The Beetles: Eighty-Nine Million Acres of Abrupt Climate Change [View all]

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The Beetles: Eighty-Nine Million Acres of Abrupt Climate Change

Tuesday, 16 February 2016 00:00
By Bruce Melton, Truthout | Report



[font size="1"]A 100,000-acre spruce beetle kill drapes this alpine mountain park like a heavy wool blanket. Except for a green strip of young trees along the old logging roads that crisscross forested areas like these, 90 percent or more of the rest of the forest has been killed. Groundhog Park, La Garita Range, Rio Grande National Forest, south central Colorado, elevation 11,000 feet. Background: Mesa Mountain, elevation 12,994 feet. (Photo: Bruce Melton)[/font]

We were awash for 19 days in a tumultuous sea of mountains and forests, drifting a course through the heart of the US Rockies on a 6,000-mile journey of observation. Our film, What Have We Done, the North American Pine Beetle Pandemic, was released in 2009. It was the story of what is now 89 million acres of forest across the North American West that have been attacked by native insects. These insects had been driven to unprecedented numbers by warming that is twice or more the global average. Most of the trees in impacted forests were killed in the wake of the beetles.

It has been four years since the Climate Change Now Initiative's last post-film observation in 2010. Our epic crossing was different on that final journey. The mountainsides of impacted forests were not predominantly bright red. Some were red. Some were brown. And ghost forest of gray needleless conifers at times spread to the horizon.

My wife was along on this trip, on what is usually a solo operation. It was the first of these incredible journeys on which she has been able to accompany me. At an average of 285 miles per day, this was a little tamer than most, but still a grueling but exquisitely beautiful 21-day adventure across the Rockies.

The mountain pine beetle - a single species of native beetle - had attacked an area that was 20 times larger than ever recorded. From 60 to nearly 100 percent of the trees in those forests were killed. It began in the late 1990s and was widespread from New Mexico to British Columbia. The reasons for the attack were many but largely, warming has virtually eliminated the cold temperatures that have previously kept beetle populations under control. ..............(more)

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/34853-the-beetles-eighty-nine-million-acres-of-abrupt-climate-change