All plants need a dormancy period. As climate temperatures warm, trees will go dormant later in the fall; and they will emerge from dormancy earlier in the spring. So they have less time for replenishing the energy they used during the growing season. Over the long-term, these shorter dormancy periods weaken trees.
To survive disaster, some plants stay dormant for years.
During drought, roots will die back. With fewer roots, there's less leafing. The tree loses area for absorbing sunlight. Then, the roots don't get enough food (sunlight), and they die back more. It's a downward spiral. If nothing changes, the tree will die. It can't maintain a survival balance between above- and below-ground growth.
When plants are dying, we might turn to a "professional" to get what we think is a good idea. But corporate intervention of natural processes interrupts the sequence of events that creates stability and sustainability.
Imposing our desires on nature
Until the 1920s, many areas of the Southwest were not widely farmed. As settlers arrived, they plowed up the native grasses and planted the crops they wanted. When there was a severe drought several years later, the crops failed. The soil could not retain moisture, and it had nothing to hold it in place. Winds blew away the soil. The Dust Bowl of the 1930s came from exploiting the soil to a point that it could not support the agriculture we imposed on it.
We need food to survive of course. When the soil lacks nutrients, the plants do, too. So do the people who eat the plants.
To replenish nutrients in soil and prevent erosion, we need to keep fallen leaves on the ground. In a wet winter, wet leaves produce leaf mold, which actually nourishes the soil. In a dry winter, the leaves provide cover for the soil, which decreases loss of moisture. This is how nature works. It keeps leaves, stems and roots in place.
We humans think we need things done differently than nature. We want things done now. But interrupting one factor of a natural cycle changes the whole cycle. Unfortunately, we interrupt nature routinely, which is disastrous for the web of life. Just moving plants from their native environments to other (hostile) places is like transporting humans to Mars.
The era of chemical control
The era of chemical control of "pests" started after World War II. On a very large scale, petroleum-based pesticides were introduced to control mosquitoes in SE Asia where the U.S. had troops. We didn't want them to get malaria. After the war, we had a lot of DDT left over. The federal government sold it cheaply to get rid of flies and other insects in outhouses and trees. This was perhaps humanity's first attempt to control the natural population of organisms.
To get rid of the weeds and fungus we think we don't want, gardeners spray grasses, rosebushes, tomatoes and trees with pesticides, herbicides and fungicides. Monsanto's Roundup for example contains a carcinogenic growth hormone that makes a weed grow itself to death.
Using even a small application of any artificial substance on a plant suppresses natural processes within a very complex web. Of course, when millions of gardeners apply a small application of something toxic, the problems compound. Each application weakens the plant's natural resistance to pathogens. The plant will need more and more chemicals. This sets up future trouble. It's analogous to the overuse of antibiotics, which weakens peoples' immune systems.
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