By Jane Braxton Little

Study Reveals the Big Climate Impact of the Way Drought Kills Trees New research into how drought kills trees has helped reveal a potentially huge climate consequence of an increase in dead and dying forests that one scientist cautioned could result in a “carbon death spiral.”

That dead tree in your back yard? You could say drought killed it.

It's been a brutal forest fire season in California. But there's actually a greater threat to California's trees — the state's record-setting drought. The lack of water has killed at least 60 million trees in the past four years.

Scientists are struggling to understand which trees are most vulnerable to drought and how to keep the survivors alive. To that end, they're sending human climbers and flying drones into the treetops, in a novel biological experiment.

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As farmers abandon crops amid dust bowl conditions, scientists find ways to fighting contagious spores of 'sudden oak death'

California's drought is worsening and turning farms to dust, but it is also helping to save oak trees from a deadly fungus and keep beaches clean from bacteria-saturated water.

The lack of rain has impeded a disease which kills the state's signature tree and reduced the amount of bacteria-laden water which contaminates the coast, according to reports this week.