Dead hemlock among Douglas Fir

[ArtB]

Front 'yard' is a stand of 130--150 ft D Fir.
Last year one small area (about 50 ft square) has had 4 Hemlock die. Ranging in size from 20 in DBH down to 6", guessing the smaller are from seed dropped by the larger - which I dropped today, 92 years old. The hemlockreceived more sun as of 2 years ago when neighbor to the south removed a few 140 ft D Fir on his property line about 25 ft away from the larger hemlock.
Question is if more sunlight on a mature hemlock can cause them to die. Or is there some hemlock blight going around that I should watch for and clear out all hemlock. This is at my house in town., think there are only a few dozen mor Hemlock on y 3 in town acres.
40 years ago had the largest hemlock in the yard die, that one was about 30 in DBH and over 100 YO at the time. A couple other hemlock a few hundred feet farther Norht died about 10 years ago also.
All D. Fir (and bigleaf maple) are healthy.

 

[northmanlogging]

Front 'yard' is a stand of 130--150 ft D Fir.
Last year one small area (about 50 ft square) has had 4 Hemlock die. Ranging in size from 20 in DBH down to 6", guessing the smaller are from seed dropped by the larger - which I dropped today, 92 years old. The hemlockreceived more sun as of 2 years ago when neighbor to the south removed a few 140 ft D Fir on his property line about 25 ft away from the larger hemlock.
Question is if more sunlight on a mature hemlock can cause them to die. Or is there some hemlock blight going around that I should watch for and clear out all hemlock. This is at my house in town., think there are only a few dozen mor Hemlock on y 3 in town acres.
40 years ago had the largest hemlock in the yard die, that one was about 30 in DBH and over 100 YO at the time. A couple other hemlock a few hundred feet farther Norht died about 10 years ago also.
All D. Fir (and bigleaf maple) are healthy.

ALL the hemlock is stressed right now, all over W warshington, there is the normal center rot that seems to kill em off early, but also a few other funguses and what not that attack hemlock, some of the proper ologists will know more then I, a lot of this is do to unusually low rain fall and higher temperatures (cough climate change cough cough)

As for getting more sun killing it off, not likely, a hemlock does fine in shade, but they usually take off in full sun, getting all shaggy and hard to limb. Could be something else that the new house disurbed such as underground water sources or perhaps some sort of chemical disturbance (septic system nearby?) Perhaps they disturbed the root structures when clearing? In reality it could be any of a few dozen reasons, or all of them.

The D fir is generally very resiliant, while the Maples have been getting stressed too, but they are pretty damned hard to kill, even when you cut them down and light them on fire... they still tend to grow back.

 

[slowp]

Waaaay back in Forestry class, we learned that yes, too much sun can be bad for hemlock. Yet, in my experience, they seed back in clearcuts on their own so that really isn't true. I'd guess that like any other tree, they are used to certain conditions and changing those conditions can cause stress--exposing them to sunlight suddenly. Also, yards are not healthy places for trees and can stress them--grass, too much or not enough watering, ground compaction, etc. Sounds like some other things are going off kilter also per Northman's post. Root rot? Laminated root rot is everywhere in Western Warshington, it seems.