| Colorado
Mountain Pine Beetle |
Anthony
Kelly |
| Mar
22, 2007 09:22 PST |
| Re:
Colorado Mountain Pine Beetle |
symplastless |
| Mar
22, 2007 13:18 PST |
Even aged trees seem to be in a predisposition as a whole all at
once verses
uneven aged trees seen very much more diverse. When all the
trees are even
aged and reach predisposition, an organism can come in and
appear to wipe
them out or better said "move them on to another ecological
stage" all at
once. An article on predisposition is here:
http://www.treedictionary.com/DICT2003/shigo/ARM.html
Sincerely,
John A. Keslick, Jr.
Arborist
|
| Re:
Colorado Mountain Pine Beetle |
Lee
Frelich |
| Mar
22, 2007 15:00 PST |
Anthony:
MPB has also killed about 30 million acres of lodgepole pine in
British
Columbia (that's about the size of PA) where the trees are under
stress
from much warmer climate in the last few years, and the -40
temperatures to
keep the bug at bay no longer occur.
MPB can also kill jack pine and is now poised to spread across
the boreal
forest from Sakkatchewan to Quebec and wipe out the southern
edge of the
boreal forest.
Some entomologists I have talked also think it can infest
eastern white
pine as well--so you had better hope it does not make its way to
the range
of white pine.
Lee
|
| Re:
Colorado Mountain Pine Beetle |
Anthony
Kelly |
| Mar
24, 2007 02:27 PST |
Lee,
Had the mountain pine beetle already been present in British
Columbia as it
was in Colorado, or was it able to expand it's range? Is it
already present
in the lower boreal from Saskatchuan to Quebec? In other words
is it the
beetle itself that is spreading or just it's ability to wreak
destruction?
Or both?
Anthony Kelly
|
| Re:
Colorado Mountain Pine Beetle |
Lee
Frelich |
| Mar
24, 2007 07:58 PST |
Anthony:
MPB has long been native in the lodgepole pine forests that were
killed in
British Columbia. It was cold enough there to keep the
population low, but
not cold enough to eliminate it. It is now expanding its range
into the
lowland boreal forests of central North America (it has just
been detected
east of the continental divide and is reported to be spreading
rapidly in
the last 2-3 years), where previously it was far too cold for
the insect to
survive. So, its ability to destroy the forest and its range are
both
expanding.
People often point out that global warming at high latitudes
will occur
more during winter than summer and manifest itself more as
warmer minimum
temperatures than during the day, and ask why it would be
important. Who
cares how cold it gets in the middle of the night in the middle
of the
boreal forest? Well, if it doesn't get down to -45 several times
each
winter, red maple can displace spruce trees, since red maple is
limited by
that minimum temperature, and if it does not get down to -40
several times
each winter, MPB can kill the jack pine in the boreal forest.
The result
is that the lack of extreme winter minimum temperatures can
destroy the
boreal forest, which is mainly composed of spruce and jack pine,
and we are
seeing both of these changes occurring on a massive scale.
Lee
|
| Re:
Colorado Mountain Pine Beetle |
DON
BERTOLETTE |
| Mar
24, 2007 11:57 PST |
Lee/Anthony-
While I was working for the Chugach National Forest in Alaska 1993-95,
Southeast Alaska was just beginning to experience a Spruce Bark
Beetle
epidemic...the Forest Entomologist had just come out tying the
epidemic to a
string of warm winters which was allowing better conditions for
the beetle
to promulgate...Glen Juday was suspecting global warming for a
number of
things, but back then, everybody was more speculative.
The SBB went on to decimate Southcentral Alaska's spruces
(90-95% at last
reckoning). As a forester back then trying to propose solutions
that were
being stymied by environmental organizations, we had no idea of
the global
nature of the problem...we may have been able to isolate the SBB
at the
beginning, but there was a point where it would have become
futile.
Hindsight rules...
-Don
|
| Re:
Colorado Mountain Pine Beetle |
Fores-@aol.com |
| Mar
25, 2007 06:39 PST |
Anthony:
When I was working in Montana in the early 1970's there was a
lot of concern
about the mountain pine beetle especially in the northwestern
corner of the
state where there was a massive forest fire in 1910. That single
intense,
fire which burned over 3 million acres in three days converted
millions of
acres of virgin forest to bare ground with the result being
thousands of acres of
lodge pole pine so thick it was difficult to even walk though. Although
there was a severe outbreak of spruce bud worms that had lasted
over a decade at
the time the worry was about what would happen if mountain pine
beetles ever
got going in the maturing lodge pole...I think we are now seeing
and the big
fires have yet to start.
The 1910 fire on the Montana/Idaho state line was a subject of
study for
forestry students at the University of Montana and there are a
couple of really
interesting historical facts from the fire....like the Pulaski,
a very famous
fire fighting tool was named after a fire crew boss (Pulaski)
who got over
90 fire fighters to go into an abandoned mine during the worst
of the fire so
they wouldn't burn to death.
That particular fire was one of the most famous fire storms in
northwestern
US history but it did not result in as many fatalities than the
Peshigo fire
in Wisconsin or Minnesota. The forest service had a couple of
very detailed
histories of the 1910 fire and I am surprised that there has
never been a
movie made about the event. Most easterners have never heard of
the 1910 fire
because at the same time one of the worst fires to ever burn in
the White
Mountains of NH took place. I have a copy of the book the forest
service
published on the fire but I haven't read it for over 30 years.
It might still be
available from the Forest Service
Russ
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