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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About a decade ago we had a 3 year span of hot, dry summers with miserly monsoon seasons and warm, dry winters here in northern NM. In the space of a single season the Bark Beetles wiped out about 1/3 of all the Piñon pines in the region. The explanation given by the forestry experts was that drought weakens and stresses the trees thereby making them more susceptible to bark beetle infestation. Naturally the bark beetle population exploded and a lot of trees died. Then we had a cold, snowy winter followed by several years of excellent winter snowpack and generous monsoon seasons. The remaining trees grew stronger and the bark beetle population dwindled as healthy trees can effectively fight off infestation.
The whole “catastrophic devastation of the Piñons” was chalked up to an extended dry spell. These periods of extended drought are quite common in the region and have been well documented for over 100 years. The entire event was quite natural and only the weakest trees died. The trees that survived are flourishing. I suppose it was, indeed, due to “climate change”. The climate became drier and warmer for a period of several years before it became cooler and wetter.
anyone that has lived in the pacific northwest and put a pine on the fire can tell you why beetles are a problem. the pine tree is nothing like other trees. it burns like it is soaked in gasoline. humans caused the pine beetle problem by stopping natural burning that occurs every summer from lightning strikes. it is no different than the decrease in frog population caused by fungus carried by scientists doing the measurement. Misguided human decisions, not temperature are the source of the problem.
Well (this pine (Pinus contorta) is in no danger of dying out due to any climate change. It is a most aggressive species. It was introduced into N.Z. in the 1920’s as a timber species and is now classified as a weed in many districts of this country invading pasture and other land. It seems to cope with our rather mild climate quite well thank you, crowding out native species. So – no worries about it’s survival per se.
The real problem associated with this in North America seems to be the pine bark beetle. I notice that fire is an important element in the ecology of P. contorta forests. Maybe it is part of the management of the beetle too. So perhaps they should be looking at the total ecological envelope.
Douglas
Tain says:
March 1, 2011 at 7:49 am
The beetles are by far the most important factor in the decline of lodgepole pines. In general, with mtn pine beetles, the timing of the cold is the most important factor. In winter, these critters hibernate, and their blood transforms to act like a kind of anti-freeze, and the cold may have little effect on them. Control of the population occurs when there are early Automn freezes, or late Spring freezes, ie. before/after they come out of hibernation.
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So, what constrains the population in Mexico and other much milder parts of its range?
The worst infestations have occurred in the coldest regions.
This is also true for dendroctonus rufipennis, ponderosae’s cousin. Alaska has seen very extensive destruction of spruce forests.
People are very keen to ascribe causes, especially human, such as fire suppression and global warming. Actually, we don’t know how it all works.
I love the photo of the lodgepole pine forest provided above. The forest is clearly sitting on a glacially scoured valley. I guess climate change giveth the lodgpole pine to Western North America, and climate change shall taketh away.
We have very little Lodgepole pine in the mountains down here (San Bernardino Mtns in southern CA). The pine beetle infestation/kill during the drought a few years back instead took place in stands of Coulter pines, another fast-growing, fire-prone type of pine that grew down here after the pioneers logged off most of the large Ponderosa. Huge stands of 50-200 year old trees would turn orange on one weekend. I watched this happen to a large stand adjacent to my property.
I took great pains to drip water the 30 pines that exist on my own property that summer, and we lost only a couple which happenned to be directly in the path of westerly-trending wind coming from the killed stand adjacent. I assume there was too many beetles for even a healthy, well-watered tree to resist.
Since the kill, the recovery of the Coulter pines has been rapid, with the green of the young new trees overtaking the standing dead, which are slowly falling and disappearing below the canopy. There’s still a few bigger, older trees killed by the beetles each year, but nothing like during the drought year.
And so the cycle will repeat itself eventually, without a fire to suppress the rapid growth of the new Coulters coming up, when similar conditions arise. When we suppress the natural fires, nature finds a different way to thin out the forest.
One of the more informative books regarding this issue is “Fire in Sierra Nevada Forests” A Photographic Interpretation of Ecological Change Since 1849 by George E. Gruell. What Gruell did was to attempt to duplicate landscape photographs of Forests in the Sierra Nevada taken since as early as 1849 up to 1919 from the same spot as the original photo. He did this over a two year period of 1993-1994. The book contains 84 photos of the forests spanning the length of the Sierra Nevada at varying elevations. As stated by the publisher. “Gruell asks readers to study the evidence , then take part in current debates over prescribed fire, fuel buildup , logging, and the management of our national forests”. Looking at the original photographs, especially the ones of areas that had not been logged, and then comparing those to the more recent photos, it is clear to me that the forests were far less dense a 100+ years ago than currently and that the primary reason was modern fire suppression. I doubt that a change in climate had much to do with this because this observation is evident in photos from relatively low elevations to high elevations throughout the Sierras and the fact that the span of the photos from 1849 to about 1920 contains a period of changing climate within itself.
According to local sources here (the NW), pesticides are effective against bark beetles for higher value trees. Grants are also available to private land owners to eradicate these blighters. But for the Feds I think they have actually taken a do-nothing approach, and so the beetle gets to epidemic proportions.
It is like having a neighbor that grows thousands of roses on his property, but does not control the aphids. He is in effect breeding them and infecting the neighborhood.
The important lesson here is that for the so-called forest “management,” pesicides have far more stigma attached to them than deadly pests. Some towns will not even spray one single tree which is infected. Timely use of sprays is an important part of management, along with thinning. The people in the east should take this as a lesson. The Japanese Beetle is a threat able to wipe out all of the hardwood forests.
Oliver Ramsay says:
March 1, 2011 at 9:24 am
“So, what constrains the population in Mexico and other much milder parts of its range?
The worst infestations have occurred in the coldest regions.
This is also true for dendroctonus rufipennis, ponderosae’s cousin. Alaska has seen very extensive destruction of spruce forests.
People are very keen to ascribe causes, especially human, such as fire suppression and global warming. Actually, we don’t know how it all works.”
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No, we actually do know how this works.
To answer your questions, the lodgepole pine is the primary host for these major epidemics, and they are not found in Mexico. Because of its survival strategy and stand characteristics – even-aged monoculture-like stands – it is the species that can provide sufficient mt pine beetle habitat to support epidemics. Ponderosa, for those same reasons, do not except under what were once freak conditions but are now widespread because of fire suppression.
The lodgepole pine is the only host species found “in the coldest regions.”
Mountain pine beetles do not attack spruces, in Alaska or anywhere else, except incidentally during hyperabundant epidemics. So that is another story.
True, that people cannot ‘blame’ this on AGW but they can blame it on fire suppression. I tried to explain all this in my post February 28, 2011 at 9:40 pm
Here’s the key point from that:
“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.”
This realtes to the comment (Tain says: March 1, 2011 at 7:49 am) which you responded to which stated:
“The beetles are by far the most important factor in the decline of lodgepole pines.”
Should read “MATURE or OLD lodgepole pines.” So all this talk about reduction of these or any pines as a species is utterly ridiculous. If I have my movie analogies right, this beetle is more like Harrison Ford in ‘Blade Runner,’ eliminating the older people for the long term benefit of the whole population.
P.S. I first worked on this beetle back in the 1970’s when this supposedly ‘unprecedented’ AGW problem hit the mature pine forests of Glacier-Waterton national parks and adjacent SE BC.
Asian Longhorn Beetles are no fun either. Another girdler in the cambium layer. I have seen one in Oregon near a Christmas tree farm, but it had no white spots. Just as big as a quarter, and long antenae.
http://www.treehelp.com/itemRelations.asp?Choice=30
such as Douglas-fir, grand fir and ponderosa pine, which are also more drought-tolerant.
Apparently, these species evolved when the earth was warmer or where it is warmer now. So, is the premise of the author that this species needs to be saved at all costs for emotional reasons, rather than logical?
The species historically has played important ecological and cultural roles.
The lead photo looks like it was taken from Rattle Snake Ledge (looking SE), just a few miles south of North Bend WA.
The photo used to illustrate this article is potentially very informative. Note the patchiness of the beetle killed trees. I can’t tell from the photo but what it shows is typical, with only the mature lp stands being killed while the younger stands (or patches of spruce) are not. In extreme epidemics the beetles become so abundant that they can attack younger trees or even spruce trees but those young pines do not have a sufficiently thick cambium layer to provide viable beetle habitat, and spruce trees are not viable mt pine beetle hosts.
That latter point is also informative. The same AGW gang that is teamed up with the Biodiversity Crisis gang is being deliberately blind to biodiversity, and the simple fact that biodiversity is all about different species being adapted to exploit different niches. The mt pine beetle has specific hosts, primarily lp and a few other western pines, yet when the epidemics in BC were exploding they were warning that it was going to spread all across Canada – even though there are no host tree species any further east than the range of lodgepole pine (and further south, Ponderosa pine). It was funny to read those ridiculous scare stories, but also sad that that kind of misinformation was being pumped out and that people were believing it.
I am a retired silviculturist. A silviculturist is a person who manages timber. I was responsible for timber management on about 200,000 acres in Oregon. I have worked in both Montana and Oregon and know a little about lodgepole pine and the pine beetle.
As a silviculturist, I needed to keep up with the latest science. In doing so, you learn which scientists do good work and which ones do crap. Richard Waring does good work. So we need to take his findings seriously, but that doesn’t mean his determination of cause and effect is correct.
The bark beetle is a huge limiting factor for lodgepole pine. When a tree reaches decent size, it’s ice cream for the beetle. It overwinters under the bark. If snow depths are high, the snow, which maintains a fairly constant temp, protects the beetle. But a cold year with little snow hammers the bugs. So bug populations are a function of weather patterns. And since the beetle takes out trees when they reach a certain size, the ultimate size potential of lodgepole pine is limited by the beetle–a natural selection process working against the fastest growing trees. Without the pine beetle you might see lodgepoles reaching the sizes of ponderosas and other large western species.
70, 80 year old trees are coming into their prime, for the beetle and for use as timber.
In 1910 there were a series of devastating fires over large portions of the west. This led to a policy of trying to have all fires out by 10 am the next day. That policy was followed up until the late 80’s or into the 90’s. So, how old would lodgepoles be that germinated in 1911? Prime time for beetles. Add in millions of acres of lodgepoles existing that are or were in the prime age range, unrelated to the 1910 burns–they never get too old for the beetles.
One other detail. When the beetle burrows under the bark it carries with it a fungus that rapidly decays the wood after the tree dies.
Then in the 1980’s, just when huge amounts of lodgepoles were coming into their prime for the beetles environmental restrictions made it harder and harder to put up a timber sale. When there was an outbreak, the time it took to plan and sell a timber sale took so long that the timber was often worthless before it could be logged. Planning a Forest Service timber sale takes months, involving teams that usually include wildlife biologists, fisheries biologists, endangered species biologists, soil scientists, as well as foresters and perhaps other specialists, depending on the sale. We had timber sales in Oregon that were appealed by people 2000 miles away in Michigan–just using the system because the environmental laws say they can. And each appeal had to be addressed, even if everyone knew the appeal was baseless.
Complicating the situation is access. Lodgepole is low value timber. Access requires roads. Road building is often the most expensive part of a timber sale. If the sale can’t cover the cost of the roads required to access the timber, you can’t sell the timber. These days, in the name of watershed protection or lack of road maintenance funds the Forest Service is closing roads all over the place. Closing means tearing up the roadbed. So a beetle outbreak in a remote area may require rebuilding roads that were perfectly good a few years ago.
In the “good old days” if you had the beginnings of an outbreak, you could rush out and log the affected area before the outbreak spread. Falling the timber, letting the logs dry exposed to the sun, killed most of the beetles and hauling the logs to the mill took them out of the susceptible area.
So we have had a policy that for decades has preserved lodgepoles for the beetles combined with policies that hamper any response to an outbreak, combined with weather patterns that favor the beetle overwinter survival. What should we expect, other than a huge problem?
One other thing: Fires remove some soil nutrients, particularly nitrogen, and the hotter the fire, the greater the nutrient impact. Conversely, protecting an area from fire allows soils to become richer and more productive. In addition, these northern, high elevation sites accumulate organic matter faster than it can decompose under the tree canopy because of cool temperatures. Protecting lodgepole stands from fire improves the site productivity, making some of them more suitable for Douglas-firs and other species. If the beetle takes out a stand and it isn’t logged or burned, the new site conditions may allow these other species to take over.
Climate changes, for natural and perhaps also anthropogenic reasons. As it does, the dominant species will change. This means we will have to adapt to the new environment, but that’s what humans have always been good at!
I live in the Rocky Mountain West and have seen how those darned pine beetles are killing these trees. I wonder how these scientists were able to separate out the effects of the beetles from the effect due to warming temperatures.
It never seems that people who want to be alarmed are unable to find something to alarmed about. Lodge pole are a species that fall into that group of species that are occasionally referred to as “pioneer” species. They move into wet meadows as sedimentation converts meadows to a drier state, and they are in turn pushed out by taller, thirstier trees like red fir, hemlock and Douglas fir. Anyone who bothers to do some historical research, especially of old photographs, will find that there are more trees in the US at present than at anytime in the country’s history. This is a direct result of fire suppression, which permits more seedlings to become established and for a thriving understory to develop.
If you work with fire fighters in forested ares in the west, you encounter terms such as “fire ladder” reflecting the gradient from dead fuel on forest floors, with brush, young trees, older trees and mature trees creating a “ladder” that a fire can climb from the ground to the crowns of the largest trees. American Indians in California and Oregon tended to set fires periodically in many areas, artificially suppressing succession and creating open “park like” forests. They also burned grass lands encouraging perennial, deep rooted species at the expense of shallow rooted, annuals whose seeds were destroyed by the fires, or whose shallow root systems were killed before seeding could occur. This burning achieved a number of things including encouraging useful early succession plants such as squaw grass, huckleberry, improving browse for deer, and for a number of other useful ends.
The suppression of indian burning opened the door to biological succession patterns that had been limited by fire. During the early 20th century, the decision to attampt to fully suppress all fires lead to “natural” states that have NEVER BEFORE existed. Even prior to indian burning practices became wide spread natural fires created a patch work of age stands and species mixes. Before blaming “climate change” it would make sense to actually determine whether we really know what we speak of.
Al Gored says:
March 1, 2011 at 11:16 am
To answer your questions, the lodgepole pine is the primary host for these major epidemics, and they are not found in Mexico. Because of its survival strategy and stand characteristics – even-aged monoculture-like stands – it is the species that can provide sufficient mt pine beetle habitat to support epidemics. Ponderosa, for those same reasons, do not except under what were once freak conditions but are now widespread because of fire suppression.
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Lodgepole may not be found in Mexico but Mountain Pine beetle is.
Temperature is clearly not the potential constraint in the warm regions that it could be in the cold ones and since beetles tend to concentrate very strongly in a few trees, rather than diffuse their attack across the stand, they do not exterminate themselves by wiping out their future hosts, bearing in mind that if a tree is hit even fairly lightly, it will be dead within the year.
I did fall and burn tree disposal of MPB for several years in areas where lodgepole was the predominant species and, also, in relatively isolated pockets amidst spruce, hemlock, doug fir and thuja. We usually re-baited, the following year, areas that we had treated and would return in the fall to assess the trees and then destroy the infestations.
From year to year there was considerable variation in intensity of outbreak and very little consistency across the region as a whole. There could be a jackpot of red trees in one spot and a few miles away, very few, then the next year it could be reversed.
My point about the related spruce bark beetle in Alaska was that it does get cold there and wildfire suppression has not been the cause of death for every mature spruce from Glenallen to Valdez.
Incidentally, Lodgepole is not the only host in the coldest regions. It is predominant but there’s lots of White pine, too.
We got paid by the tree and disliked White pine because they got hit right up to the top and they grow bigger than LP, so that meant a lot more work.
Oliver Ramsay says:
March 1, 2011 at 1:47 pm
Hi Oliver. Don’t want to be too much of a nitpicker here but I think you are missing some points in your comment, mostly due to overgeneralization.
For example… “since beetles tend to concentrate very strongly in a few trees, rather than diffuse their attack across the stand, they do not exterminate themselves by wiping out their future hosts, bearing in mind that if a tree is hit even fairly lightly, it will be dead within the year.”
During epidemic events, in typical even-aged lp stands, this isn’t true. They kill off the whole stand if those trees are mature. But true, they definitely do not kill off their “future hosts” – by killing those stands, and creating a fire waiting to happen, they kick start their next cycle of hosts when those new pines mature.
And true about the lp not being the only host – as I too have noted in each post – but it is the simplest species to understand how this cycle works. As for the western white pine, it doesn’t grow in areas as cold as the lp and now, just to make life more complicated, an introduced rust often kills them off when they mature as well.
The simplest way to effectively end this cycle would be to simply log these lp pine stands – or large patches of them at least – before they mature and become beetle habitat. Since their growth rate declines dramatically as they mature, not much net wood would be sacrificed to do that. Of course, that ain’t going to happen in parks and wilderness areas. This beetle would have turned huge swaths of Yellowstone red then dead were it not for the fires that beat them to it. That’s basically the lp story. If fire doesn’t get them these beetles will. Just a matter of time. So ‘old growth’ lp stands are rare freaks of nature, and in BC there were vast swaths of them due to fire suppression, and that’s what made things so bad there.
Now, just to be clear, I too have necessarily overgeneralized here, and there are exceptions when one starts talking about forests where lp is a minor component. And things are significantly different for species like ponderosa pines which are fire-adapted in a different way; that is, regular light fires eliminate their competition while the mature trees survive them… compared to lp stands which are flammable by design, and need destructive fires to wipe the slate clean so they can continue to dominate an area. Without fire, the spruces for example, which can start growing in their shade, and which are long living, just take over… while lp, which are shade intolerant, cannot start under spruces.
Anyhow, no matter how warm it is/was, these mt pine beetle epidemics could not occur without huge amounts of beetle habitat, and that habitat was created by Smokey the Bear. That has caused endless problems, including the increased intensity of fires now also blamed on AGW. Really caused by fuel buildups.
Before the so-called scientists get too far along attributing the demise of the pine tree to global warming they should explain what effect reforestation has had on these ecosystems, especially when mixed forests were replaced exclusively with pine trees. I flew from Princeton to Prince George by helicopter in 2010 and saw a lot of pine trees and a lot of forest fires. Makes me wonder what would happen to those poor beetles if they stopped replanting pine trees altogether. Probably be on the endangered species list.
This nonsense of the mountain pine beetles devestating pine forests just doesn’t seem to go away. Even, Al Gore mentions this in his book An Inconvenient Truth. However, Al Gore and this paper conveniently forget to mention that MPB infestations run in about 30 to 40 year cycles and have nothing to do with agw (Carroll et al, 2004). There are four distinct phases of this cycle: Endemic, incipient, epidemic, and declining. These cycles are probably more influenced by the PDO, double lunar nodal cycle, and/or triple solar cycle than anything else.
Steve from rockwood says:
March 1, 2011 at 2:50 pm
Until very recently they never replanted lodgepole pines in BC. They were seen as a ‘weed species’ when they had other species in abundance. Those fires you saw effectively replanted them, if they were burning where lps were growing. So when you look down [from] a helicopter all those even aged stands – of various ages – are each the product of a fire.
So when you note “what effect reforestation has had on these ecosystems” you really mean the fire history there, and that has been a history of fire suppression which allowed all that pine to mature, and become beetle habitat.
But the mt pine beetle won’t be on any endangered species list. It is always in forest ecosystems where its host species live in small numbers attacking mature individual trees, which if they are healthy enough and beetles are few enough can survive those infestations.
That said, given how loony things are, I can almost imagine a photo of a mt pine beetle stranded on an ice floe in a WWF fund-raising brochure… almost.
Al Gored says:
March 1, 2011 at 2:47 pm
“As for the western white pine, it doesn’t grow in areas as cold as the lp and now, just to make life more complicated, an introduced rust often kills them off when they mature as well.”
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But, it does grow in the colder parts of MPB’s range, and people have been talking about blister rust wiping out White pine for years but it hasn’t happened yet.
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“Anyhow, no matter how warm it is/was, these mt pine beetle epidemics could not occur without huge amounts of beetle habitat, and that habitat was created by Smokey the Bear. That has caused endless problems, including the increased intensity of fires now also blamed on AGW. Really caused by fuel buildups.”
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We agree that LP’s growth slows and spruce/ balsam take over if fire doesn’t get there first. But the Cariboo and Chilcotin areas of BC, which are enormous, have been in pine for a much longer time than fire-fighting has been going on. Sure, there are spruce stands, too, and they’re not immune to fire.
Why are there no big fir/hemlock forests? Because fire or logging don’t give them the opportunity. They take too long to come in under the pioneer canopy and attempts to plant fir without the benefit of the overstorey have not been very successful. There are lots of Doug fir vets mixed in with the pine because individual fir trees survive fires.
When you pass a logging truck in that country you can count 120 logs to a load; that’s not big, mature timber.
Humans didn’t cause the MPB thing. Not by AGW and not by putting out all the forest fires.
Anyway, remember AGW causes all those fires so that proves we haven’t eliminated them all!
In the book “America’s Ancient Forests from Ice Age to the Age of Discovery” a decidedly less alarmist tone to is taken by forester Dr. Thomas M. Bonnicksen. He also has a different view on climate change than his OSU/UBC colleagues. An excerpt
“The forests (read plant communities) we see today have an aura of permanence. They seem like finished works of art. However, history shows that they assembled from species that moved from place to place in response to climatic changes (that are natural). The climate may again be shifting to a temporary warming trend. We do not know. We do know that a new glacial age has begun and that our forests will change as the climate changes. Each species will move to a favourable environment independently of other species. When they meet one another, a new forest (read plant community) will form. Then today’s forests will look primeval and the new forests will look modern to those who see them.”
jae says:
February 28, 2011 at 7:31 pm
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Don’t look now Jae, but there is lots of fir in Colorado:
http://esp.cr.usgs.gov/data/atlas/little/abielasi.pdf
http://esp.cr.usgs.gov/data/atlas/little/abieconc.pdf
Perhaps you were thinking of the Nunavit FUR tree … it has a wide tripod like base, covered in white fur tipped with long black claws and huge white teeth … /sarc off
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jae says:
February 28, 2011 at 7:31 pm
“If you could travel back in time to Summit County, Colorado before the miners arrived you would see a patchwork quilt of burned areas, thick lodgepole stands and old growth fir and spruce stands. Unfortunately the miners logged it all and it was replaced with Lodgepole which has now reached its old age and is now being consumed by bugs due to fire supression.”
Is this just a Colorado pipe-dream, or do you have some data to support your “hypothesis??” Old-growth fir? In Colorado? What kind of “fir,”