At Edmund Niles Huyck Preserve in rural Albany County, the white spruce trees are struggling. Planted in the 1920s at what was then the southern part of the trees’ range, the plot now has no white spruce saplings, and “the adults are not doing well either,” said Andrei Lapenas, a professor at the University at Albany’s Transformational & Ecosystem-based Climate Adaptation. Lapenas, said higher temperatures from climate change have slowed older trees’ growth, while younger trees are being out-competed by the mature ones. Meanwhile, a different species, red spruce, has established itself in the preserve… He speculated that in the next 20 to 40 years, the preserve “will be overtaken by other tree species, and red spruce is a good candidate for this.”