very, very old Douglas firs are dying

An expert in climate variability over time, Daniel Griffin has studied the growth rings of very old Douglas firs from a grove on the steep slopes of Mount Pinos, California. “The tell-tale signs of decades of drought from centuries past lie deep in the trunks of its age-old trees,” writes this geographer from the University of Minnesota in the pages of New York Times.

Daniel Griffin details the story, which began in 1538, of one of them through the study of its cells: “When the rains came in the spring of 1539, the sapling grew rapidly, forming large cells that arborists call ‘earlywood’.” In some years, reflected by thick rings, it rained ab