With their towering, cinnamon-colored trunks and dusky green canopies, ponderosa pine has long been a charismatic icon of the American West.
Yet a quiet unraveling has begun: in the past decade, in a vast area from Santa Fe to the Sierras, more than 200,000 ponderosa have died.
While some trees will survive in cooler places, scientists estimate that by mid-century less than five percent of the ponderosa in the American Southwest may remain.
As the very character of this vast region shifts, what will be left behind? And how can we come to terms with such profound loss?
