aspen tree

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World's Biggest Organism Is Under Stress
Hungry Deer Pose Threat
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Hungry Deer Pose Threat to World's Biggest Organism

Pando, a stand of aspens in Utah, also faces threats from disease and warmer temperatures

(Newser) - It looks for all the world like a giant grove of trees, but this one has a twist: The 106-acre stand of aspens in Utah known as Pando is actually a single organism—and the biggest organism in the world at that. The trees don't grow from seeds but...

One of the World's Biggest Organisms Is in Trouble

A Utah forest of genetically identical aspen trees is dying, says new study

(Newser) - You wouldn't know it to look at it, but a forest of aspen trees in Utah qualifies as one of the biggest—certainly the heaviest at 13 million pounds—living organisms on the planet. And scientists say it's in real danger for the first time in millennia, reports...

Climate Change Pushes Aspens to Brink
 Climate Change 
 Pushes Aspens 
 to Brink 
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Climate Change Pushes Aspens to Brink

New weather patterns exacerbate other issues, like the nasty bark beetle

(Newser) - Huge swaths of the Rocky Mountain landscape is being transformed as the region's signature tree, the aspen, goes into rapid decline, reports the Smithsonian. Climate change and surging population of the bark beetle is causing the grim phenomenon known as SAD (sudden aspen decline). The beetle is a mere twelfth-of-an-inch...

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