To Date, Pine & Spruce Beetles Have Attacked/Damaged/Killed 45 Million Acres Of N. American Forests

[hatrack]

EDIT

This scenario is being replayed across the West. In Colorado, aerial surveys show that from 1996 to 2008 Colorado lost almost 2.5 million acres (1 million hectares) of pine forest to the beetle outbreak, Wyoming 677,000 acres and South Dakota 354,000 acres. Over the same period of time, the spruce beetle, which has also ravaged forests as far north as Alaska, took out 374,000 acres of spruce trees in Colorado and 340,000 in Wyoming.

That cumulative total of over 6 million acres (2.5 million hectares) is an area larger than Israel or South Africa's Kruger National Park. Farther north in Canada, the pine beetle has attacked trees over an area of about 39 million acres (14.5 million hectares) in British Columbia since the 1990s. The sheer scale of the damage can be seen northwest of Denver in Colorado's Yampa Valley. Vast tracts of formerly evergreen forest now have huge splashes of orange running through them.

According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, a third of the United States' land area is covered in forest but it is only expanding at a rate of about 0.1 percent per year. Under "cap and trade" provisions in the U.S. climate bill, additional forest growth may be encouraged through a market mechanism that will allow reforestation efforts by landowners and other groups to be counted as "carbon offsets." Such projects could generate cash through "carbon credits" paid by polluters who want to exceed their own emissions caps.

A forest can recover, but that can take decades. "Most forests will recover the carbon they lose but if the next 50 to 100 years is important we may not have that much time. It's setting back carbon storage efforts," said Ryan.

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http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE57300N20090804?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews&pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0

[Fotoware58]

1. Ongoing disaster

We're only about a third of the way into this mega-disaster that could have been minimized with creative mitigation through scientific forest management. Too bad politics is against the solution and instead, the government continues to encourage and enhance drought, bark beetle attacks and catastrophic fires. Americans will be stuck with the impacts for many decades, all in the name of agendas and rhetoric.

It sure looks like California's fire season will shift into overdrive now, with fires already burning in the north state and more lightning expected for today. The wishes of anti-management preservationists are that they would rather see forests burn than to see a few stumps. Also, the carbon thrust up into the upper atmosphere through huge columns of toxic smoke will probably be inaccessible to plants to re-sequester. There is no benefit to these mega-firestorms, despite the claims of government firefighters.

[Bigmack]

2. The effects of the pine bark beetle

on British Columbia are going to be - are already - devastating. The sight of those tens of thousands - indeed millions - of acres of dead forests is absolutely mind-boggling. And SCARY as well.... Ms Bigmack