Wyoming's Dead And Dying Lodgepole Forests, Killed By Bark Beetle, Waiting For A Spark

[hatrack]

EDIT

In the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest, 90 percent of lodgepole pines greater than five inches in diameter will be dead in the next two to three years. Tony Tezak, forest fire management officer for the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest, estimated that more than 150,000 acres of the forest are currently infected by the mountain pine beetle, and the spread is inevitable, leaving a swath of red-needled trees across Wyoming and Colorado.

A fire in these red forests would almost certainly spread to the treetops, fueled by the dead needles. “Once you make that transition from the ground to the crowns, you have a catastrophic fire. It’s very, very difficult to control,” Tezak said. “It’s exposed to the wind. There’s nothing to stop it.” But that danger is short-lived, as the needles remain on the dead trees for just a couple seasons before falling to the ground.

At that point, scientists say, the fire danger would actually be lower as the dead trunks turn gray and gradually fall during the next few decades. Without needles, tree canopies are much less dense and in some cases no longer touching — “this stage is analogous to trying to set fire to a row of telephone poles,” Dominik Kulakowski, an assistant professor of geography at Clark University who has researched disturbances in forest ecosystems, said in an e-mail. He used to be a research scientist at the University of Colorado.

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Things get more complicated as those dead trees fall or are blown over, a process that will continue for many years and lead to the growth of smaller trees that suddenly have sunlight and room. A paper written by Kulakowski and scientists from Colorado State University, University of Colorado and University of Idaho theorizes that the danger of a crown fire may increase over the decades following a pine beetle outbreak for two reasons.

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http://www.laramieboomerang.com/articles/2008/08/23/news/doc48b0dc3f65c01750157920.txt

[XemaSab]

1. What kind of tree is a lodgpole?

:P

[hatrack]

2. They're kind of like lodgepole pines, but with shittier spelling skills.

:hi:

[XemaSab]

4. .

;)

[villager]

3. But... only hippie liberal commies worry about that "environmental stuff"

No need for concern in blood-red Wyoming!

[lob1]

5. I understand the same is happening in Colorado.

All those lodgepole pines will be gone in 5 years, I'm told. The way the beetles attack, when the trees show symptoms of being infected, it's already too late to save the tree.

[ben_meyers]

6. Wouldn't now be a good time to let commercial loggers

in to clean these trees out for pulp wood or bio-fuels?

[liberal N proud]

7. Fire is new life to the Lodgepole Pine

The fires on 88 in Yellowstone proved to save the forest there. Much of the old growth in the forest that burned was dead. Forest Fire Prevention had done nothing to clear out the dead fuel on the forest floor.
The way a lodgepole pine rejuvenates is through heat of a fire releasing the seed with in the lodgepole pine cones.
Without fire, no new trees.

[DCKit]

8. Would also act as population control on the beetles...

though I have no idea how long or how effective it would be. From what I understand, the beetle's population explosion is due warmer winters not killing enough eggs and larvae of tree pests - and it's not just lodgepole pines. Lots of tree species are marching north.

[amandabeech]

9. Isn't one of the problem with intense fire that the heat is so intense that it burns

all the organic matter in the soil down about a foot so that the lodgepole seed cannot regenerate? The same sort of thing happened in Michigan in the late 1900s with predominantly White Pine forests. The logs were hauled out leaving an incredible amount of slash on the ground. Eventually the slash dried out and huge stretches of the northern lower peninsula and upper peninsula burned. In some areas, the intense fire carbonized everything in the soil to a considerable depth. The worst hit of those areas still have not completely regenerated.

If the Forest Service and contractors could haul a large percentage of the dead stuff out now, perhaps there could be the possibility that the fires would be less intense and allow the lodgepole seeds to survive. If the dead stuff were burned in a commercial facility to produce electricity, then the ashes, which contain vital nutrients, could be hauled off and spread over the area from which the dead trees were removed. In the Detroit area, ash trees taken down due to the Emerald Ash Borer infestation are burned for electricity--its the only way to kill the damn bugs--and it works out well.

[liberal N proud]

10. All I know is Yellowstone tree growth is doing great following the fires.

[amandabeech]

11. Did those fires take the entire tree?

I can't recall.

[liberal N proud]

12. In some areas it was a clear or total burn

We were visiting Yellowstone in 88 and had to leave early due to the fires. We returned every other year after that and have been amazed at the growth of those trees in the burn areas.
There are areas where the some dead trees still stand with the new growth rising up through them while other areas everything was consumed.

[amandabeech]

13. Thanks.

I'm glad that Yellowstone is doing well. Let's hope that the other fire-struck areas come back just as well!