The Mountain Pine Beetle’s (MPB) life cycle normally lasts one year, in late summer the adults emerge from the trees in which they fed and developed, and fly off to infest healthy trees.
The mountain pine beetle, Dendroctonus ponderosae, is a small, dark-coloured, cylindrical beetle, about the size of a grain of rice. It is the most destructive biotic agent of mature pine forests in western North America. Normally these beetles attack only old, decadent trees and help speed the process of stand regeneration. However populations periodically erupt into large scale outbreaks, killing mature trees over many thousands of hectares. The current rate of MPB infestation is unprecedented in recorded history and in addition to extensive timber loss, is likely to affect watershed quality, wildlife composition, and recreational values.
What actually kills the trees is a blue stain fungus that the Mountain Pine Beetle (MPB) carries in their mouth parts which effectively blocks the tree's vascular system and eventually kills it. The majority of the mountain pine beetle life cycle is spent as larvae feeding from the inner bark of host pine trees. Its life cycle normally lasts one year, in late summer the adults emerge from the trees in which they fed and developed, and fly off to infest healthy trees. The principal hosts of MPB are the lodgepole, ponderosa and western white pine, but other pine species including exotic can be infested and killed.
Management of The Mountain Pine Beetle
Management of MPB aims at controlling invaders and mitigating their impact rather than eradication. Limitation of resources forces forest managers to carefully plan and prioritize interventions. Hence, information on the actual and potential distribution of MPB is considered crucial for their management.
Control of The Mountain Pine Beetle
Control of MPB spread, practices include direct and indirect measures. Direct measures range from harvesting or burning infested trees before the adults get a chance to fly off in search of new hosts, to the more sophisticated containment approach by means of pheromone traps that attract and keep the beetles in a given forest area that will later be cleared. Indirect control aims at reducing the risk of future beetle infestations through regeneration planting replacing mature pines susceptible to beetle attack with a mix of tree species and age classes that are less attractive to the MPB, prescribed burning, felling of host trees, and early harvesting of stands to reduce the number of mature host trees that could attract beetles.
Potential Impacts of The Mountain Pine Beetle
The potential impacts of the different management practice options vary and need to be analyzed within the spatial context of the watershed in order to select best management practices and to keep the watershed ecosystems healthy while combating the MPB. Problems associated with the MPB in the watershed are increased erosion and changes in streamflow regime, which in turn affect water and habitat quality.
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MPB Impact Assessment
H&C has the expertise to conduct assessment of MPB damage to the forest stands using (1) Remotely Sensed data and image processing tools to identify, quantify, and project MPB spread over time, and to analyze consequences of MPB damage on water quality and supply, habitat quality and recreational values using (2) distributed models within GIS to assess risks at the watershed level.
Remotely sensed data and image processing for Beetle impact distribution mapping
Remotely sensed data is used to help detect and map mountain pine beetle damage over large areas. H&C has the expertise to conduct assessment of MPB damage using remote sensing techniques supported by field work, and has the capacity to conduct multi-temporal analysis with satellite images to monitor the extent and progression of the damage over time.
The spread of Mountain Pine Beetles can then be analyzed within GIS to predict spreading patterns based on factors such as altitude, stand composition and age, etc, to model potential impact zones and make future projections.
Distributed models using GIS for integrated watershed assessment
H&C's team includes professionals well versed in modeling streamflow, erosion, and sedimentation, capable of analyzing the extent of the consequences of MPB damage and of developing tools to help select BMP's to mitigate and prevent damage within the watershed, which include:
- Erosion risk zoning to identify priority areas of intervention - Factors of the RUSLE equation are adjusted to baseline watershed conditions in order to identify and classify the watershed in erosion risk units. Baseline conditions are then changed to projected conditions to incorporate the effect of different mitigation and remediation measures. Best practices are selected based on the results of the model, the objective being to reduce overall erosion risk in the watershed.
- Frequency Analysis and Simulation of Peak flow events - Simulation models, such as HEC-HMS are calibrated to baseline watershed conditions and are then used to analyze the effect of changes in landuse and loss of forest cover by MPB attack. The sub-basins can be adjusted to analyze the effect of flow surges to Sensitive habitats, such as fish spawning reaches to be modeled. With a calibrated model, the effect of different mitigation and remediation options can be incorporated and analyzed in order to select BMP's.
- Frequency Analysis and Climate Change Models - are also applied to the simulation of peak flows to assess and select BMP's.
- Monthly Water Budget - To analyze the overall effect of loss of mature forest stands and climate change on streamflow regime. It is likely that the timing and quantities of flow throughout the year will change with changing vegetation and temperatures, the monthly water budget provides a tool to analyze these changes in a physically based distributed model, and it can incorporate changes in snowmelt timing and rates, due to changes in albedo and temperature due to loss of tree cover, and to changes in snowfall due to warming temperatures.
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MPB Helpful Links
- Nevada Division of Forestry
- Natural Resources, Canada
- Fraser Basin Council, Canada
- Alberta Sustainable Resources Development
- Publications about MPB in Canada
- Pine-beetle battle turns desperate
- Colorado High County Forest Health Task Force
- Ski Towns Scramble to Cope with Mountain Pine Beetle Epidemic
- USFS, Rocky Mountain Region
- City of Boulder, Colorado
- Deaths of trees 'catastrophic'
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