Vermont Forest Indicators Dashboard

Tree Mortality

Score for 2018:
--/5
Long-Term Trend:
Scores are 
Trees die for a variety of reasons, from wind storms and lightning strikes, to fungal or insect infestations. Every year, trees die. The trunks may persist for decades as snags (standing dead trees), providing habitat for birds and animals, or as logs slowly rotting on the forest floor and gradually returning nutrients to living plants. However, changes to the baseline tree mortality rate may signify that environmental conditions are changing and could pose problems to the lifespan of our trees. Here, tree mortality is computed as a ratio of the number of dead to live trees recorded in Forest Inventory and Analysis plots1. The current year is scored as the difference from the long-term mean (scored 0-1).