Colorado pines, use? beetle problem

[edwardj_]

Up here in Northern Alberta all the trees that I have cut from pine bugs have the blue stain, unless they got the bugs this year.  My Lodgepole pine didnt have the stain as I know they got bugged this summer.  The ones that had holes from last year had a small ring of it.  The trees I have cut that died last year or before have about a 2 inch layer of it on trees 14"+ DBH.

[stumphugger]

Folks are trying to blame a warming climate for the infestation.  Like others have said, LP is a short lived tree.  It is mature at about 60 to 80 years.  The natural cycle is for beetles to hit the mature trees, kill them, and then a fire rips through which releases seed from the LP cones, and the cycle is repeated.

That is all well and good unless you happen to live in the area burning.  The fires will go until it rains or snows and you'll be dealing with smoke for a while.    LP decays fast so the snags start coming down in a couple of years.  This creates that hard to walk through layer on the ground and it'll burn again if the conditions are right.

During the late 80s, we clearcut quite a bit of it.  .  An environmentalist got a group together to lobby successfully to save "the old growth Lodgepole Pine."  They saved it from being logged.  A few years later, it burned up.  Such is the nature of lodgepole. 

Google the Triad Fire. 

[Dakota]

Here is the solution to the beetle kill problem on my land.

 



 

[Jasperfield]

Wow! It looks like they've eaten the roof off and about half of the house.

[Kansas]

When I was building my house, I wanted a nice lighter color wood with some character to use for the ceiling. I looked at the blue stain pine out of  Colorado, even had some samples sent. It was nice looking stuff. I thought it was reasonably priced.  Some of those places advertised some pretty good sized beams too, both in length and size. In the end, I had a chance to get a bunch of box elder locally, and used that.
I think there would be a good market for the blue stain pine.

[mad murdock]

It is a shame that there is so much beetle kill throughout the western parts of US and canada.  Does not need to be.  I work for an aerial application company, who has been involved with testing for the last 9 years, experimenting with different methods of applying a beetle pheromone, to disrupt the beetles in their natural mating cycle.  The experiments met with great success, in the many test plots that we applied the material.  We applied to blocks in California, Oregon, Washington, and Montana.  Results showed a drastic drop in beetle activity.  the problem is that the enviro's, and the beaurocrats who infest the process of managing the vast areas affected, cannot make up their minds to expand the treatment to larger areas, and get the program out of the testing stages, by the time they do, it will be too late, the beetle infestations will have died out because they will have run out of food to keep going, or the forests will have all burned up.  Either way the people get screwed.

[stumphugger]

I am not sure if this is true anymore, but blue stain used to be considered a defect in the log.  The logger/timber owner was docked for it.  It was ironic because when milled, blue stain made the boards more valuable for use as paneling. 

[mtngun]

I was wondering about what held this beetle in check before now.  Was it cold weather?   Would a normal winter, colder than the last 5, knock them back a little?  Yes, I know it’s been cold.  But, on the average I think this winter has been slighter warmer than the 30 year average.

Was wondering out loud.

Bruce

There doesn't seem to be a consensus, but lots of theories.

Smokey the Bear, global warming, decline in bird populations, human caused fires, drought, grazing, non-indigenous plants (like cheatgrass).   Take your pick.     

[Bobus2003]

Here in the Hills there blaming the Drought, allowing the beeetles to get in and with the drought couldn't push enough sap out of the Ponderosa Pine to push out the beetles.. That and the drought had them stressed already so they were easy targets.. There logging like crazy in many parts of the hills now.. Some places leaving only a dozen or so per acre standing.. In the Norbeck Wilderness area (roughly 35000 Acres) we now have 100% Mortality rates.. The USFS's theory of no management is good managment is failing big time now.. They have now brought it a Crew from Montana to Heli Log it since we cant take Timbco's & Skidder's in there.. Much of the Bug wood here is goin to the Mills (Saying its sound wood) I myself am cutting lots of Firewood and House Logs out of it..

[pappy19]

In New Mexico the bark beetle has about wiped out the Pinon Pine. No use as a forest product but the natives eat and sell the Pinon Pine nut. Prices have gone through the roof for pinon pine nuts. They could have been saved by doing the green chain cutting cycle, but the enviro's wouldn't allow any cutting. Now they have alot of firewood until the big fire comes.

[woodtroll]

Cold weather has little affect. Drought combined with IMO (the main reason) over stocking. Trees can only grow so thick, they stress out each other. The weak die off the reminder continue growing. Add a bug that hits when the trees are stressed then you have big problems.

I do not believe they are logging in the Norbeck. They just can't, it's wilderness. Custer State Park, next door, is paying to heli log.
Just wait, it is hitting the trees around Rushmore and the park has no plans to deal with this situation.
Again hats of to the Black Hills NF for doing what they can harvesting full throttle and to industry in the area for utilizing the product.

[SwampDonkey]

The term over stocking is foreign to us Canadian foresters. We had it drilled into us that it was over dense, can't have more than 100 % stocking. Density will be defined pretty much by the site, what it will support. When you survey for stocking it's considered 100 % when all your stocking plots contain at least one commercial tree in the defined plot size.

[woodtroll]

I figure stocking is the amount of growing material that can be sustained on a given sight. These arid stands, it makes a big difference.

[SwampDonkey]

I know the Society of American Forester define stocking as overstocked and understocked, but it represents the upper and lower limits of site occupancy expressed as a percent. I know in stocking charts you'll see 110 %. The stocking chart was derived by tree-area ratio and crown competition factor. Basically, growing space of a tree of said diameter someone figured was in the optimum range for that species. What we look at in my area is somewhat similar, but the plot size of the samples represents the optimum growing space of a fir or spruce. If I hit a fir or spruce in that plot I sample at random, it's a stocked plot and if I get 8 out of ten, the site is said to be 80 % stocked. I can't grasp the concept of being more than 100 % stocked at all. A site will only grow so many trees, just like a bowl can only hold 100 % of it's volume in water. The overflow can't occupy it and the bowl can't be more than 100 %.

[Bobus2003]

Cold weather has little affect. Drought combined with IMO (the main reason) over stocking. Trees can only grow so thick, they stress out each other. The weak die off the reminder continue growing. Add a bug that hits when the trees are stressed then you have big problems.

I do not believe they are logging in the Norbeck. They just can't, it's wilderness. Custer State Park, next door, is paying to heli log.
Just wait, it is hitting the trees around Rushmore and the park has no plans to deal with this situation.
Again hats of to the Black Hills NF for doing what they can harvesting full throttle and to industry in the area for utilizing the product.

Here is the Article from the Rapid City Journal about the Bugs and the plans to deal with them in Norbeck

http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/news/article_0139f0ec-df69-11de-8bf6-001cc4c03286.html

As for Mt Rushmore..There trying to come up with plans for that now too.. Since they have such high mortality rate in norbeck next door

[mtngun]

Here in the Hills there blaming the Drought, allowing the beeetles to get in and with the drought couldn't push enough sap out of the Ponderosa Pine to push out the beetles.. That and the drought had them stressed already so they were easy targets..

I can't argue with the drought theory.

Climate change has only increased temperatures 1 or 2 degrees which is barely noticeable, however, it also shifts prevailing currents and changes precipitation dramatically.    In many parts of the west we have seen 20% reductions in annual precip year after year with only a few "good water" years.    

If the so-called drought turns out to be a result of warming,  and if the warming-caused drought continues, there will be more bugs and more wildfires.   We can debate whether to log the threatened areas but one way or the other some of our forests will not be forests any more.

[SwampDonkey]

I haven't seen any changes in annual rain fall here, other than a couple years had record highs for rain and later snow. But that doesn't mean much because the records in this area are only for 70 years. And these records replaced records set in the 50's and 70's. With all the snow in the record year (12 feet) , it only amounted to 1/3 of the annual precip.  I don't put a whole lot of stock in the record keeping either, because we have pictures of grandfather on the camp roof shoveling snow and the camp is totally buried snow deep clear to the peek.  Not only that, but the records are mostly kept where people live and not out in the middle of the wilderness. The out back here gets a lot more snow than we do along the river valley. You can snow mobile a whole month longer out there and it's bare grass in here.