30 seconds

Dr. Andrea Lloyd says:

But the other kinda cool thing that we're looking at is changes in growth form. The other thing that might happen if climate gets better is that these things that have been growing in these real twisted horizontal krummholz forms, like this one here, might begin to grow as upright trees. So if you look at this tree at its base, you can see that it's coming from this really horizontal stem here but it's got a couple of upright leaders that are now looking very much like upright trees. And so what we expect to find is that around the time it became possible for spruce seeds to germinate and grow up here, that these horizontal trees should have been able to begin to grow as upright individuals. Both of those things: the presence of seedlings and the change of growth form of these krummholz individuals seem to suggest that the spruce forests are in fact advancing.