The Coast Redwood can withstand some cold temperatures, but will not tolerate prolonged periods of sub-freezing weather.
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Climate change, and its current and projected interactions with these stressors, jeopardizes the redwoods' ability to survive and thrive into the future.
They Live for Thousands of YearsAlthough a redwoods' ability for a long lifespan contributed to its Latin name, Sequoia sempervirens—sempervirens means evergreen or everlasting” in Latin—most of the remaining redwoods in the Santa Cruz Mountains are “second-growth”, about 50-150 years old.
California's North Coast provides the only such environment in the world. A combination of longitude, climate, and elevation limits the redwoods' range to a few hundred coastal miles. The cool, moist air created by the Pacific Ocean keeps the trees continually damp, even during summer droughts.
The gold rush brought hundreds of thousands of people to California, and the coast redwoods were logged extensively to satisfy the explosive demand for lumber. Now, approximately 5 percent of the old-growth coast redwood forest remains.
Sequoias and giant redwoods are often referred to interchangeably, though they are two very different, though equally remarkable, species of tree. Both naturally occurring only in California, these two species share a distinctive cinnamon-colored bark and the proclivity for growing to overwhelming heights.
The coast redwood and Douglas-fir forests, and oak woodlands of Redwood National Park are home to many black bears {Ursus americanus). The black bear is the most common species of bear in North America, and is the only one found in California since the grizzly bear (U. horribilis) was extermi- nated in the 1920s.
Portland does not have the elevation or snowpack that the Sierra do, or coastal fog to the extent that is seen along the northern California coast, where champion redwoods thrive. Despite this, we're finding that redwoods and sequoias do well in the city.
As the climate changes, scientists predict that the range and character of redwood forests in the Santa Cruz mountains will change too. Some areas that have redwoods today could become too hot and dry to support them in the future.