Sentences with phrase «beetle outbreaks»

The next article will discuss the geography and dynamics of the beetle outbreaks in relation to likely causative factors, including climate.

Here I'll try to give background on the issues related to bark beetle outbreaks, working from proximate to ultimate causes, and focusing on the one beetle species currently doing by far the most damage, the mountain pine beetle (MPB), Dendroctonus ponderosae.

Because natural fire regimes varied widely historically, and are complicated in many places by similar variability in logging practices and intensities, the effect of fire reductions on bark beetle outbreaks varies considerably and involves several issues of spatial and temporal scale variability.

What else do they eat and where, in addition to beetle outbreaks?

In general, weather and climate are the key drivers of fire occurrence; large severe fires are more likely when it's hot, dry and windy, regardless of beetle outbreaks.

Area burned in the western United States is unaffected by recent mountain pine beetle outbreaks.

I think this continues to be a big misconception with the public, which is understandable because climate is a key driver of both bark beetle outbreaks and wildfires.

No, the bark beetle outbreaks have little - to - no relationship with trends in area burned or the ecological severity of fires.

Many people jump to the conclusion that bark beetle outbreaks are causing fires.

The pine beetle outbreaks in the US Rockies in the 1960s and 1980s were extreme, and may have been an early warning sign of trends to emerge later at higher elevations and latitudes.

These effects are utterly swamped by the recent mortality due to bark beetle outbreaks, in which mortality rates are vastly higher, and over a vastly larger area.

«Drought is a reoccurring phenomenon in California that invariably leads to bark beetle outbreaks and tree mortality.

Tom Veblen, a professor of geography at the University of Colorado at Boulder, has been involved in studying the effects of fire and mountain pine beetle outbreaks in the Rocky Mountains for 25 years.

Climate disruption in California — including record high temperatures, ongoing drought, tree die off and bark beetle outbreaks — has increased the state's wildfire risk by extending wildfire seasons, expanding at risk areas, and increasing fire size.

The 2015 California Forest Health Highlights Report found that drought - stricken and fire - damaged trees fueled bark beetle outbreaks of epidemic proportions in areas of coastal and southern California, as well as throughout the central and southern Sierra Nevada range.

Unfortunately — as the climate of the boreal forests warms more beetle larvae survive the winter months — large pine beetle outbreaks are no longer once in a century events.

We use two ponderosa pine - dominated sites in western Montana, U.S.A. to apply a modeling approach that couples information acquired via remote sensing, soil surveys, and local weather stations to assess where bark beetle outbreaks might first occur and why.

The beetle is now wiping out a whole ecosystem, high - elevation whitebark pine forests, that saw only limited beetle outbreaks during warm spells in the past.

Pinyon pine, an iconic and dominant species in the West, has suffered nearly 100 percent mortality at sites in Colorado and Arizona, where climate change has made trees more susceptible to bark beetle outbreaks that in turn result in increased wildfires.

And because pine beetle outbreaks have been rare in the past, whitebark pines have not evolved effective defenses.

This drying effect is also demonstrated well in our local spruce bark beetle outbreaks.

The new study is important because it shows that drought is a better predictor of spruce beetle outbreaks in northern Colorado than temperature alone, said lead study author Sarah Hart, a CU - Boulder doctoral student in geography.

Univolt pine beetle outbreaks are decimating the tree - line ecosystem in the west.

PORTLAND, Ore. — A new paper published today in the Natural Areas Journal indicates that bark beetle outbreaks that have turned millions of acres of forests in the Inter-mountain West a noticeable red coloration (from tree death) do not substantially increase the risk of active crown fire in lodgepole pine and spruce forests as commonly assumed.

Lastly, the third experiment asks this specific question: Did anthropogenic greenhouse gases increase the probability of major bark beetle outbreaks in western North America during the first decade of the 21st century?

Field studies suggest that recent mountain pine beetle outbreaks correlate with mean August temperatures > 59 °F (15 °C) and that outbreak size is correlated with minimum winter temperatures and drought conditions in previous years (Preisler et al. 2012).

Climate, weather, and recent mountain pine beetle outbreaks in the western United States.

For lodgepole pine, the model showed it would take 79 years for the first post-fire stands to become highly susceptible to bark beetle outbreaks, and 115 years for half of the stands to reach vulnerability.

Do severe wildfires make forests in the western United States more susceptible to future bark beetle outbreaks?

Turner and Raffa say land and forest managers may want to consider promoting and maintaining this natural variability to help protect forests from bark beetle outbreaks.

They measured how susceptible the forests would be to bark beetle outbreaks each year following fire based on the characteristics of the dominant tree species in Greater Yellowstone: lodgepole pine and Douglas fir.

«Bark beetle outbreaks transformed former production forests into a growing wilderness that offers great possibilities for the conservation of the barbastelle bat,» said Mareike Kortmann, lead author of the Animal Conservation study.

New research indicates that bark beetle outbreaks in forests create several new roosting and foraging possibilities for the protected bat species Barbastella barbastellus.

An entirely new temperature regime could impair the species» ability to return as it has after past beetle outbreaks.

Nor should you, ecologists add: Bark beetle outbreaks should be allowed to happen as part of the forest's life cycle, and the dead spruces provide habitat for many species.

Pinyon pine, an iconic and dominant species in the West, has suffered nearly 100 % mortality at sites in Colorado and Arizona, where climate change has made trees more susceptible to bark beetle outbreaks that in turn result in increased wildfires.

Over the past decade, B.C. has experienced a devastating mountain pine beetle outbreak, which has destroyed 16.3 million hectares of forest.

The primary driver «We view this as the stage - setting event that has allowed more beetle events,» said David Thoma, a National Park Service ecologist studying factors behind the beetle outbreak.

«Fire severity in southwestern Colorado unaffected by spruce beetle outbreak.»

Millions of acres of forest have been lost, with severe economic and ecological impacts from a beetle outbreak ten times larger than previous outbreaks.

For mountain pine beetles, the study found fire severity was high immediately after an outbreak, but over time as the number of trees killed by the beetle outbreak grew, fire severity leveled out.

However, the indirect effects of climate change on forests, such as changing wildfire and beetle outbreak severity, are already having a large impact on the health of Montana's forests and in some instances these impacts are easier to predict.

In the worst year, the impacts resulting from the beetle outbreak in British Columbia were equivalent to 75 % of the average annual direct forest fire emissions from all of Canada during 1959 — 1999.

The combination of forest stress created by drought and the warming climate, in conjunction with the overstocked conditions, led to a huge pine beetle outbreak and massive forest mortality.

«The current spruce beetle outbreak has the potential to expand and intensify and have an immense impact on the values held by people living in Alaska,» Lundquist wrote.

Six said that blister rust, drought and the ongoing pine beetle outbreak are each bad for whitebark pines, in and of themselves.

Warmer winters and unrelenting drought in western North America have led to a rampant mountain pine beetle outbreak, with no end in sight.

A 2009 study looked at conifer forests in the San Bernardino Mountains in Southern California after significant tree mortality, stemming from a pine beetle outbreak in 2002, was followed by fires in subsequent years.

In one case, an unprecedented loss of trees triggered by the pine beetle outbreak in western North America has decreased the net carbon balance on a scale comparable to British Columbia's current fossil fuel emissions

The result recently has been a larger beetle outbreak in spite of wetter overall conditions.