right now. The Cerro Grande fire, destroyed many square miles of coniferous forest and the aspen were think as theives by the next spring. They have continued to grow like mad ever since. I am missing the conifers.
Looking across the Rio Grand Valley from Los Alamos, one sees Lake Peak where the Santa Fe Ski Area resides. One used to be able to see a huge horsehead shaped area of aspens on that mountain. The indians saw a thunderbird. One way or the other, both shapes have been disappearing for many years.
Aspen are nurse trees for conifers. They come in like crazy after a fire. Then the conifers come in underneath them, protected by them and eventually take over. That is why the horsehead has been shrinking. There hasn't been a fire on Lake Peak in something like a century. But about a century ago, there was a giant fire there that Congress actually allocated money to fight. It burned for a very long time -- like a year. The aspen came in after the fire, but now the forest is going back to conifers. Not a bad thing except that locals miss their horse head or thunderbird.
Yet it is, here at least, a part of the natural process. Can't say about other parts of the Rockies