Mountain Pine Beetle Invasion in Canada Poses Global Warming Threat
by Jeremy Elton Jacquot, Los Angeles on 04.27.08
Image courtesy of D&J Huber via flickr
A festering problem Lloyd reported on last year -- the invasion of British Columbia's forests by voracious mountain pine beetles -- has taken a drastic turn for the worse, according to a new study published in the journal Nature. Werner Kurz of Natural Resources Canada found that the beetles are turning large tracts of forests into carbon sources -- rather than sinks -- aggravating the onset of global warming.
Kurz and his colleagues modeled the carbon budget for 374,000 square kilometers of pine forest, estimating that close to 270 megatonnes of carbon would disappear from the area between 2000 and 2020 -- much of it lost as carbon dioxide emitted by dying trees. The impact of the pine beetles' blight was determined to be worse than that of the 2003 forest fires: causing a pine forest -- considered a slight carbon sink in their model, when untouched -- to release 50% more carbon than when effected by a fire.
While most previous models had only considered forests' beneficial effects on the climate, Kurz cautioned that the negative impacts -- their ability to also release massive amounts of carbon dioxide -- also needed to be taken into account. Reforestation efforts in the last 2 decades have not been able to keep pace with the beetles' destruction, and the impact of logging risks making a bad situation worse.
B.C. officials have encouraged the practice of salvage logging as a mitigation strategy, but Kurz notes that this may actually lead to more emissions being released; logging removes all the natural forest-floor vegetation, eliminating more potential carbon sinks. Furthermore, most of the wood retrieved from the dying trees is of dubious quality: A fungus carried by the beetles, known as a "blue fungus," discolors the wood, reducing its value. An alternative strategy, burning the trees for energy, would also aggravate the problem.
In the end, what will eventually stop the beetles' infestation is their own voracious appetite. The large trees they feed on and use for reproductive purposes will soon all be gone. “The beetle will eat itself out of house and home, and the population will eventually collapse,” Kurz said.
But, as DeSmogBlog's Mitchell Anderson warns, the risk is that the beetles, having already crossed over the Rocky Mountains, could threaten Canada's entire boreal forest. The results, he glibly notes, wouldn't be pretty:
If the same cycle of devastation and carbon release occurs, we will be looking at much bigger eventual release of carbon dioxide than one billion tonnes.Dr.. Kurz’s research demonstrates the dangerous complexities of playing with the thermostat of the planet. This new source of atmospheric carbon from by decomposing trees is an excellent example of what scientists pedantically call “positive feedback loops ”.
The rest of us might better describe these unplanned accelerations of climate change as the “holy crap factor ”.
Via ::DeSmogBlog: Climate Change and Pine Beetles (blog)
See also: ::The Pine Beetle's Deadly March, ::Run for Your Lives: The Crabs Are Coming
"A fungus carried by the beetles, known as a "blue fungus," discolors the wood, reducing its value."
Personally, I think naturally blue wood would be cool. I'm not sure if this also compromises the integrity/longevity of the wood. I'm having a hard time finding definite answers on this. Anyone else know?
I live in the middle of the devastation. Aside from the huge hit our local forest economy will take in the future, we have another problem; the forest fire hazard. We must get the standing dead wood forests harvested as quickly as possible to avoid the summer fire hazard.
Forest blazes in this dry and resinous dead forests quickly become infernos that consume and completely destroy the living eco-system as well.. So, harvesting the dead wood is a big priority here. The problem is in marketing the wood. It is currently being used for wood pulp and wood pellet fuel production. We can market both products around the world to a growing demand.
We have tried to market the lumber as "Denim Pine" (after it's color), but buyers are not impressed, so yes, it does decrease the value of the wood. The blue stain doesn't affect the quality, but it does affect the perception of quality.
Our Province is pro-active in replanting forests as they are harvested. We are planting a broad spectrum of tree varieties because their are other diseases and bugs out there that could destroy mono-culture forests.
The "denim pine," as it is known here in BC, is not structurally different than non-stained pine, it's all about aesthetics. Some people think the stained pine is not as valuable as the pine we are accustomed to seeing. I think it is quite stunning, myself, and am happy to see some BC companies doing value-added work with denim pine.
We pre-paid for cremations recently and found that remains are now sealed in little "Denim Pine" caskets for the family. I thought they looked great!
In certain areas of Colorado, the stained pine is gaining in popularity. Fads come and go, so hopefully this one catches on enough to get the forests cleared of dead wood.
Do pine beetles survive forest fires? With all this dead wood, that seems inevitable.
Forest fires are limited to a relatively small area. Here is Alberta, the Gov says that the cold winter we had stopped the pine beetle.. For now.
They have crossed the Rockies and threaten the rest of the boreal forest. This forest runs from BC all the way to the Canadian Shield. The only hope we have is to freeze 'em out. We need winter temps below minus 20 celcius for sustained periods of time, like up to three weeks to kill the beetles.
I also read that the beetles need to be frozen early in the winter before they go into stasis to actually kill them. So the Government may be a little less than truthful here..
What a surprise, the Alberta Government not telling the whole truth???
Does cutting 'fire breaks' through the forest do nothing to stop the spread of the beetles? How far will they travel to find new trees to eat?
By the time the trees have reached the "red and dead" stage, the beetles have pretty much moved on to greener pastures so forest fires are not a means of beetle population control. What needs to happen is cold - as in daytime highs of minus 40 for several days cold - during certain times of the winter when the beetle larvae haven't built up their "antifreeze" stores and are vulnerable to the cold. I can't remember the last time that kind of cold snap has happened here.
Forest breaks do not work because like many other species of beetles the MPB can fly, and even if they couldn't beetles can also walk. The claim of reduced structural integrity is not true, as there have been studies showing equal strength. Finally there are early studies showing that the removal of the bazilions of trees that are effected is not the best plan of action, backed by some of the negative effects on the ecosystem (described above a bit) but also because the shading and wind break support the dead trees provides allows for other shade tolerant or new saplings to grow. I also don't have to mention, but I guess I will now, added wildlife trees and soil and water retention benefits versus complete removal. You tend to passively learn a lot about the MPB outbreak when you go to UNBC, heart of the research and effects of MPB.
I work in this forest everyday. To answer some questions, you can't stop this beetle epidemic, no matter the size of the fire break, I have heard about beetle flying straight up and being carried over 100km by the wind.
Blue stain doesn't hurt the quality of lumber unless you try to sell your wood to Japan (they want perfect wood, no flaws). The main customer of this is new home owners, which will put drywall on top of and won't see it anyway. The shell life of this pine is not great, it dies, dries out, cracks, and fungus gets into the cracks and start to decrease the value because of decay (this happens at year 3 after attack).
Fire hazard is worth talking about, when the trees are red (year 2 of attack) the fire behavior is like nothing anyone has ever seen before (BC has been lucky, during this red stage there wasn't any big fires, thankfully). Then the extreme fire hazard goes away for a while, until the trees start to fall down all over each other, think of pick up sticks. Now think of how you start a fire with teepee arranged kindling, that looks like pick up sticks.
Of course if we didn't try to "control" fire so much before (1920 until present) we wouldn't have this scale of a problem in the first case. This pine beetle problem comes from two things, first is global warming, the other is too much food from lack of mortality due to forest fires in the past 100 years (too much over mature pine trees in the northern interior of BC). Ask people in Kelowna how much they would be willing to let forest fires burn and you will realize why we fight forest fires so aggressively.
My question that I ask the forest professionals is what do you do about the next epidemic? Beetle problems are not new to a forest (google: 1980s, spruce beetle, bowron), global warming however is new to these forests. The main killer of these pests is cold weather (-40C or F).
One last thing: this is a Natural Pest and part of a healthy forest ecosystem (and in this case, a un-healthy forest ecosystem).