Alex Woods and his colleagues at the British Columbia Forest Service and the University of Alberta investigated climate records in the area of the outbreak. The records provided no evidence of warming in the affected area in recent years, but they did reveal a clear increase in summer precipitation over the past decade. That constituted a smoking gun, because D. septosporum's life cycle depends on summer moisture for spore distribution. The increase in precipitation had no clear link to a known climatic oscillation that might have explained it, and the authors conclude that it is most likely related to a directional climate trend. The report of Woods et al. appears to represent one of a growing number of examples of an indirect effect of climate change, because increased summer precipitation would have been expected, absent D. septosporum, to benefit lodgepole pines.
BioScience is the monthly journal of the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS). BioScience publishes commentary and peer-reviewed articles covering a wide range of biological fields. The journal has been published since 1964. AIBS is an umbrella organization for professional scientific societies and organizations that are involved with biology. It represents some 90 member societies and organizations with a combined membership of about 240,000.
The complete list of research articles in the September issue of BioScience is as follows:
BioScience