WILL THE CEDARS OF LEBANON BE EXTINGUISHED?

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Climate Change Is Killing the Cedars of Lebanon   https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/07/18/climate/lebanon-climate-change-environment-cedars.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

BAROUK CEDAR FOREST, LEBANON — Walking among the cedars on a mountain slope in Lebanon feels like visiting the territory of primeval beings. Some of the oldest trees have been here for more than 1,000 years, spreading their uniquely horizontal branches like outstretched arms and sending their roots deep into the craggy limestone. They flourish on the moisture and cool temperatures that make this ecosystem unusual in the Middle East, with mountaintops that snare the clouds floating in from the Mediterranean Sea and gleam with winter snow.

But now, after centuries of human depredation, the cedars of Lebanon face perhaps their most dangerous threat: Climate change could wipe out most of the country’s remaining cedar forests by the end of the century.

As temperatures rise, the cedars’ ecological comfort zone is moving up the mountains to higher altitudes, chasing the cold winters they need to reproduce. But here in the Barouk forest, part of the Shouf Biosphere Reserve, south of Beirut, there isn’t much farther up to go. If the climate warms at the rates expected because of the continued rise of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere, some scholars say that by 2100 cedars will be able to thrive only at the northern tip of the country, where the mountains are higher.

In the north, though, there are different problems. Lebanon’s densest cedar forest, the Tannourine Cedars Forest Nature Reserve, has lost more than 7 percent of its trees to insect infestations unknown before 1997. They are directly tied to a warming, drying climate.

Throuhout  history, the cedars of Lebanon have been prized for buildings and boats, chopped down for temples in ancient Egypt, Jerusalem and beyond. So while climate change did not start the assault on the cedars, it could be the death blow.

Many thousands of square kilometers of forest once spread across most of Lebanon’s highlands. Only 17 square kilometers of cedars remain, in scattered groves.

The country’s most famous cedar patch, sometimes called the Cedars of God, has been fenced off for preservation since 1876.

Some believe that patch was where the resurrected Jesus revealed himself to his followers, said Antoine Jibrael Tawk, an author of books on the cedars.

The Lebanon cedar, a distinct species known scientifically as Cedrus libani, grows mainly here and in Turkey. The trees germinate in late winter because they need a freeze, preferably with snow.

This year, winter was mild. Omar Abu Ali, the ecotourism coordinator for the Shouf Biosphere Reserve, Lebanon’s largest protected area, pointed to evidence on the ground in the Barouk forest.

It was early April, and cedar seedlings were beginning to pop up from the soil. Normally the seedlings don’t come up until early May. Earlier, they risk dying in cold snaps and are more vulnerable to insects. “This is early germination,” Mr. Abu Ali said. “They can die.”