Cause and effect, or correlation not causation?
Press release Via Eurekalert:
Climate change causing demise of lodgepole pine in western North America
CORVALLIS, Ore. – Lodgepole pine, a hardy tree species that can thrive in cold temperatures and plays a key role in many western ecosystems, is already shrinking in range as a result of climate change – and may almost disappear from most of the Pacific Northwest by 2080, a new study concludes.
Including Canada, where it is actually projected to increase in some places, lodgepole pine is expected to be able to survive in only 17 percent of its current range in the western parts of North America.
The research, just published in the journal Climatic Change, was done by scientists from the College of Forestry at Oregon State University and the Department of Forest Resource Management at the University of British Columbia. It was based on an analysis of 12,600 sites across a broad geographic range.
Lodgepole pine ecosystems occupy large areas following major fires where extreme cold temperatures, poor soils and heavy, branch-breaking snows make it difficult for other tree species to compete. This includes large parts of higher elevation sites in Oregon, Washington, the Rocky Mountains and western Canada. Yellowstone National Park is dominated by this tree species.
However, warming temperatures, less winter precipitation, earlier loss of snowpack and more summer drought already appear to be affecting the range of lodgepole pine, at the same time increasing the infestations of bark beetles that attack this tree species.
The researchers concluded that some of these forces have been at work since at least 1980, and by around 2020 will have decreased the Pacific Northwest range of lodgepole pine by 8 percent. After that, continued climatic changes are expected to accelerate the species’ demise. By 2080, it is projected to be almost absent from Oregon, Washington and Idaho, some of the areas facing the most dramatic changes.
“For skeptics of climate change, it’s worth noting that the increase in vulnerability of lodgepole pine we’ve seen in recent decades is made from comparisons with real climatic data, and is backed up with satellite-observations showing major changes on the ground,” said Richard Waring, an OSU distinguished professor emeritus of forest science.
“This is already happening in some places,” Waring said. “Bark beetles in lodgepole pine used to be more selective, leaving the younger and healthier trees alone.
“Now their populations and pheromone levels are getting so high they can more easily reach epidemic levels and kill almost all adult trees,” he said. “Less frost, combined with less snow favors heavier levels of bark beetle infestation. We’re already seeing more insect attack, and we project that it will get worse.”
Some species are adapted to lower elevations, experts say, but lodgepole pine is predominately a sub-alpine tree species. Its new foliage can handle frost down to temperatures below freezing, it easily sheds snow that might break the branches of tree species more common at lower elevations, and it can survive in marginal soils.
But it makes these adaptations by growing more slowly, and as the subalpine environment becomes less harsh, lodgepole pine may increasingly be displaced by other species such as Douglas-fir, grand fir and ponderosa pine, which are also more drought-tolerant.
As lodgepole pine continues to decline, one of the few places on the map where it’s still projected to survive by 2080 is Yellowstone National Park – a harsh, high-elevation location – and a few other sub-alpine locations.
The species historically has played important ecological and cultural roles. It provided long, straight and lightweight poles often sought for tepees by Native American tribes, was later harvested commercially for poles and fence materials, and offers cover and habitat for big game animals.
Funding for this research was provided by NASA and the Natural Sciences Engineering and Research Council of Canada. A co-author of the study was Nicholas Coops with the University of British Columbia.
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“Funding for this research was provided by NASA and the Natural Sciences Engineering and Research Council of Canada”
When is NASA going to focus on Space again?
One might speculate that the period since 1980 was also the warm period of the PDO.
It will be interesting to see how well these trees do over the cold phase, which has just started.
When I asked the forest ranger why they have re-adopted a natural fire prevention campaign in yellowstone despite the science showing that lodge pole pines are well served and invariably bolstered by forest fire, the response was a simple shoulder shrug. Even when the science is clear and the benefits are obvious, the green movement does not act in the interest of the environment. they act only to advance their own agenda, which has nothing to do with conservation and everything to do with appearances and politics.
I wonder if the lodgepole pine will expand it’s range northward? Crowding out the poor tundra all the way to the shores of the arctic?
I wonder if the lodgepole pine will expand it’s range northward? Crowding out the tundra all the way to the shores of the Arctic?
This winter ought to take care of all their problems. It is both cold and snowy. They’ll need more money.
Snoqualmie Pass in Washington State has been closed most of the day because of heavy snow. Bummer.
By the way – what warming are they talking about?
I have a hunch that their prediction will be wrong.
One proud NASA is now doing forestry? And, doing it badly, it would appear.
I guess they plan to leave spaceflight to China and concentrate on forestry?
Wrong. Around Slocan BC all the pine died in 1980, we logged what we could and burned the rest. Guess what? It all grew back, the pine beetles came back, so we are logging it again.
Pine has been here since coal was formed and will be here long after we are gone. It grows to useable size in 25 years; and then burns. Lodgepole is a fire tree and beats back the competition by burning them. Logepole pine cones need fire to go off like popcorn and scatter seeds everywhere.
True, the fire hazard is extreme, but they are making the world safe for pine trees; not for us.
The beetle has increased because of warmer winters.
The warmists, naturally, are extrapolating the trnd and saying, that is going to get worse.
Cold weather is what keeps the pine beetle populations down, as I understand it.
Therefore since we are now entering a cooling trend with lots of snow and sub-zero weather, things will NOT be “worse than we thought”.
IMHO.
1980? Other than a minor event in SW Washington, that’s also about the time the PDO entered the warm regime.
Bark Beetles are killing the pines.
Now Global Warming (sorry, I cannot call it Climate Change without more specifics about WHAT is changing…) might be making the trees more susceptible to the beetle.
Bit it might also be that we are witnessing the demise of a 70-100 year old monocultured forest that was replanted at the end of the 19th Century after logging for mines and railroads denuded the original forests. The healthy life span of a lodgepole is 80 years.
So is it Pine Beetle by Global Warming? Or by bad management by U.S. Dept. of National Forests?
Let us also not overlook the possibility of color enhancement in the press release.
Here are photos I took Aug 2009 months ago in Colorado.
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/25321843 – East of Silverthorn
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/25305587 – East Portal of Eisenhower Tunnel.
It is amazing that we see these stories yet according to NCDC, CONUS temperatures have been declining rapidly since 1998.
The assumption they are making is that warming will continue. We sure haven’t had much of it the last ten years.
It’s not a bug, but a feature. Maybe these beetles will learn to chirp Yellow submarine.
Montana is experiencing one hell of a brutal winter. New record lows have been set with record snowfalls. If the bugs can survive this perhaps congress will shovel a further handout to Monsanto for Roundup Ready lodgepole pine.
You might be correct, if you don’t know anything about the life cycle of the mountain pine beetle. The problem is that low temperatures are a limitation on MPB populations. Here in Western Montana we have had almost a decade long outbreak of MPB because we haven’t had a good early cold snap as was fairly common out here prior to about 2002 or 2003. This had led to devastating consequences for forests around here. My friend the forester refers to a new species of pine which is appearing around here the “red pine”. That is what trees killed by the MPB look like once they have been killed. The needles turn red and stay on the trees for years.
Last year we finally had a good early freeze (read that as below zero F temps for a week) early in October. This appears (according to my forester friend) to have slowed down the MPB outbreak for this year. The reason for this is that MPB larvae develop an ant-freeze compound in the late fall which prevents them from being killed by later cold snaps.
This is causation, not correlation. There is a good reason, grounded in the biology of the MPB for this. But then you would have to know something about ecology (the science, not the slogan) in order to appreciate this.
A chart of my increasing gray hair over the years overlays exactly with the increasing CO2 chart… I conclude that my gray hair is caused by Climate Change… I see Fools.
Don’t overlook the role of bark beetlesin wiping out these forests; 90% of some stands in Oregon have been killed by these pests. Control of these outbreaks would be a little quicker using such conventional silvicultural practices as removal, thinning, applying pesticides, etc.. But for states like Oregon you’ll need to cut off your affordable energy supply and use public transportation to address the problem instead.
ref: http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/wyoming/article_f1952d30-089b-11df-9ea8-001cc4c002e0.html
“By now, almost all the national forest’s stands of lodgepole pine have been affected”
“Lodgepole pine ecosystems occupy large areas following major fires where extreme cold temperatures, poor soils and heavy, branch-breaking snows make it difficult for other tree species to compete”
The serotinous cones of the Lodgepole pine are sealed with a resin that a fire melts away, releasing the seeds, giving this species a massive advantage over other tress as primary colonists.
Now call me Dr Suspicious, but has there be a large scale change in the management of forests, with respect to fires, recently. If you don’t have fire clearance events then larger, faster growing trees will edge out the Lodgepole pines.
Lodgepole pine have a niche, colonizing fire cleared site; take away the big fires, and they will no longer be dominant.
Biology, not climatology.
They could be correct and they could be incorrect. No one could assign a probability to either side of a prediction about the effects of future climate, nor what shape that future climate itself will take.
Clearly the recent decades of fire suppression policy by managers as well as the policy favoring clear-cutting has also had effects which may or may not have more important effects on beetle population dynamics than purported climate changes.
One thing is certain: there have ALWAYS been natural cyclical forest pest outbreaks in temperate and boreal zone forests and their likely always will be in the future. Tree species increase and decrease in abundance as well. Change is the one thing we can always count on with a 100% probability.
Our difficulty is determining why ecosystems respond the way they do. One of these centuries we may even succeed.
Help me understand a few things; I am but a humble layman out in Washington State that likes to have fun in our great outdoors!
When temps trend higher species adapt right? Won’t new areas become hospitable to the Lodgepole Pines? Treeline will become higher, new trees will grow in areas that once were only was hospitable to grasses, shrubs and marmots, right?
It seems as if the ‘climate extremists’ have a zero sum gain mentality.
Darwin could never have been a ‘climate extremist’.
Change will always be good for some and bad for others. (If that where not so we would not now be enjoying our time as the dominant species.) Try thinking of this story from the point of view of the beetle.
I don’t have first hand info, but a local logger friend was telling me last year that after the previous two exceptionally cold winters, the pine beetle spread had all but stopped. I would imagine that after this past also exceptionally cold winter in the interior of BC the spread will be even further reduced. Temps below -30 apparently kill the beasties. We have had three years in a row of well below -30 temps for months on end throughout the interior. I will look around a bit more regarding this article, and perhaps speak with my logger buddy and get some real information about this subject. Those guys at UBC are zealots.