Pine Beetle News.

Tree Reb

TreeHouser
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I was just reading this, seems a lot worse than I thought. :(
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090804/sc_nm/us_usa_forests_beetle_2


..Forests fall to beetle outbreak

MEDICINE BOW NATIONAL FOREST, Wyoming (Reuters) – From the vantage point of an 80-foot (25 meter) tower rising above the trees, the Wyoming vista seems idyllic: snow-capped peaks in the distance give way to shimmering green spruce.

But this is a forest under siege. Among the green foliage of the healthy spruce are the orange-red needles of the sick and the dead, victims of a beetle infestation closely related to one that has already laid waste to millions of acres (hectares) of pine forest in North America.

"The gravity of the situation is very real," said Rolf Skar, a forest campaigner with Greenpeace.

The plague has cost billions of dollars in lost timber and land values and may thwart efforts to combat climate change, as forests are major storing houses of carbon, the main greenhouse gas blamed for global warming.

The beetle outbreak, which has taken a lesser, but mounting, toll on spruce trees, could make it that much tougher to meet the ambitious target to reduce U.S. carbon emissions by 17 percent of 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050.

That is laid out in a climate bill that narrowly passed in the U.S. House of Representatives and waits Senate debate.

Many researchers have also linked the infestation in the U.S. and Canadian West to climate change, notably a dearth of winters cold enough to kill the voracious little bugs.

"Pine beetle infestations are cyclical in nature and have been occurring for thousands of years but what is making things worse now is the effects of global warming," said Skar.

"If you don't have the real cold extremes to kill off the larvae under the bark you are going to have extreme infestation events," he said.

CARBON FOOTPRINT

In the Medicine Bow National Forest, scientists are getting a first-hand look at the carbon implications.

The forest is home to the U.S. Forest Service's Glacier Lakes Ecosystem Experiments site in a tower with gadgets that, among other things, examine the "carbon flux" of the forest.

The site was established a decade ago, before the spruce beetle infestation, and gives scientists a unique chance to measure the changes to carbon storage wrought by the insects.

"We are getting readings here every half hour," said Colorado-based U.S. Forest Service scientist Mike Ryan, shouting above the wind as he pointed to an instrument that measures carbon. This gas analyzer resembles a small space capsule on the end of horizontal a metal pole.

In the terminology of trees and carbon, a healthy forest is a net "sink," with trees storing carbon as they grow. When they die and rot they "emit" carbon back into the atmosphere, and so a dead or dying forest becomes a "net source" of greenhouse gas, meaning it emits more carbon dioxide than it stores.

Ryan said the net carbon storage in this patch of woods is about half of what it was three or four years ago. In another three or four years, he believes it will become a net source.

A SEA OF GREEN TURNS ORANGE

This scenario is being replayed across the West. In Colorado, aerial surveys show that from 1996 to 2008 Colorado lost almost 2.5 million acres (1 million hectares) of pine forest to the beetle outbreak, Wyoming 677,000 acres and South Dakota 354,000 acres.

Over the same period of time, the spruce beetle, which has also ravaged forests as far north as Alaska, took out 374,000 acres of spruce trees in Colorado and 340,000 in Wyoming.

That cumulative total of over 6 million acres (2.5 million hectares) is an area larger than Israel or South Africa's Kruger National Park.

Farther north in Canada, the pine beetle has attacked trees over an area of about 39 million acres (14.5 million hectares) in British Columbia since the 1990s.

The sheer scale of the damage can be seen northwest of Denver in Colorado's Yampa Valley. Vast tracts of formerly evergreen forest now have huge splashes of orange running through them.

According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, a third of the United States' land area is covered in forest but it is only expanding at a rate of about 0.1 percent per year.

Under "cap and trade" provisions in the U.S. climate bill, additional forest growth may be encouraged through a market mechanism that will allow reforestation efforts by landowners and other groups to be counted as "carbon offsets."

Such projects could generate cash through "carbon credits" paid by polluters who want to exceed their own emissions caps.

A forest can recover, but that can take decades.

"Most forests will recover the carbon they lose but if the next 50 to 100 years is important we may not have that much time. It's setting back carbon storage efforts," said Ryan.

Forest growth in the United States currently sucks up about 12 percent of the country's greenhouse gas emissions. "That's a big number. To get another 10 percent you would have to convert a third of U.S. agriculture land to forest," said Ryan.

The outbreak has other consequences. It is creating huge fire hazards as it leaves mountains of combustible wood in its wake. In a worrying trend, it also has spread from lodgepole pine to ponderosa pine.

There are expenses for landowners as well.

On his ranch in northern Colorado, mountain realtor Bill McClelland points to a dying tree and says: "A week ago that tree was green. I've lost another one."

In May, he had to cut 476 pines on his property and then have them ground into wood chips -- an expensive operation that is one of the few ways to contain the outbreak. He reckons an infestation will generally shave about 20 percent of the value off a private wood lot or ranch.

Past beetle outbreaks have been stopped by very cold winters but recent winters have not been cold enough.

Another factor scientists attribute to the outbreak is past forest clearance and fires that saw large areas cleared.

Often when this happens, the forest that regrows in its place will have huge patches of trees the same age and this makes them susceptible to a collective attack when they mature at the same time into the older trees that the bugs favor.

The beetles may collectively wreak havoc by nesting and feeding in the trees but they look harmless enough as individuals, not least because they are so tiny.

At Medicine Bow, Ryan points to a few writhing in a glass jar that have been trapped on the trunk of a spruce tree.

"Until we get a big cold spell they are going to go on until they have nothing to eat," he said.

(Additional reporting by Allan Dowd in Vancouver; Editing by Doina Chiacu)
 
I'm right in the thick of it. But remember, global warming or climate change or whatever you want to call it doesn't really exist.:roll:
 
How does this work?
The beetle outbreak, which has taken a lesser, but mounting, toll on spruce trees, could make it that much tougher to meet the ambitious target to reduce U.S. carbon emissions by 17 percent of 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050.
 
The beetle outbreak, which has taken a lesser, but mounting, toll on spruce trees, could make it that much tougher to meet the ambitious target to reduce U.S. carbon emissions by 17 percent of 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050.

Trees lessen pollution. If pulling these numbers out of wherever gets people to care for and plant trees then is that a bad thing?
 
The pine beetle will turn to other species when there's no pine to be had.

Eh, most if not just about all critters are highly evolved and specialized. Unlikely they could change millions of years of co-evolution and suddenly change that much.
More likely something else will come along.

Pine pitch canker

Dutch Elm disease

Chestnut blight
to name a few

Its when something comes along that can cross over that causes some much consternation.
 
Its when something comes along that can cross over that causes some much consternation.

It's totally decimated huge tracts of forest up here. This bug is really, really bad news. But it makes me alot of money too, so I have somewhat mixed feelings about it.:D
 
The beetle outbreak, which has taken a lesser, but mounting, toll on spruce trees, could make it that much tougher to meet the ambitious target to reduce U.S. carbon emissions by 17 percent of 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050.

Trees lessen pollution. If pulling these numbers out of wherever gets people to care for and plant trees then is that a bad thing?

How does a tree reduce emissions?
 
They don't.. And nor does the Gov. tell you that photosynthesis dependent plants not only emit O but also CO2. It's all a spin by the Dr's in politics...
 
The key word is emissions. Or more importantly "reducing emissions", not cleaning up what has been emitted
 
It's not that big of a stretch Justin. Both the Pine bark beetle and the Spruce bark beetle are Dentroctonus.
 
Even age contiguous stands are the biggest issue in aiding the "outbreaks". Another is aggressive fire suppresion, which stops the mosaic pattern created by lighting strikes.
 
It's not that big of a stretch Justin. Both the Pine bark beetle and the Spruce bark beetle are Dentroctonus.

Not that big of a stretch but the epidemic of the bugs has gotten to the point where they're eating trees they're not really designed/evolved to Dentroctonus bark aside. If you read the linked article they're closely studying reproduction success or lack there of in the Spruce trees. The lack of success of reproduction of the pine beetle in the spruce is about the only good news to go along with them actually killing the spruce trees in the first place.
 
Even age contiguous stands are the biggest issue in aiding the "outbreaks". Another is aggressive fire suppresion, which stops the mosaic pattern created by lighting strikes.

I agree with your points but certainly a huge factor in the outbreak is that it no longer gets cold enough, fast enough in the winter to kill any of the buggers off. Now whether that is man caused or a natural cycle of the earth it's still playing a huge factor in the spread of these bugs up here. Whatever the cause, our average temperatures are up and going up and this has helped this bug out treemendously. And again certainly all of the factors, the ones you listed and climate change, have come together for the perfect storm so to speak of pine beetle devastation.
 
No, no y'all are trying to confuse the issue. Trees are good for co2. Scroll down a tiny bit on this page and read. There was also a good article in the last arborist news that I got explaining it.

http://www.coloradotrees.org/benefits.htm

What has that got to do with reducing emissions? I understand trees help with the clean up of co2 but trees don't stop cars from emitting exhaust
 
Cars exhaust contain co2, trees absorb it. So they may not reduce the actual emissions when they exit the tailpipe, but having more trees around helps to take care of the emissions that are coming out anyways. So when a bug comes along and kills millions of trees it's bad for our planets C02 fighting/absorbing abilities. That is the point that they were trying to originally make in the article I beleive.
 
It's like this. Washington as a state is looking at their emissions. One way that they could reduce emissions, as a state, is to plant more trees. It's not actually making anyones tailpipe or factory burn/work cleaner but the overall end result is reduced emissions, as a state.
 
Which has nothing to do with the law they refrenced, which is not about absorbing co2. That was my point, they add in stuff that joe blow in casual reading may accept as fact when in reality has nothing to do with the subject as portrayed
 
I'm obviously not very good at typing my thoughts the way they occur to me:dur:
 
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