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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This illustrates one of the more serious biological consequences of tolerating the warming lie. It provides a handy explanation for adverse biological events which totally excuses all parties concerned from doing a REAL investigation and finding the actual cause. So the harm continues.
Oliver Ramsay says:
March 1, 2011 at 4:34 pm
You ought to look at some historic photos and see what the ‘natural’ forests of the West looked like under ‘natural’ fire regimes. And by ‘natural’ I mean with Native people lighting most of the fires, for a variety of very pragmatic survival reasons.
That rust won’t ‘wipe out’ WWP because it only attacks the mature and old ones. Same reason why the mt pine beetle won’t ‘wipe out’ lps.
“Why are there no big fir/hemlock forests?”
There are but there are a lot less of them now due to logging. But Interior Douglas Fir are another fire-adapted species in the same way as Ponderosa pines are… those beautiful parklike stands of big vets are maintained by regular light fires. Now that fire suppression has stopped those regular fuel reductions, many of those forest are choked with young trees which not only add heat when burned but provide bridges for the fires to reach up into the canopies of the big trees and kill them.
As for hemlock, they grow in much moister areas where fire is less of a factor… like red cedars and coastal D Firs. So that’s a different story. Those relatively long living trees naturally become the classic ‘rain forest’ old growth forests than some people – notably misinformed environmentalists – imagine all forest become.
Anyhow, I think we fully agree that AGW didn’t cause the recent epidemic in BC and elsewhere, although mild winters did enable it to become so huge and spread so far north and east into Alberta.
It is obvious it can’t be temperature related.
Compare Bend, Oregon and West Yellowstone, Montana. Both areas have huge numbers of Lodgepole killed by pine beetles. Assuming the post by Rattus Norvegicus above is correct that hard October freezes are a key to temperature control of the bugs.
Bend: Average October low 32, record 0
West Yellowstone, Average October low 22, record -20
These two areas show similar patterns of infestation, but their temperature differences are far more than the observed warming. Fire suppression is a much more likely culpret.
Courtesy of my alma mater, UBC, Forestry Dept. magazine, Branchlines volume 22#1:
CONS 210- Anew course in visualizing climate change.
A central theme of UBC’s Sustainability Initiative to integrate
sustainability in teaching, research
and campus operations is the university as an agent of change in the
community. One way of empowering students and researchers to
improve awareness and accelerate
action on sustainability is to help
them harness the power of visual
media in communicating scientific
information to lay-people.
To this end, the Faculty of Forestry has developed and piloted
a new course (led by Dr Stephen
Sheppard, Department of Forest
Resources Management), Visualizing Climate Change (CONS 210).
This course explores some of our
latest climate change research
through a range of visualization
media that can enhance learning:
3D landscape visualizations, Hollywood movie special effects, video
games, Google Earth, remote sensing imagery, GIS mapping, and data
visualization. The course is aimed at
2nd and 3rd year undergraduates
from across campus, with no prerequisites. Making the course open
to both arts and science students is
important, since we need an interdisciplinary approach in understanding the social and environmental impacts of climate change
and creating real-world solutions.
The course uses team-based learning methods and emphasizes
interactive learning with ‘clickers’
and collaborative exercises. CONS
210 is one of several new major
sustainability-themed classes and
programs offered this academic
year (see http://www.sustain.ubc.ca/
teaching-learning/).
A primary objective of Visualizing Climate Change is to advance
students’ broader understanding
of climate change and how it links
to people’s everyday lives in multiple ways. The course provides
a grounding in key concepts of
climate change causes, effects, vulnerabilities, and human response
strategies, structured around standard ways of projecting future scenarios. A second objective is to give
our students the techniques and
confidence to communicate with
their peers and associates on solutions to the climate crisis. Part of the
course reviews the pros and cons
of different types of visual media.
Students learn that visualizations
such as the disaster movie The
Day After Tomorrow or dramatic ……….
…..You Tube social marketing pieces can motivate people,
but too many doom and gloom dramatizations can
have a paralyzing effect, and the science is not always
accurately communicated. Conversely, showing people
ways to help mitigate and adapt to climate change in
their own communities – through things like urban
forestry, solar power and bioenergy, retrofitting homes,
electric vehicles and local food production – can really
get people thinking about solutions and the choices
they can take.
The course is supported by several scientists conducting cutting-edge research in climate change adaptation
and mitigation, addressing: forest ecosystems and assisted
migration of tree species; glaciers and snowpack; carbon
sequestration, wildfire risk management, renewable
energy and biomass, urban heat islands, energy policy
and community perceptions. Co-instructors in the pilot
version of this course included faculty members from
Forestry, Earth and Ocean Sciences and Geography.
For their term project, students worked in groups
to develop a plan for communicating science on a climate change topic relevant to a non-expert Canadian
audience. The goal was to build awareness of possible
climate change implications for the audience’s geographic or interest area, and stimulate thinking on the
topic. The students had to identify the basic science
content that the plan would cover and describe the
types of visual media to be used, consistent with principles for effective, compelling, and defensible public
engagement. Groups chose to develop communication
plans for a High School class on the climate impacts
on forest ecosystems, for provincial educators of grade
5-7 pupils on renewable energy, and for local elected
officials on adapting to sea level rise, among others.
Prototype communication approaches developed by
the students included:
• a cartoon storyboard of the carbon cycle and green
energy sources, linking to future visualizations of tidal
energy generators and a North Vancouver windfarm;
• a Smart Board workshop for Grade 8 students in Williams Lake on their relationship to shrinking glaciers
and snowpack; and
• a design for a video game called “Last Stand” that
explores pine beetle epidemic/restoration scenarios
from the standpoint of a company CEO, a politician,
and an environmentalist.
The pilot year of the course taught us a lot about
the benefits and challenges of learning about climate
change and applying visual media to engage others
in that same learning process. We acknowledge the
invaluable support for this course from the Pacific
Institute for Climate Solutions, Pacific Climate Impacts
Consortium, Metro Vancouver, UBC Media Services,
the USI’s Spotlight funding program, and stellar teaching assistants Ana Elia Ramon and Scott Krayenhoff.
For more information on this new course, visit: www.
sustain.ubc.ca/teaching-learning/featured-content/
visualizing-climate-change.
Dr Stephen Sheppard has recently completed a book on
“Visualizing Climate Change” as a text for next year’s class.
He can be reached at stephen.sheppard@ubc.ca
Yikes.
Robert says:
February 28, 2011 at 7:57 pm
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.
————————————————————————————————-
Nope. They can be carried hundreds of miles by wind. They were carried right over the Rocky Mountains from BC into Alberta. Water is not an obstacle.
Al Gored says:
March 1, 2011 at 5:10 pm
“Anyhow, I think we fully agree that AGW didn’t cause the recent epidemic in BC and elsewhere, although mild winters did enable it to become so huge and spread so far north and east into Alberta.”
——————————-
Yes, we agree it wasn’t AGW. Even if there were such a thing, the nature of the MPB epidemic is not consistent with it.
It did not move north. It started in the north and moved south, which belies the AGW notion. That also casts doubt on mild winters being significant.
————–
“You ought to look at some historic photos and see what the ‘natural’ forests of the West looked like under ‘natural’ fire regimes. And by ‘natural’ I mean with Native people lighting most of the fires, for a variety of very pragmatic survival reasons.”
————————–
“The West” is not a meaningful term in this context. We were discussing LP forests on the Interior Plateau of BC. Of course, there are cedar/ hemlock forests to the east and the west but my question was about why the pine doesn’t get supplanted.
As for the fires being mostly started by humans in the old times, that’s absurd. Thunderstorms are frequent in the summer with thousands of lightning strikes.
————
“That rust won’t ‘wipe out’ WWP because it only attacks the mature and old ones. Same reason why the mt pine beetle won’t ‘wipe out’ lps.”
————-
You have that backwards. Young trees are the hardest hit. The fungal spores enter the needles and infect the stem easily on a seedling. Infection of big trees is often just on limbs.
However, I agree that PB is not going to wipe out LP.
We started this exchange with your claim that we do know how all this works and that it’s our fault. You haven’t convinced me.
@Wayne Delbeke says:
March 1, 2011 at 5:49 pm
Could be, i am not the expert on this, still we make it much easier for them without the aid of climate change, climate change has very little to do with the Pine Beetle, mismanagement due to green sentiments on the other hand…
chris b says:
March 1, 2011 at 5:38 pm
“……………………………..Yikes”
The one solace is that they will tire of it in time and chase some other silliness.
In all of this discussion, of which I have played a part, I don’t see much attention to the crux of the warmist argument: the temperature increase attributable to GLOBAL warming.
In order for the pine beetle to survive and pass its remorra-like disease to the trees, a certain minimum temperature must not occur for a certain number of days. From my personal experience in the Alberta slopes where the pine beetle is a problem, there has been a marked decrease in “serious” low temperatures of -35C to -45C since I arrived in 1979. However, the minimum temps have NOT gone up by a degree or so, which is what global warming alarmists might attribute to AGW, but by 10 or 15C for the prior 2 or 3 week periods we have. And it has not been progressive, but a step-function that occurred somewhere in the 80s, I think.
So: what temp increase are the warmists referring to? It seems too much to be accounted for by even CAGW theory at present. A regional change of significance, yes, but not global, and certainly not of the magnitude that could in any form be attributable to global warming.
Anyone? How much, in theory, could the winter temps of the eastern slopes of the Rockies be attributed to global warming REGARDLESS of its cause?
The charge of AGW causing pine beetle infestation seems to fail by regionality and by magnitude of temperature change observed and magnitude of temperature change considered a possible AGW symptom.
Oliver Ramsay says:
March 1, 2011 at 6:30 pm
“It did not move north. It started in the north and moved south, which belies the AGW notion.”
I am not sure how you arrive at this? If we are specifically talking about the recent BC epidemic – as per your “LP forests on the Interior Plateau of BC” – that ostensibly started in Tweedsmuir Prov Park… then spread both north(east) and south(east) from there. The AGW hype got hottest when it spread into Alberta north of there.
Re historic photographs… ““The West” is not a meaningful term in this context.” OK. There are historic photographs of that region too. Lots of research done based on comparing historic and current photographs of the same places, and in almost all interior areas they show the obvious effects of fire.
“but my question was about why the pine doesn’t get supplanted.”
I think I missed that. In any case, it is the same story. Because of regular fires. In the typical simplified scenario, the long-living spruce, which can start growing in the shade of the lp, eventually shade out the lps… unless or until there’s a fire. Kills off the spruce and replants the pine. That’s the long term cycle. Now with managed forests, in theory, hopefully when they salvage logged the lp they left the spruce. Back in the bad old days I saw them clean out everything allegedly to stop the beetle!
Guess I had my details off on the WWP. Writing off the top of my aging head.
“As for the fires being mostly started by humans in the old times, that’s absurd.”
Don’t think so… worth a look:
http://westinstenv.org/histwl/2008/02/26/are-lightning-fires-unnatural-a-comparison-of-aboriginal-and-lightning-ignition-rates-in-the-united-states/
http://westinstenv.org/sosf/2010/06/18/climate-isnt-responsible-for-everything/
“We started this exchange with your claim that we do know how all this works and that it’s our fault. You haven’t convinced me.”
That’s OK. I find this stuff very interesting so enjoy discussions. Everything is always more complicated than it seems. But here’s one last summary as I see it:
Mt Pine Beetles need habitat, epidemics of them need huge amounts of habitat, and ‘unprecedented’ ones as large as the recent BC to AB epidemic need unprecendented amounts of habitat. And that is what they had. Vast expanses of mature even-aged lp stands, all with prime mpb habitat – suitably thick cambium layers – waiting to host that population explosion. No matter how warm it got, no epidemic of this size could have been possible without that vast habitat to exploit. And that was a product of modern fire suppression.
How’s that?
Doug Proctor says:
March 1, 2011 at 8:19 pm
In all of this discussion, of which I have played a part, I don’t see much attention to the crux of the warmist argument: the temperature increase attributable to GLOBAL warming.
In order for the pine beetle to survive and pass its remorra-like disease to the trees, a certain minimum temperature must not occur for a certain number of days.
———————-
In an earlier comment, I mentioned that there is a putative 1.5 degree C rise in the wintertime average daily minimum.
My contention is that the claim that outbreaks are only prevented by temperatures of -35C is not proven. The range of MPB is from north central BC down to Mexico. In much of that range it seldom or never reaches -35 and yet, there was not an epidemic.
Insects are very mysterious creatures.
Al Gored says:
March 1, 2011 at 9:33 pm
————–
Sorry Al, I can’t let you just go off to bed!
How would more fires produce fewer pine stands and more mixed woods?
Pine is the ne plus ultra post-fire pioneer species. It takes a lot longer to get a spruce or fir forest established.
Oliver Ramsay says:
March 1, 2011 at 11:05 pm
“Sorry Al, I can’t let you just go off to bed!
How would more fires produce fewer pine stands and more mixed woods?
Pine is the ne plus ultra post-fire pioneer species. It takes a lot longer to get a spruce or fir forest established.”
Sorry Oliver, I went to sleep.
I think you misunderstood what I was trying to say but… here goes. Again, going back to historic photos showing the effects of the ‘natural’ fire regime, what you see is less trees in general and more diversity… in the specific case of lps, more different aged stands, each reflecting different fire events. And in many areas where there are lp stands now, no trees at all. In the Chilcotin and further south there were more grasslands, which were fire maintained (same with the prairies).
Now, one effect of that is that with more patchy cover, there was less continuous forest to burn, so more patchy fires… which also contributes to this diversity. Even now most fires miss patches, and with less continuous forests (and less fuel buildup in general due to regular fires), more patches get missed.
So to INTERIOR Douglas Fir, like in the Chilcotin. They are actually a fire adapted species too. Once they reach a certain age their bark is fire resistant and their lower trunks are typically bare so they can easily withstand regular light fires. Indeed they need that to prevent too much fuel buildup or the growth of too much understory which now does make fires too intense for old trees to survive (particularly when young trees create fire ladders to to the upper green parts of those trees).
Spruce trees are and were typically found in moister areas where fire was less prevalent. And historic photos show that in many areas where they are now, they were scattered or absent under natural fire regimes.
So, if you add all this together – regular fires with most frequency in the driest most fire prone areas (where you find lp and interior Doug Fir and, further south Ponderosa pine which is fire adapted like Int D Fir) plus fewer fires and thus more spruce in moister areas, and then add the randomness of how each fire moves, the whole thing adds up to a much more diverse and mixed landscape than we have now.
Then you add aspen, which is virtually fire-proof when it is green. That species provides some of the best evidence for Native burning because historic fires in those stands were typically in the spring, the prime time for most of their burning activities and the time when lightning strikes are almost nonexistent.
So, there’s a long rambling answer to what I think your question was. Make any sense to you?
P.S. Did you check out those links?
Thus, in places like the Fraser Canyon I’ll address your points
Oops. Sorry Oliver that last line was accidentally left hanging… ignore.
Once again, the alarmists have set a long-term projection.
In 69 years, we’ll be able to see if their projection comes true. Wanna bet that the original authors won’t be alive by then?
Makes it hard for us to say “see, I told you so…”
@ur momisugly Al Gored,
Sorry, busy then sidetracked on the greenhouse thread.
I don’t disagree with most of your last comment; just enough that I don’t think we can blame Smokey. Martin Mars tankers haven’t been around for a whole forest cycle, for one thing. If you’ve ever built hand-guard you’ll know how ineffective it is.
I haven’t yet read your links, but will do so tomorrow. I do remember reading fairly recently that the Indians’ use of fire is thought to have been overstated.
Wayne Delbeke says: March 1, 2011 at 4:51 pm
[…] reference to jae.
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,”
On the western slope we have lots of Blue and Engleman Spruce. I think those qualify as old-growth fir, but they tend to be along wetter areas from the mid-state and south. As one heads north to near Steamboat though, I recall large stands of big firs.