Though increased precipitation thanks to the El Niño event heating up Pacific waters has provided some small relief, California is still in the grip of a four-year drought, the impacts of which are making themselves known in many ways.
The drought has not only left California with severely reduced snowpack, however - soil moisture, groundwater and reservoir stocks are all greatly diminished, which prompted Governor Jerry Brown to establish the first-ever statewide restrictions on water use .
Now a study by researchers at the Washington, D.C.-based Carnegie Institution for Science has found that up to 58 million large trees in California - some of Earth's oldest and most massive trees - have experienced severe canopy water loss between 2011 and today, putting them at severe risk.
Carnegie's Greg Asner led a team that used data from the laser-guided imaging spectroscopy tools mounted on the Carnegie Airborne Observatory in combination with more traditional satellite data going back to 2011 to measure the full impact of the drought on California's forests.