Search Here

You've got your Christmas tree in place this year, but it might be at risk soon. Scientists have found that evergreen trees might just die out by 2100.

In Southwest U.S., a semi-arid region including Arizona and parts of New Mexico, California, Colorado, Utah and Texas, scientists find that there are 11 national forests that stretch across 20 acres in Arizona and New Mexico alone.

Due to the loss of broad-scale forest cover over the Southwest, there are increased carbon emissions added to the atmosphere, which increase the additional warming. With depleting greenery, it leads to a "negative feedback loop" which might rebound on climate change.

After studying numerous models of plants and averaging the models, scientists found that about 72 percent of the evergreen forests would be wiped out by 2050, while almost 100 percent would die out by 2100 in the Southwest U.S.

Even as every simulation led to diverse precipitation patterns, the climate model findings always led to the same result---that of widespread tree death.

"No matter how we investigated the problem, we got the same result," said Sara Rauscher, one of the researchers, in a news release. "This consensus gives us confidence in this projection of forest mortality."

The findings are published in the journal Nature Climate Change.