Quote:
Originally Posted by aerohead
The pine beetle infestation has to do with global warming.
The forests used to be colder, and they used to be colder for longer.
They don't get cold enough and for long enough, so the millions of larvae laid by Mom survive now, to eat the cambium out of the pines.
The keyboard player for the Rolling Stones did a show where they were harvesting the pine-kill, to widen fire breaks, and turning the deadwood into pellets for pellet stoves, which is technically a net-carbon technology.
|
It's probably linked to global warming too. But I was with some experts in the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboritory in Keyston that were explaining how healthy trees producs enough sap to push out pine beetles, so are immune to them. Pine beetles only attack weak trees that don't produce enough sap because the sap would kill the pine beetles as it's too sticky for them and drilling into a sap trap of death isn't what they like to do. But the trees here in Colorado have been suffering due to 1, clear cutting and over sowing the soil with trees so they compete too much for water and nutrients and 2, the drought we're been having for the past few decades.
At any rate, it could be a combination of the two factors, not enough cold to kill pine beetles and trees not getting enough water to produce sap, their natural defense against the beetles.