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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jae says:
February 28, 2011 at 7:31 pm
All sorts of trees. Lodgepole did not dominate as they do now. Those trees are all in the 100+ year age range, ripe for beetle infestation.
Search around on the web, this has been known for quite some time. Apparently the authors of these “Global Warming MUST BE THE CULPRIT” papers tend to forget about known science, or basic common sense (whichever you prefer,) when they set out to blame their favorite boogeyman.
Mark
Lemme see, the original (1980?) range will decline, by 2020, to 92% of its initial value (that’s 100% – 8%). That’s an average loss of 0.2% per year. Interpolation would put the current value at 94% of the original.
By 2080, predicted survival is 17% of that current 94%. That’s approximately 16% of the original value and an 84% loss overall. So the first 40 years (1980-2020) we lose 8%, and the next 60 years we lose 76% (100% – 84%).
Again, the rate over the first 40 years is 0.2% annually. The rate of loss over next 60 years is 76/60, or 1.27% a year. Yes, that is one heck of an acceleration. Those bugs better get busy….
The pine beetle is killed by 3 weeks or more of -30 weather. When I came to Calgary in the late ’70s, there was at least 3 weeks of such cold weather per year. Things changed. But global warming?
The pine beetle dies at a certain temperature minimum. That is what kept it so far south. The temperature rise needs to be above that minimum for the required time. In order to say global warming did this, you would have to show that – since 1980 – 1) the mountain temperatures have risen by that much during the winter months not progressively until today, but immediately when the pine beetle began to move, and 2) that the temperature rise was GLOBAL, an not regional starting from the winters that didn’t kill the pine beetle.
Yes, we in Calgary/Banff do not have the cold spells we used to have 30 years ago. We went from -45 periods to -25 periods in only a few years, and then that was repeated. WE DO NOT HAVE GENERAL EVEVATED TEMPERATURES OF THAT MAGNITUDE HERE!
The pine beetle problem is a regional problem caused by, yes, a climatic shift but not a GLOBAL one. The world would be a steambath and baked dessert if it were.
Grab an idea, toss it into your grant application and wait for the green-backed manna.
Weather is climate and local is global.
It is a sad sight to see the devastation of the pine beetle in Colorado. Yet it is important not to let emotions run our decisions, but rather data and analysis. Kudos to the Forest Service in the Black Hills for recognizing fire suppression / excessively thick growth is conducive to pine beetles. Once they attacked the real problem, they have made remarkable progress in the return of healthy forests.
Oh no it this thread again 🙂
From what i understand is that this beetle is a poor flyer and rivers form a major obstacle for them until we provided the means of transport for them in the form of bridges and transportation of felled trees across the country.
That these beetles love poorly managed forrest so much because almost all trees are old enough for them, no active lodging of sick trees and a active forrestfire supression tend to cause that.
That the beetles start to feast on the younger trees these days has nothing to do with climate change, or in this case old fashioned global warming, there are so damn many of them that they face good old fashion starvation by overpopulation or they adapt.
It is caused by Man, no doubt about that, but claiming that it is climate change means that they steer away from practical solutions.
Fire suppression and ill-conceived forest management practices have had far more to do with the spread of the pine beetle than any supposed climate change. As others have indicated above, pine beetle is part of the lodgepole forest ecosystem and always has been. In an “unmanaged” forest, between drought and lightning, lodgepole pine rarely survives more than about 40 yrs – and pine beetle attack the old, decadent trees – but once an infestation begins, its hard to stop as long as there’s more trees around.
It may have been a little warmer (or cooler) in the past 40 yrs, and perhaps there were (or were not) more frequent “cold snaps” in the past, but the pine beetle infestation is clearly an unintended consequence of “aggressive” forest management practices – not climate.
The reason the pine beetles have caused havoc is poor forest mgmt – blame the USDA & Smoky Bear, not global warming. Natural forest settings have fire as regular component to prevent overgrowth; overgrowth = pine beetle epidemics.
We have had a policy of wildfire suppression (ie Smoky Bear) for decades & now we are paying the price with our forests being devastated by pine beetles.
This whole article is revolting on so many levels – bad science in the form of poor forest mgmt causing one problem & then blaming it on another bit of bad science (AGW) by a group that is supposed to be studying space (NASA) – what the heck do they know about forestry or climate? Nothing as far as I can tell. All I can conclude is that SCIENCE AS WE USED TO KNOW IT IS DEAD & society as whole is worse off for it.
Here in Vancouver, Canada. about 18 months ago the local radio warmist talk show host Bill Good was doing his usual rant about Global Warming was causing the Pine Beetle infestation. I phoned in with this report and shut him down, he still goes on about Global warming but never mentions the Pine beetle anymore!
Here’s why:
Must Read! The Pine Beetle Hysteria Exposed! Natural, not Manmade!
Man may indeed have played a large role in the spread of the mountain pine beetle but not in the way climate change activists portray.
For the latter half of the 20th century as people settled in forested areas in greater numbers, forest fires drew more attention. While in centuries past fires burned unabated as part of a natural cycle of the earth, man now was coming to the “rescue” and putting out the fires. In doing so, an unintended consequence of forest overgrowth was realized. By eliminating the natural death and re-birth cycle that fire brings, forests became more dense and just as critically, they have matured to an age that is ripe for pine beetles to attack.
Sky Stephens, Forest Entomologist for the Colorado State Forest Service said that our desire to stamp out fires in unpopulated areas did more harm than good. “It set us up for a number events that have and are going to happen,” she said. Stephens said the forests were never meant to have the dense stands that we have grown accustomed to seeing and the more food there is for the beetles, the greater the impact when they attack.
Dave Thom, a natural resources officer with the Black Hills National Forest agrees with Stephens. Of trying to point the finger at manmade climate change, he told the Rapid City Journal last month, “It’s more complicated than that.”
That phenomenon [the pine beetle epidemic] can happen regardless of a few degrees of change in climate, measured on a global scale. ~ Dave Thom, Black Hills National Forest
See lots more:
http://www.climatechangedispatch.com/home/5432-must-read-the-pine-beetle-hysteria-exposed-natural-not-manmade
“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.
“Real” data, only for the skeptics, eh? Do they ever read what they’ve just written or said, or is this some kind of harbinger of surrender to real science?
Where I live in Oregon, the previously standing dead lodgepole ring-widths indicate that we probably should have already been iced over, while you can’t stop the young-uns not even born from fire from ruling some areas without using a ground level daisy cutter approach. One big area of a natural clean-house type of forest fire has what looks like a gigantic tree farm of lodgepole in extremely high concentration, which they are noted for. Some of the larch survived because of their thicker bark. People have been predicting a bark beetle or needle borer apocalypse here since before Global Warming. I witnessed one semi-local “progressive” here see a few dead trees and call it an “epidemic”.
CAGW relies upon people being suggestible.
Rock Road- I lived on the Oregon coast- you haven’t dealt with “weed” trees until you
have dealt with the lodgepole’s cousin the shore pine. Picturesqe, with lovely shape and
cover-and a termite trap. I spent years cutting those things down, to keep them
away from my house.Before one fell on our bedroom….
I did a 30 year stint in forestry research in BC as a technician. When it comes to Universities, it is the old “publish or perish” syndrome. Those who don’t toe the ‘global warming’ line don’t get funding for their projects, and therefore won’t be able to publish. The Whole Truth doesn’t matter when your tenure is at stake, it seems.
Pines are colonizers, designed to take over freshly burned areas. They are pretty much decadent between 80 and 120. They replenish themselves just fine with the right kind of fire. (not too intense). They don’t need a lot of protection against bark beetles and insect pests because of their shorter lifespans coupled with their ability in natural regeneration.
Pines are in no danger of extinction except in the minds of the global warming zealots.
regards, Ian Cairns
@Steve R asked: “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?”
Trees invading warming Arctic will cause warming over entire region, study shows
By Robert Sanders, Media Relations | January 11, 2010
BERKELEY —
Contrary to scientists’ predictions that, as the Earth warms, the movement of trees into the Arctic will have only a local warming effect, University of California, Berkeley, scientists modeling this scenario have found that replacing tundra with trees will melt sea ice and greatly enhance warming over the entire Arctic region.
http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2010/01/11/arctic_warming/
And see this from 2007:
Surprising New Arctic Inhabitants: Trees
Andrea Thompson
Date: 09 March 2007 Time: 04:38 AM ET
Rising temperatures fueled by global warming are causing forests of spruce trees to invade Arctic tundra faster than scientists originally thought, evicting and endangering the species that dwell there and only there, a new study concludes.
http://www.livescience.com/1350-surprising-arctic-inhabitants-trees.html
Here in Lodgepole, Alberta it’s a balmy -38C tonight in the wind. Last winter was similarly tropical and had the result of reducing the pine beetle population very significantly. I suspect they’ll be all but eradicated this year.
Moreover, the lodgepole pines… we cut them down, turn them into fence boards and then re-plant the forest with something that is actually useful.
A lot of you seem to have a hard time with the idea that an effect can have more than one cause. In this case climate change (man made or not) and poor forest management could both be involved. Part of our response in climate change (man made or not) needs to include better forest management.
“Much of western North America has elevated tree densities, relative to pre-settlement times, either for all trees, the largest tree classes thereof, or both. This is primarily due to active fire reduction/suppression policies over the last century or more by federal and state land managers, and/or timber harvesting practices. The resulting increased competition, without any increased climate stresses, would by itself increase tree physiological stress and affect beetle outbreak dynamics. The addition of warmer and/or dryer conditions simply magnifies this problem.” http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/10/seeing-red/
Could it be that all the bans on all the pesticides is a major factor in the beetle spread. We seem to have been so thoroughly brain washed that only one out of 63 responses even mentions spraying insectcide.
So it is not a problem caused by clear cutting and zero fire tolerance. It is not a problem from mono-culture. It is not a problem from pollution.
No, it is due to a ~1degree change over 100 years in a global average.
In an eco-system that regularly experiences ~ 60 degree dynamic range per year.
What a waste of money this sort of propaganda dressed up as science represents. Can we please get our money back on this?
Mike says at 8:20 pm
Get a grip, Mike. It has all happened before. Nothing to get excited about. Nothing to see here. Move on, now.
Historical Aspects of the Northern Canadian Treeline
by HARVEY NICHOLS
http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic29-1-38.pdf
Some of you might be interested in this story from 2008.
Western U.S. Forests At Risk: Complex Dynamics Underlie Bark Beetle Eruptions
ScienceDaily (June 6, 2008) — Biological interactions involving fungi as well as trees and competing insects drive bark beetle outbreaks. The processes are sensitive to a forest’s condition and the local climate, but prediction is difficult because the processes turn on multiple critical thresholds.
Nonetheless, human activities are making outbreaks more extensive and frequent. Climate change and biological processes at large and small scales drive outbreaks now killing forests in the American West.
Forest management that favors single tree species and climate change are just two of the critical factors making forests throughout western North America more susceptible to infestation by bark beetles, according to an article published in the June 2008 BioScience.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080602075818.htm
“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. ”
Trend without end, extrapolated until the cows come home.
There is the old saying “Can’t see the forest for the trees”
With yound lodgpole pine stands, you can’t walk through the darned forest for the trees.
This is something I know about in detail. Many posters have got most of the pieces of this story but not yet pulled it all together.
Several have explained that the lodgepole pine is a relatively short-lived fire-adapted species which can only maintain its dominance with the aid of regular fires… and that Smokey the Bear fire suppression is the first cause of these recent epidemics. The missing point so far – unless I missed it – is that the viable habitat of these beetles is the tree’s cambium layer, only when it reaches the thickness of mature trees. Thus this is a ‘disease’ of old age for these pines.
In the absence of fire the beetles kill them, which creates a very fire prone aftermath, and when fire comes, to either a live or beetle killed lp forest, that pops the seeds out of the cones and that plants what becomes an even-aged stand.
Now step back 80 years or more, when Smokey started stomping, after many areas had been burned, with fresh young pine stands popping up. With no fires they have all matured to create vast areas of mountain pine beetle habitat.
The bottom line here is simple. No matter how warm winters had been (and fall is actually the critical period), these huge epidemics could never have happened without all this unnatural habitat. And it made it worse. These beetle populations had so much habitat that they exploded into hyperabundance, which made them spread further and faster and even attack young and other non-host trees (they can attack them but they can not survive to reproduce in them).
This beetle is always present in western forests. It also attacks ponderosa pines and a couple of other species. But mature trees can usually fight off attacks unless they are stressed by drought or disease or, most importantly here, they are attacked by so many beetles they cannot resist them.
The real problem for the future is to manage forests better including recreating the kind of patchy multi-species, multi-aged forests that occured under “natural” (Native Americans (mostly) and lightning) conditions. If huge areas are just left as even-aged lodgepole pine again, the cycle will repeat itself.
Have you heard about the Mountain Pine Beetle infestation in Mexico?
That’s because there isn’t one. Even though Dendroctonus Ponderosae (that’s his name) has lived in northern Mexico for a very long time.
It never gets to be -30C in Mexico, that’s why we all like to go there when it is that cold here.
They used to claim that that was the temperature needed to keep the beetle in check. When it became clear that that wasn’t the case the story changed to the temperature at the time of the mating flight in early summer.
In the eighties, I contracted with the BC government for several years to seek and destroy Mountain Pine Beetle in the Robson Forest district and, I’m sorry to say, that although we killed a lot of beetles we failed to stop the outbreak.
If there’s any glimmer of truth in this “study” I am unable to discern it.
The BC pine beetle epidemic has been enormous, in part beause the pine stands in this part of the world are enormous. The story about the snow-shedding branches is utter nonense. Engelmann and white spruce, which are species extensively found with Lodgepole, have down-sweeping limbs, which shed the snow just fine in spite of their dense foliage; just about all the pines have up-sweeping branches, and they do fine, too. Maybe because the canopy is more open or maybe because the whole issue is a red herring. Lodgepole seeds survive fire very well (others have pointed this out) and they grow quickly into adolescence. Spruce takes over if fire doesn’t intervene because these pines are not long-lived and their growth slows as they mature.
Yes, beetles are more successful attacking older trees becaue they get “pitched out” of younger trees, but that’s hardly a drawback, since the entire stand is all of an age and the regenerated stand will have a good number of years to get established. Lodgepole pine is all about Nature’s own monoculture.
Supposedly, there has been, in BC, a rise in the average winter daily minimum temperature of about 1.5C. That’s the only trend that is claimed for here.
It’s also worth noting that the BC epidemic started in the coldest parts of its range and has spread to the warmer parts, where it has been less significant than expectd and is now abating.
In reality and in the real world the problem with the pine beetle is due in large measure to a lack of forestry management by people with the required skill set. The law of unintended consequences kicks in with conservationists gaining control of government land and policy and trying to enact and enforce half arsed ill thought out trendy tree hugger theology on an environment perfectly adapted to solving the problems it faces on its own.
Instead of owning up to the mistakes of the past they invent fantastical excuses for those past mistakes, instead of casting a critical eye over the issue and inviting real genuine forestry experts for their insights they choose to hide from reality and spend their time making up reports like this. We see this kind of thing happening all the time now with people so keen to run away from their responsibilities. Green theology is being exposed as the real ‘age of stupid’.
As I recall a major blowdown occurred in 1997 on the national forest I worked on (see links). The cleanup plan had been pitched by one or more logging outfits to be granted salvage rights to the downed timber. This would have required a few logging access roads to be cleared in order to get to the remote areas impacted. All it took was for some overzealous person/persons to request an injunction from a judge to put a stop to the salvage effort. Never even had to go to court, just beat the clock as the longer the timber was down the less profitable it became to the logging industry. In the end the salvage effort was abandoned and instead a cleanup proposal was tabled but was determined to be too costly. A couple of back to back mild winters plus the blowdown was all that was needed to start the bark beetle population explosion that spread from area to area and the resulting fuel loads and forestry management nightmare that followed. So yes, weather related (the microburst that created the blowdown and a couple of mild winters) but nothing that has not happened before.
http://www.cora.nwra.com/~snook/blowdown.html
http://www.federalregister.gov/articles/1998/09/24/98-25541/routt-divide-blowdown-analysis-medicine-bow-routt-national-forest-hahns-peakbears-ears-ranger
I don’t suppose the beetles evolving/mutating to be be more efficient predators of these lodgepole pines has anything to do with this.
This definitely is a project which needs much greater grant funding and quickly!!! Sarc
some history …….(book from 1909)
http://www.archive.org/stream/annotatedlistofi00crai#page/n35/mode/2up