officially catalog "The Continuing Population Decline of Torreya taxifolia", which was published in 1993. In 1995 Schwartz and Hermann teamed with Cristoph S. Vogel in publishing the results of their field and lab work in assessing a number of environmental variables that could have stressed the torreya population enough to induce one or more pathogens to become lethal. The team posed and assessed a total of eight hypotheses for the decline: three possible "biotic agents" and five possible "abiotic triggers." The "abiotic triggers" assessed were: (1) Water stress, (2) Microclimatic warming, (3) Regional warming, (4) Hydrologic change, and (5) Fire suppression. The team documented that both regional drought and dam construction were "coincident with the timing of the decline," but such triggers were not, in their view, commensurate with the scale of torreya die-off: "While we cannot rule out the possibility that moisture, temperature or soil nutrient stress contributed to inciting disease in T. taxifolia, the argument that one of these concurrent environmental changes single-handedly incited a decline is very weak." The team did acknowledge, in Table 2, that, "If T. taxifolia is limited by warm temperatures, a slight increase in temperature may render it susceptible to native pathogens. This species may be an early casualty of global warming." Because the team focus and expertise was ecological rather than pathological, their assessment of the three hypotheses for "biotic agent" causes relied on existing pathological publications rather than new research of their own. Their assessment was negative as to: (1) Introduced pathogen, (2) Pathogen vectors (e.g., deer antler rubbing), and (3) Fungal pathogens as epiphenomenon (that is, initially virulent but becoming weak or absent). However, the team did acknowledge that "most catastrophic declines have involved exotic pathogen" and therefore an as-yet "unknown pathogen" could ultimately be determined as the cause. A new team was assembled by Mark W. Schwartz, aimed at using models to predict the time of future extinction in the wild. Ecological details from additional field experience were included in their 2001 paper, and these offered context for understanding the scope of the initial wave of tree die-off and torreya's response:"The population crash of the 1950s appears to have killed all wild adults, leaving a current population of solely juvenile (nonreproductive) trees. Unlike the American chestnut (Castanea dentata), in which many adult trees died back to the ground but survived as individuals, it appears that adult torreya trees died