Up Rooted

Forests have always migrated to survive. But now they need our help to outrun climate catastrophe.

- Por Lauren Markham

I drove to Oregon because I wanted to see the future. Our rapidly changing climate vexes me, keeps me up at night—perhaps you’ve felt this, too—and recently I’d become particularly preoccupied with trees. In California, where I live, climate change helped kill nearly 62 million trees in 2016 alone, and last year, 4.2 million acres of our state burned. I wanted to know what was in store for our forests and, because we humans rely on them for so much— for clean air, for carbon sequestration, for biodiversity, for habitat, for lumber and money, for joy—what was in store for us.