dead stands of poplar

green

and not so green.
As we drove out towards Haines jct and on,
We saw something that started 3 or 4 years ago, along the way we saw several dead stands of polar ( trembling aspen). It appears now more evident then ever. When we drove into the litle road that further on was very green, at the beginning we drove to such dead forest and the little spruce trees where covered in webs with black caterpillars.

Now especially in this area we are used to the spruce trees dying due to the spruce beetle. I have not heard much about this.

I do believe that it could all  be part of a natural phenomena. If everything was left be, large areas in the Yukon would have been burned due to forest fires. As fires are managed these days, maybe....i am just surmising here..... nature provides another way to rejuvenate, dying a part of that process.

We also drove into the marshal creek area where there was a fire years ago, the poplars look lovely they are about 2 meters high  i would say. For years this area was a sea of purple from fireweed and before that shortly after the fire we picked morels there.

 We did find one morel today, but that was a coincidence, we by accident kicked it over on the trail to granite mountain