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This article is one of a series exploring the devastating issues surround mountain pine beetle infestation, in particular, in the Colorado Rocky Mountains.
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Colorado Mountain Pine Beetle Infestation: Causes, Consequences, and Cures
Article One - August 2011, written for an Environmental Management course through Harvard University
© Allison Frederick, All Rights Reserved, for comments & questions, email info at greenideaprotection.com
Introduction
The Mountain Pine Beetle infestation in Colorado’s mountains has killed more than 1.5 million trees in the past decade adversely impacting Colorado’s ecology, economy, and aesthetic. The consequences of the infestation shall be extensive, long-term, and costly in many respects. This review explores the etiology of the infestation, responses to the infestation, environmental and economic impacts, and offers a multi-pronged approach for present and future management.
Methodology
A significant amount of the reviewed literature is sourced from official government- or university-produced literature, including National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), U.S. Forest Service, Colorado State University, Environmental Protection Agency, Colorado Governor’s Energy Office, and United States patents and publications. The remainder of resources for this review derive from peer-reviewed literature as it pertained to forest management and the mountain pine beetle.
The Nature and Extent of the Infestation
For more than 150 years, the state of Colorado has enjoyed densely-colorful evergreen forests and subsequently benefits from substantial tourism revenues relating to its abundant forests and National Parks. However, since 1998, Colorado has suffered from a severe infestation of Mountain Pine Beetle (MPB) or dendroctonus ponderosae hopkins, which has since reached epidemic proportions and is devastating the state’s scenic landscape.
Lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) are tall, thin, deeply colored evergreens. Pinus contorta means “twisted pine.” The subspecies found in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado is latifolia. Lodgepole pines thrive in abundant sunlight and in cold, dry climates such as those conditions found in Colorado.
The current epidemic is not the first time Colorado pine has suffered from an infestation. A less severe outbreak of MPB in the mid-1970s proved to be relatively self-limiting, possibly due to, in part to less extreme weather conditions than what co-exist with today’s epidemic.
By 2009, sixty-eight percent of the Colorado lodgepole pine forest were infected by MPB (Figure 1). Today, residents, scientists, and government officials remain concerned because infestation is now spreading to other prevalent Colorado pine species, including Ponderosa Pine and spruce and fir trees. Management approaches to the infestation have ranged from no intervention to intense pesticide spraying. Yet the reason the rate of infestation has slowed among lodgepole pines appears to be because there simply aren’t many more lodgepole pines to be consumed. It is estimated that it will take fifty to one hundred years before the landscape aesthetically recovers.
- -- Do you have ideas about how to address this issue? If so, please leave a comment below or contact us at GRIPS - GReen Idea Protection Strategies
References Cited
Ciesla, W. et al. The Health of Colorado Forests: Special Issue: Threats to Colorado's Current and Future Forest Resources. Report (Colorado State Forest Service and United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service, 2009).
United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service Forest Service: Nature & Science. Trees – Lodgepole pine: Plants and Trees. (n.d.) Retrieved July 30, 2011
Mc Cambridge, W.F. et al. Ponderosa Pine Mortality Resulting from a Mountain Pine Beetle Outbreak. Research Paper RM-235 (United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station, Colorado, September 1982).
Kaufmann M.R. et al. The status of our scientific understanding of lodgepole pine and mountain pine beetles – a focus on forest ecology and fire behavior. GFI technical report 2008-2 (The Nature Conservancy, Arlington, VA., 2008).
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