Bark Beetle infestation

Just watched A television show about the damage being done by these Beetles and it really bums me out too think of these beautiful forests being killed off. Experts say by 2019 75% of the lodgepole pines will be killed in British Columbia due to 1 degree rise in temperature. The warmer temps are causing Bark Beetle population explosions.

I've been told 30% of the pines in the Sierra have already been killed.Being aware of this now I'm noticing how severe the problem is and I hope something changes and slows the process. This isn't something that is taking very long and there will be a time when all forests will be gone in our lifetime unless something changes .

Pull up Fraser, CO. on Google Earth and get a look how bad it is here in Colorado. I read somewhere where these huge kill-offs happen in 150-200 year cycles. Next up will be a long era of fires as this material gets consumed, and that will finally kill the buggers off. It is especially dramatic though due to the century of fire-suppression we've done combined with global warming. Hopefully the dead trees get 3-5 years to degrade without a severe drought, or we will witness conflagrations of biblical proportions.

I've heard Forest Service officials state that we just have to get used to the mountains looking different.

The challenging part is that Lodgepoles grow for one thing....fires. They need fire to reproduce and have a very short lifespan. Here in Colorado a majority of the Lodgepoles that are dying/dead should have burned up 50 years ago. Once Lodgepole reach maturity(approx 80 years) they are very susceptible to the beetles. The beetles are balancing and equation that the lack of fires has created.

It's not the Lodgepole that should concern you but the Ponderosa that the beetle epidemic is going to have the longest term effects on. These trees take hundreds of years to mature, and are susceptable to the beetles once their density is high enough.

A single mating pair of beetles produce up to 30 larvae, which feed on the cambium and kill the tree. When you have hundreds of beetles attacking a single tree it really doesn't stand a chance.

BTW there are no pesticides approved by the FDA that can kill the beetles, and spraying trees to prevent infestation is expensive and not very effective.

Lots of photos and good information located out here (mostly Colorado centric):

fortheforest.org/

Great information everyone. Just a quick point of clarification.

The media reports statistics in black and white terms. When they report that 30% of sierra forests have been "killed", this is actually not the full story. They mean that 30% of sierra lodgepole pine or ponderosa forests have been 'affected'. The mountain pine beetle preferentially attacks trees greater than 8-10 inches in diameter. This often results in about 50% of the trees actually dying. Hillsides that appear to have complete mortality are often not that way at all. The crowns of the large trees obscure our view of the smaller surviving trees. This doesn't mean that there aren't patches of forest that are experiencing 100% mortality. It does mean, however, that the vast majority of forest patches are experiencing far less. In a recent study on the west side of Rocky Mountain National Park (near the Fraser Valley mentioned above), the mortality of lodgepole pine ranged from 10% to 100% with only 5 study plots out of 137 experiencing 100% mortality.

The mountain pine beetle is a native forest pathogen. Eruptive cycles such as the current one are believed to have occurred at semi-regular intervals in the past, although not at the continental scale that North America is experiencing. There is no doubt that we are going to have to get used to our lodgepole pine forests looking different. The large red trees will drop their needles in 4-5 years and many large grey snags will remain on the landscape for 10 - 15 years to come. The growth release of small trees will be substantial (greater than 250% in most cases) and what is now an 8 inch survivor will be rivaling the height and diameter of the previous forest canopy in 10 - 20 years.

Fortunately for the ponderosa pine (in Colorado as least), the mountain pine beetle hasn't yet affected it at such a large scale. If this does occur, the same rules apply. Small trees will survive the larger ones, but these forests will take substantially longer to recover.

One last note, the red, dead tree shown in the picture at the beginning of this post is a fir tree and was not killed by the mountain pine beetle.

Take Care

Summit County Colorado is mostly brown right now. I moved there in 2002 and the problem was not very evident, when I pass through today practically all the hillsides are dead. I have heard this is due to the fact that the natural forest up there was mostly clear cut during a few decades on either side of 1900, this allowed the lodgepole, which usually lives at slightly lower elevation, to quickly take over tracts of cleared land that had originally been far more diverse. With the majority of the trees being the same age (exactly the age the beetles like) and so close together due to the fact that there has not been a natural fire in a century all the trees are doomed. This will create a MASSIVE fire hazard, especially with the winds that occur up there. There is nothing we can do, mitigation only slows the process slightly, everything will die in the unnaturally non-diverse areas. There are some old growth areas near keystone, particularly around Haus Rock and the hummingbird boulders. The trees there are some of the biggest I have seen in Colorado, absolutely beautiful, it's a shame they may burn too when the entire county erupts in flames sometime in the next few decades.

Sierrastew wrote:Fortunately for the ponderosa pine (in Colorado as least), the mountain pine beetle hasn't yet affected it at such a large scale.

It appears to be just a matter of time. We are already seeing ponderosa that are under attack by mountain pine beetle in the Boulder foothills. Of course, ips and turpentine beetles are also in the area. But the MPB may very well change the landscape along the entire Front Range in the not too distant future.

I have noticed in the earliest hit areas, once the needles fall off the trees they go from orangy-brown to grey and are not as noticeable.

Like forest fires, why is this a tragedy anyway? and I do not mean someones house burning down, I just mean the process by itself. We get to witness one of natures processes either way and as long as no one is killed or loses property I don't see it as all that ugly. Some post burn areas of Colorado are very beautiful, after a rainfall they green up real nice with lots of flowers.

My family has logged the forest around Crested Butte for years, my grandfather, and now my uncle, can not afford a lumber kiln to dry wood so he really appreciates the beetle kill.

I don't hope anything slows the process, it is what it is.

Sierrastew wrote:The mountain pine beetle is a native forest pathogen. Eruptive cycles such as the current one are believed to have occurred at semi-regular intervals in the past, although not at the continental scale that North America is experiencing.

This is a very strong point that many people overlook. Lodgepole pine forests are characterized by single cohort age structures, and by nature are susceptible to single, major disturbance factors (although it has historically been crown fires). Another important thing to note (relating to the theme of "natural forest pathogens") is that many people have this preconceived notion that all forests were completely healthy before the "evil" bark beetle epidemic started. In reality, there are always a wide range of naturally occurring forest pathogens present in every forest on the planet and no one forest is ever completely "healthy" (I don't really think it is fair to associate that word with forest vigor).

Evan Simons wrote:I have heard this is due to the fact that the natural forest up there was mostly clear cut during a few decades on either side of 1900, this allowed the lodgepole, which usually lives at slightly lower elevation, to quickly take over tracts of cleared land that had originally been far more diverse.

I have not heard this theory before, however, the areas you speak of are well within the natural (and historical) habitat range for Lodgepole pine. Therefore, I do not think this theory is very reputable.

A little more insight into the issue:

Lodgepole Pine forests are characterized by dense, single age stand structures (single cohort). If a Lodgepole Pine forest is within it's historic range of variation, it should experience a high intensity active crown fire about every 70 - 90 years. This large scale disturbance, while it seems devastating, is actually quite normal and helps to raise overall stand vigor. Lodgepole Pine cones are serotinus, meaning they require heat to open and release seeds that will germinate following a large fire. Therefore, the exclusion of fire in these areas has caused an abnormal reproduction cycle in these forests making them susceptible to pathogens (bark beetles) that, historically, have been naturally regulated. In the past, these forests could self regulate the vast majority of forest disturbances (including pathogens), however, current forest conditions have changed the role, severity and spatial scale of these pathogens, resulting in a forest struggling to find an equilibrium in a landscape rich with new stakeholders (with differing priorities).

Who's Evan Simmons?

My mistake. It's fixed.

I was being excessively facetious, sorry if there was even a hint of seriousness in there.

I believe the beetle is a byproduct from the Cheney/Bush admin.

Mark Nelson wrote:I believe the beetle is a byproduct from the Cheney/Bush admin.

There are a lot of byproducts left behind by those two idiots.

Guess its not all negative with the infestation and its a natural cycle of the forest thinning it self of weaker trees. Did a lot of reading about the subject and there are positives and negatives.
So much for message (Help Keep Our Forests Green)

Bringing this thread back up...went up to Eagle County this weekend and wow....I was just blown away by the number of dead trees during the trip. There were probably more brown dead pines than living green.

I really wish we would stop blaming everything on climate change. (Yes, its real, but we had blights long before we had cars.) If we won't, then lets accept that even if we all stop burning all fossil fuels right now, the beatle infestation will continue to grow in areas slightly warmer than BC... and example is my back yard. The Tetons and Gros Ventres are ravaged. If we don't start letting forest fires do what they have been doing for thousands, or millions, of years, eventually all the trees will die from a blight or just die of old age and not reproduce.

The only know enemies of the bark beetle are forest fires, and temps below -25 Degrees. Since forest fires are usually put out quickly, we are the cause of our own problems.