Sentences with word «whitebark»

Vast stands of whitebark pine help to maintain the mountain snowpacks that provide water to more than 30 million people in 16 U.S. states each year.

A recent inventory says 25 percent of whitebark pines in the Yellowstone ecosystem have rust.

The hope for whitebark pines in the face of the blister rust epidemic is that some trees are resistant and pass that resistance on to seedlings, which can be replanted in the wild, until genetic resistance to blister rust is well - distributed.

MPB mortality on whitebark pine in western Wyoming's Bridger - Teton National Forest.

Warming temperatures allow the native beetle to thrive in previously inhospitable high - elevation forests, where the insect bores into and kills whitebark pine trees.

As the fungal disease spreads south and east, it leaves behind «ghost» forests, Tomback said - stands of dead whitebark pine and mortality rates of 90 percent or higher.

«It was the most magnificent whitebark ecosystem I'd seen,» Logan would later recall in an interview with The New York Times.

Currently we are focused on the ectomycorrhizal fungi associated with whitebark pine and the biodiversity / biogeography of true alpine fungi in the Rocky Mountains.

By 2007, virtually no living whitebarks remained.

Clinging to its rocky soil are some of the oldest trees in the western United States — slow - growing whitebark pines, the oldest dating back more than a millennium.

An ancient record Assessing lake sediment cores from the region reaching 15,000 years into the past, a Montana State University team found whitebark pines more abundant despite higher summer temperatures and fire frequency than today.

Thirty years» of warming has left whitebark pines exposed to a threat they rarely saw.

The agency planted almost 350 acres of rust - resistant whitebark pine in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem this year, part of an ongoing 15 - year effort to help the species, said Mary Frances Mahalovich, a Forest Service geneticist.

Charcoal and ancient pollen records suggest the niche space needed by whitebark pine is much larger than models estimate.

Beetles gained similar strength in the Rockies during mild winters in the late»90s and early 2000s, killing not only their usual victims but also entire hillsides of ancient whitebark pines, which live at altitudes once too frigid to support the insects.A beautifully concise explanation of what has happened in a large portion of the West, thanks in part to climate change.

The karakami paper practice traditionally involves hand - carved symbols and designs on whitebark magnolia.

However, this will be a factor only if the insect is still able to enter the winter in its cold - hardy stage; this may be occurring in high - elevation forest types such as whitebark and limber pine.

Yet when whitebark pine nut crops fail or do poorly, grizzlies tend to abandon the high country in search of food.

The bears raid squirrel middens or caches of stored whitebark pine nuts in the fall, adding on the layers of fat that will get the bears through long winters, and improve the odds that grizzly mothers will have successful pregnancies.

Swaths of dead whitebarks now stretch across the landscape, their telltale red needles bearing witness to the unprecedented impacts of climate change in this iconic ecosystem.

The first problem facing whitebark pines is an altered fire regime in the last century or so, Tomback said.

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.

These days, the beetles survive the winters and are decimating whitebark pine trees, a species that shelters and feeds 50 species within Crater Lake National Park.

Standing on a mountain plateau south of Missoula, Dr. Six and Dr. Running pointed to the devastation the beetles had wrought in the forest around them, consisting of a high - elevation species called whitebark pine.

Good years for whitebark pine seed production mean good years for grizzly bears - abundant food far, far away from livestock, birdfeeders, orchards, garbage and other temptations in valley bottoms crowded with roads, development and people.

Climate influences on whitebark pine mortality from mountain pine beetle in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

A few years ago, Six was stunned to find sites where the mountain pine beetle was skipping right over lower - altitude stands of lodgepole pines, to focus on and kill whitebark pine stands at higher altitudes.

«Now, concerns about viability of whitebark pine populations are one of the main reasons grizzly bears in Yellowstone National Park are still listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.»

«A weaker defense system may also be why we are seeing a strong preference now by the beetle for whitebark pine over lodgepole pine, which has long been its preferred host.»

These conservation projects have included returning salmon to rivers in Canada, otter protection in Denmark, bee recovery in the UK, and in Hong Kong Banrock Station has been proud to support the Mai Po Wetlands, while in the US it has supported American Forests» campaign to preserve the whitebark pine.

Here and there among the whitebark stands, patches of burnt orange, the color of rust, were appearing.

By 2008, much of the whitebark population of Yellowstone National Park would be similarly afflicted.

He is currently part of a group of scientists and citizens pushing the government to confer protected status on the whitebark pine.

The study, appearing in this month's issue of Ecology, also portends even harder times for the grizzlies, thanks to recent poor yields of whitebark pine seeds, one of the bear's key foods.

The duo folded these data into a computer model of births and deaths, taking into account factors — such as age, sex, whitebark pine crop size, and whether a bear had become accustomed to humans — that influenced the odds of survival of any particular tracked bear.

The death is a major concern for conservationists, biologists and public land managers, for the whitebark pine supports the entire ecosystem.

Hit hard «The whitebark pine is both a foundation and a keystone species,» said Jesse Logan, a retired U.S. Forest Service entomologist.

«In the warmest periods, the whitebark pine was really pretty happy,» said Cathy Whitlock, MSU director of the Montana Institute on Ecosystems who led the research team.

But two - thirds of the whitebark pine forest in the Yellowstone region grows on land protected by either wilderness status or a national park boundary — regions where intensive management is often anathema.

Polly Buotte, a graduate student at the University of Idaho, has modeled beetle outbreaks, whitebark pine mortality and projected temperatures.

«We as a society need to reduce emissions or these refugia are just going to become hospices for whitebark pine,» she said.

«The health of the whitebark pine is very closely related to the health of the entire ecosystem.»

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK — If you've hiked in the Northern Rockies above 9,000 feet, you've hiked among a whitebark pine forest.

Other high - elevation species, such as Belding's ground squirrel and whitebark pine, are also vulnerable and could lose a much larger proportion of their range.

They inspected branches from seven whitebark pine sites in western Montana, counting the scars left by pollen cones and seed cones.

«In the past, low years for whitebark pine cones have led to six times more conflicts between grizzlies and humans, as hungry bears look for food in campgrounds,» says Crone.

A small percentage of whitebark pine trees have outlived the ongoing destruction by pests and disease.

«They represent the future of whitebark pines.»

«By combining field data on seed and pollen production for whitebark pines with models that simulate mature cone production, this study helps to answer that question for these pines.»