North Shore conifers in state of stress

Conifers around Cook County are looking stressed. Year-long drought conditions are the probable cause. WTIP’s Jay Andersen spoke with U of M Extension Director Diane Booth about dying trees and what landowners should and should not do about it.

After Tuesday's interview, Booth sent on some additional information.

"I just heard back from Mike Albers, DNR Forest Specialist, who forwarded some e-mails to me from the Canadians who are seeing similar trees...stressed trees going into winter with inadequate moisture.

"They feel another condition affecting the trees would be the March warm-up to 70 degrees where trees started to transpire, were not able to get water to their needles from their root systems because the ground was still frozen, so as a result needles became desiccated.  As long as the new buds on the trees are healthy and remain healthy, the trees will probably recover with adequate rainfall.  This is the ‘winter burn’ on some of the trees."