Once a month
get new photos
and expert tips.

Environment
Environment Main Global Warming Natural Disasters Habitats FRESHWATER

Photo Gallery: Arctic Climate Change

PREVIOUS7 of 9NEXT


A forest of dead spruce trees near Homer, Alaska, is the victim of a tiny beetle that has boomed in the state's milder winters. Since the mid-1970s, about 50 percent, or 1 million acres (400,000 hectares), of the Kenai Peninsula's adult spruce trees have succumbed to the spruce bark beetle. The swaths of downed trees may actually turn forests from carbon sinks to sources, according to an April 2008 study. For instance, when dead trees decompose, they release the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Photograph courtesy Peter Essick/Getty Images