Deaths of trees 'catastrophic'

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/jan/15/beetle-infestation-get-much-worse/ ^

[libstripper]

Here’s the Wiki article about this nasty litle creature:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_pine_beetle

The cold and heavy snows of the 2007-20008 winter mighthelp to stave off the menace. Here in east Tennessee we had a bad infestation in 2001-2002. I lost about 90% of the trees on my acre.

[pandoraou812]

Did you read about this?

[TigersEye]

I have heard about this. I don’t know if it’s as big a problem as the press makes it sound like. These days everything is an end of the world story.

[RightWhale]

Sounds like a matter of time. We have plenty of spruce here and it is highly combustable. We don’t worry about acres when it comes to wildfires, but square miles.

[Vince Ferrer]

I have heard about this. I don’t know if it’s as big a problem as the press makes it sound like. These days everything is an end of the world story.

You can look at the damage yourself on Google. Go to Google maps, and search for Granby, CO. Switch to the satellite view, and zoom in a couple of times. Then scroll around the area and look at the forests around Granby, especially directly north and south of it. The rust color is the dead trees.

This is one of the hardest hit areas, but it isn't the only place, and it is spreading north. Just east of Granby is Rocky Mountain National Park (infected), lus there are ski areas all around the infected region.

[moondoggie]

Yes, we know all about wildfires in Colorado, unfortunately.

[keepitreal]

“I don’t know if it’s as big a problem as the press makes it sound like.”

Unfortunately, it is.

[TigersEye]

It’s not apparent in this part of the CO Rockies.

[TigersEye]

I’ll do that. I live on the other side of the divide from Granby and don’t see anything alarming. Apart from that I question the idea that beetles killing forests is unnatural.

[TigersEye]

You do know that Granby is in a big broad valley which has always been more or less treeless don’t you?

[BIGLOOK]

Seems the area of infestation is climax forest and as such is susceptible to predation by the beetles as well as fire from the deadwood the beetles create. Warmer than average winters can be blamed for the beetle problem but old growth is also a factor.
The climax forest denies its successors space and light and unless there's a fire or weather event (or a logging company) to reduce the old growth population, it will go on its own with time. Doesn't matter if it Lodgepole pines in the west or White oaks in the east.....or Ohias in Hawaii; they all go through the cycle.

[Vince Ferrer]

Yes, of course, I am not saying there are trees in town. Look at the forests around Granby. Follow highway 40 down to Frasier. Go up 34 to the lakes and north. Adjust the zoom so that you have a pretty large view, around midway on their scale or less.

[Vince Ferrer]

All of the rust color on this map looks like it is pine beetle killed trees:

View Larger Map

[TigersEye]

Between Granby and the lakes to the north there have never been many trees. Frasier is also in that same big open mtn valley. Are your from there or familiar with the area?

[Vince Ferrer]

I am not from there, but I have been around there many times.

[TigersEye]

I see. There's part of our problem. That's the town of Grand Lake not Granby. I see there looks like a lot of dead trees around Grand Lake (the town and the lake) and Shadow Mountain Reservoir. If you move the map to the west you will come to a place where one sat view, around Granby and Grand Lake, comes to another sat view. The first is basically brown and the other is green. The two sat views split through the middle of Hot Sulphur Springs.

May need to zoom out.

For some reason I can't make the link go to HSS instead of Grand Lake even though the URL is different. But following 34 south and 40 west will bring you there and the difference in photo colors becomes evident.

[george76]

There is so much false information that it is hard to keep up with it all.

Mountain pine beetles have killed large numbers of lodgepole pine trees.

Spruce bark beetles have killed spruce trees.

Fir engraver beetles have been killing fir trees.

It’s unusual to have all three epidemics going on at once, but that does happen.

---

Not just in Colorado.

Many areas areas DDT will not work because 90 percent of the lodgepole pine trees are already dead now. The Mountain pine beetles have moved on to kill live trees.

Foresters are denied their graduate degrees of knowledge and decades of experience as clever lawyers find weak judges to make unscientific decisions. Private land owners who hire private foresters are usually making good scientific decisions.

Federal foresters generally know what to do and when, but those Sierra Club lawyers stop them.

Too many trees per acre is a match book waiting for a spark. Thinning most small, weak trees under the guidance of a real forester will create a health forest resistant to beetles and more.

[george76]

http://www.steamboatpilot.com/news/2001/jul/29/crews_start_controlled/

[george76]

According to the United States National Forest Service, this was the largest known forest blowdown ever recorded in the Rocky Mountain region with an areal extent of several miles wide and 20 miles long ...

http://www.cora.nwra.com/~snook/blowdown.html

[george76]