© USFS
More than 102 million trees on 7.7 million acres of California’s drought-stricken forests have died since 2010.
The lingering drought in California has killed
more than 100 million trees, according to the U.S. Forest Service's latest aerial survey.
The recent death count found that
62 million trees have died just this year in California, bringing the six-year total to more than 102 million. More than
five years of drought are to blame for the tree deaths, scientists said, adding that tree "fatalities" increased by 100 percent in 2016. While
die-off is expected under drought conditions, the rate of the forests' death is faster than scientists expected, according to U.S. Forest Service (USFS) officials.
The agency said that millions of additional trees are expected to die in the coming months and years. California's drought has affected 7.7 million acres of forests, putting the region's whole ecology at risk, the scientists said.
"These dead and dying trees continue to elevate the risk of wildfire, complicate our efforts to respond safely and effectively to fires when they do occur, and pose a host of threats to life and property across California," U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack
said in a statement.
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