Reporter John Fleck wrote an unusual obituary in the Albuquerque Journal in September – on the death of a 650-year old Douglas-fir.
Known as “Yoda,” the tree was an icon for climate scientists. Growing out of a lava flow at El Malpais National Monument and measuring barely 7 feet high, Yoda was tiny for a Douglas-fir—which can grow 150 feet tall in moist southwestern canyons. But despite its diminutive size, an annual growth ring count showed that the tree had been alive since at least 1406.
The tree looked every bit the gnarled elder, with just a few live branches sprouting from its crown. It was still alive in early 2014. But when Grant Harley—one of the researchers tracking the tree—brought a group of students to the remote site in August, it was dead. Harley said “We had a moment of silence to pay our last respects.”
Trees put on wider growth rings during wet years and thinner ones during dry years, allowing scientists to work out the regional climate history going back centuries. Remote and rugged, the volcanic terrain of the Malpais means that trees there have been largely unaffected by direct human activities, making them particularly useful in climate studies.
These studies have revealed that past droughts have lasted far longer than the present one. The worst spanned half a century beginning in the mid-1500s.
But although it had survived that drought . . . sadly, Yoda didn’t make it through today’s.
Earth Notes is produced by KNAU and the Sustainable Communities Program at Northern Arizona University.