EPOW - Ecology Picture of the Week

Drunken Forest

Black Spruce (Picea mariana), Family Pinaceae
Glen Creek, Fairbanks, Alaska, USA

Explanation:  What is wrong with this forest?  It is drunk.

Actually, the term is drunken forest, with trees tilted and bent at unexpected angles just like someone who is ... well, you get the idea.  

But why?  What's happening here?  It is a vital signal for the rest of us.
  

   
Here is the answer: it is underground.  

The permafrost and frozen ground are thawing, at an alarming rate and an alarming depth.  

Some degree of thaw and freeze are certainly expected, here in the boreal forests of central interior Alaska, but it is happening more extensively than ever measured before.  

And is being studied well, but all the studies in the world cannot change the trends of increasing thaw without changing the trends of politics and policy.  

And perhaps therein lies the true origin and nature of the drunken forests of the subarctic.