Wason discusses drought’s impact on trees

WABI (Channel 5) talked with Jay Wason, assistant professor of forest ecosystem physiology in the University of Maine’s School of Forest Resources, about how the drought that struck Maine this summer may affect trees in the region. “The trees use a couple different sources of water, one is the surface water that we think about when we just look at the ground and see if it’s moist or not. The other is deep water, so lots of trees actually have roots than can go relatively deep and access groundwater that’s deeper than the surface water that we might think about,” Wason said. “If it’s been really dry for a long time, then all of a sudden we have all this moisture and now the soil is loose and if winds pick up, then you can have an event where the trees may not be holding on to the soil as well as they would have.”