A new article in the journal “Bioscience” this month describes what many foresters have suspected for some time: The century-old decline of Southeast Alaska’s yellow cedar forests is attributable to climate change. Decreasing snow cover over the decades has left fine root structures vulnerable to freezing, eventually killing the trees. Stanford doctoral candidate Lauren Oakes, who took this picture on Chichagof Island last summer, is among a new generation of researchers looking at possible management alternatives for the dead forests, which represent both valuable habitat and a marketable timber supply. Click here to read an abstract of the article.