Has the Mountain Pine Beetle killed your landscapes?

[Heroique]

I’m just back from a regular summer trip to SW Montana, where I enjoy climbing mountains to photograph – year-by-year – several favorite cone-bearing trees, such as the Ponderosa, Lodgepole, and Bristlecone.

What a deadly difference one year makes…

All the individual trees I visit – and I mean ALL of them, scattered across far-flung forests – have been killed by the Mountain Pine Beetle, which have flourished in recent years. (Let’s just say I came home with lots of unexposed film.)

As you may have heard, it’s an infestation that’s doing quick work, killing millions of acres of pines across Western North America – Montana, Colorado, Wyoming, just to name three states. And further North too: British Columbia & Alberta.

If you live near (or visit) these areas, has the ongoing plague hurt your photography? Have you watched the beetle kill favorite trees, or ruin photogenic landscapes? If you haven’t visited, have you heard about this phenomenon?

Just one example: I photographed this favorite tree last summer – a Whitebark Pine – and posted the shot below a few months ago. A very healthy tree. This summer, I was eager to return for a more complete study of its fantastic, rugged shape…

Imagine my distress when I found this tree dead – its trunk studded with circular beetle bores & surrounded by a mat of dry, brown needles. (The insect also claimed all its nearby companions, once forming a little forest on top a rocky outcrop; suddenly, it’s a skeletal graveyard without shade.)

I understand recent winters haven’t been cold enough to naturally kill-off the beetle beneath the bark in its larval stage. And this has helped the insects emerge as summer adults in plague-like numbers, ready to infest more trees. (Yes, I’ll go ahead and mention “Climate Change.”)

I hope the upcoming winter will see the mercury drop sufficiently so I can discover new living trees to replace my favorite dead ones…

[Sal Santamaura]

...If you live near (or visit) these areas, has the ongoing plague hurt your photography? Have you watched the beetle kill favorite trees, or ruin photogenic landscapes? If you haven’t visited, have you heard about this phenomenon?[/…

We own land at 7,700' just outside Rocky Mountain National Park on which we planned to be retired and living by now. If we had been able to do that, my photography would undoubtedly have been affected, though not necessarily ruined, since I work in black and white. Unfortunately, due to family illness, we can't move to that elevation, so the final construction drawings remain rolled up and we're still working here. We did, however, have 12 of the most valuable Ponderosa Pines on our land sprayed against beetles both last and this year.

...I hope the upcoming winter will see the mercury drop sufficiently so I can discover new living trees to replace my favorite dead ones…

The bumper sticker I've read and most enjoyed said "I feel much better since I gave up hope."

[jim kitchen]

Yes it has, because it is distressing to see the extent of the damage...

The Western Canadian landscape beauty is constantly being changed, as you mentioned, where millions of trees in British Columbia are affected by this torturous beetle. A count in 2003 indicates that 25 million acres, or 10 million hectares, were affected in British Columbia, Canada. That area is equivalent to ten plus Yellowstone Parks or the approximate area of the State of Ohio. The effect of this prolific beetle is overwhelming, and the affected pine trees are scattered along the mountain sides, where they have a distinctive dark red colour. I believe this colour change is caused by a fungus that is attached to the beetle which eventually migrates through the tree's bark.

It is an unfortunate event, and one that "Mother Nature" could possibly cure during consecutive winters with continuous minus 40 degree Celsius weather. I do believe this beetle does have a few natural predators, but they seem to be out of sync, regarding their family numbers, and location...

jim k

[jwaddison]

The dark red colour results from the tree dying, by whatever means. The fungus stains the wood a blue colour however.

[Drew Wiley]

Bark beetles have been particularly prolific in the Sierras recently, and there are
some sizable ghost forests of Tamarack pine around the 8000 ft elevation. Allegedly
global warming, but no doubt drought of some sort. Tamaracks tend to die off in
sizable stands, then when the lightning hits, instead of just burning along the ground,
the whole stand burns. Produces some striking charred trees for photos, and then
the next season you get tremendous wildflowers over the burn, including fireweed.
Certainly been some beautiful sections of trail in several different locations. Some
red fir burned too. The young trees weren't affected, and it seems a hot fire
actually does good because it sterilizes the area of the beetle infestation. Normally
they would just die off in colder winters.

[jim kitchen]

Here is a map from Natural Resources Canada 2006, showing the extent of this little bugger in British Columbia, and the smaller infestation along the Alberta British Columbia Border...

Huge area...

A note on the blue stain fungi: Ophiostoma http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/docs/v-g/dpp...dpp-mpb3a.aspx


jim k

[Dave Jeffery]

It was incredible to see how many dead trees were being cut down and removed in Utah due to the beetles damage. I was really shocked when I was up in Banff, Alberta where I witnessed the same thing happening there, and then realized the full extent and impact of the problem. The areas I take pictures have not been affected yet.

OT. Re: Global Warming

The permafrost in northern areas in Canada and Russia etc. has been melting for the last eight years for the first time in human history and the rate has been accelerating. This is expected to speed up the release of CO2, and more importantly methane, into the atmosphere which is predicted to accelerate global warming. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0404200308.htm

Peridotite is the rock that forms much of the Earth's mantle and it absorbs CO2. There are a number of places that Peridotite is exposed through the Earth's crust, most notably in Oman. Now if we can just figure out how to efficiently sequester the CO2 and pump it into the Peridotite or mix it with Peridotite.

Lots of great peer reviewed papers at Science Daily for those interested.

Have fun

[Drew Wiley]

I should add that in the Sierras the whitebarks grow quite high, so do not seem to
be affected, nor have the bristlecones or hemlocks had a problem. What startles me
more is the disappearance of many small glaciers, some just in the last dozen years
or so. In deep shade under some steep faces above 12000 there are still several
healthy glaciers, so I don't expect the same level of disaster as in Ex-Glacier Natl Park in the Rockies, but still a sobering reality. My college research was in Pleistocene and periglacial geology, so I've been particularly attuned to all this.

[ChrisN]

Heroique - I'm saddened to hear about the damage the beetle is causing. Trees are such an essential element in the landscape, it's hard to bear their loss in the places we love, especially the individual trees you've studied over time.

Here in south-east Australia we suffered devastating and wide-spread bushfires in 2003, which burned throughout the mountains and killed untold millions of snow-gums and mountain ash trees in my favourite haunts. I cried when I first saw the damage.

By early 2005 many of the dead snow-gums had weathered to a beautiful silver appearance, and the sturdy root sytems, not killed by the fires, were already starting to push up new limbs and leaves.

Those forests will never be the same in my lifetime, but life has returned. I don't like the fires or the changes that global warming might be bringing, but I have to accept that the natural cycles in these matters are probably far more complex and longer than I can understand.

I hope that the beetles do not take all, or destroy your enjoyment of photographing your landscapes.

[eddie]

we had a similar problem back east as well. the "tent caterpillars" were eating all the leaves on the hardwood trees. after a season or two the trees would die. entire forests looked as if it was winter when it was in the middle of the summer. the entire NE was affected. the forests are back and the caterpillars are much less. nature worked itself out. i hope the same holds true fro the western forests.