Assessing forest management strategies under a mountain pine beetle attack in Alberta: exploring the impacts

2010 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 597-610 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne-Hélène Mathey ◽  
Harry Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Forest Management ◽  
Mountain Pine Beetle ◽  
Management Strategies ◽  
Timber Supply ◽  
Growing Stock ◽  
Management Objectives ◽  
Mountain Pine ◽  
Resource Managers ◽  
Recourse Approach ◽  
Pine Beetle

We explore how forest resource managers can respond to a potential outbreak of mountain pine beetle ( Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins, 1902) by assessing how well different forest management strategies achieve various management objectives over time. Strategies include targeting at-risk stands as well as increasing harvest levels. Outcomes are evaluated on the basis of volume flows, net revenues, and the age class structure of the ending inventory. We use a spatially and temporally explicit model to simulate forest management outcomes and consider two different scenarios, one in which the attack occurs early and one where it is delayed. The model utilizes a planning with recourse approach in which the firm can reevaluate its harvesting schedule following the attack. We use company data from west-central Alberta for a 40-year planning exercise. The timing of the attack resulted in small differences in timber supply. However, most strategies performed better financially under an early attack, which limits the harvest of marginal stands. Increasing harvest levels performed better in economic terms but resulted in a very young growing stock with little old forest. The success of any strategy is linked to the timing of the attack and how it affects the growing stock, subsequently impacting timber and revenue flows.

scholarly journals Effects of a Severe Mountain Pine Beetle Epidemic in Western Alberta, Canada under Two Forest Management Scenarios

2010 ◽  
Vol 2010 ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard R. Schneider ◽  
Maria Cecilia Latham ◽  
Brad Stelfox ◽  
Dan Farr ◽  
Stan Boutin
Keyword(s):  
Mountain Pine Beetle ◽  
High Volume ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Management Scenarios ◽  
Mixed Stands ◽  
Timber Supply ◽  
Mountain Pine ◽  
Pine Beetle ◽  
Pine Stands ◽  
Management Approaches

We used a simulation model to investigate possible effects of a severe mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosaeHopkins) epidemic under two management scenarios in Alberta, Canada. Our simulated outbreak was based on the current epidemic in British Columbia, which may kill close to 80% of the province's pine volume. Our two management scenarios were conventional harvest and a pine-reduction strategy modeled on a component of Alberta's Mountain Pine Beetle Management Strategy. The pine strategy seeks to reduce the number of susceptible pine stands by 75% over the next 20 years through targeted harvesting by the forest industry. Our simulations showed that the pine strategy could not be effectively implemented, even if the onset of the beetle outbreak was delayed for 20 years. Even though we increased mill capacity by 20% and directed all harvesting to high volume pine stands during the pine strategy's surge cut, the amount of highly susceptible pine was reduced by only 43%. Additional pine volume remained within mixed stands that were not targeted by the pine strategy. When the outbreak occurred in each scenario, sufficient pine remained on the landscape for the beetle to cause the timber supply to collapse. Alternative management approaches and avenues for future research are discussed.

scholarly journals Narrating disturbance : risk, power, and Mountain Pine Beetles

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Elizabeth Waterbury Prentice
Keyword(s):  
Forest Management ◽  
Environmental Change ◽  
Mountain Pine Beetle ◽  
Economic Restructuring ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Mountain Pine ◽  
Pine Beetle ◽  
Management Policies ◽  
Cultural Shifts ◽  
The Way

Beginning in the mid 1990's, an outbreak of Mountain Pine Beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) in northern Colorado affected over 3.4 million acres of primarily lodgepole pine forest. Mountain Pine Beetle are native to these forests, but the outbreak occurred at an unprecedented scope and scale, reflecting the legacy of forest management policies since the early days of European settlement and evoking new experiences and understandings of landscape in the resource-dependent region. Like much of the American West, this region is in the midst of a transition away from traditional extractive economies towards economies rooted in natural amenities and aesthetic landscape consumption. This transition is accompanied by demographic and cultural shifts, and has implications for the way that natural spaces are understood and ideas about what activities should orient people's relationships to the natural world. Across the disturbance affected area, three sites were selected to represent economic ideal types, ranging from high amenity resort destinations to small rural communities with strong roots in extraction. With data drawn from local newspapers, local and regional organizational publications, state and federal forest service documents and 26 interviews with subjects representing actor groups across the region, local narratives of environmental change were explored through the lens of green governmentality to understand how experiences of environmental change were contextualized by ongoing economic restructuring and cultural shifts. The meaning of the changing image of the landscape, the history of the timber industry in the state and competing narratives of industry decline, and the historic implications of forest management policies in disturbance-dependent forests are explored to shed light on the way that perceptions of landscape are anchored in complex social terrain and how nature can evoke new understandings of nature.

The contribution of genetics and genomics to understanding the ecology of the mountain pine beetle system

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (7) ◽  
pp. 721-730 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine I. Cullingham ◽  
Jasmine K. Janes ◽  
Richard C. Hamelin ◽  
Patrick M.A. James ◽  
Brent W. Murray ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mountain Pine Beetle ◽  
Management Strategies ◽  
Dutch Elm Disease ◽  
Native Forest ◽  
Forest Insect ◽  
Genetic Studies ◽  
Long Term Study ◽  
Mountain Pine ◽  
Pine Beetle

Environmental change is altering forest insect dynamics worldwide. As these systems change, they pose significant ecological, social, and economic risk through, for example, the loss of valuable habitat, green space, and timber. Our understanding of such systems is often limited by the complexity of multiple interacting taxa. As a consequence, studies assessing the ecology, physiology, and genomics of each key organism in such systems are increasingly important for developing appropriate management strategies. Here we summarize the genetic and genomic contributions made by the TRIA project — a long-term study of the mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins) system encompassing beetle, fungi, and pine. Contributions include genetic and genomic resources for species identification, sex determination, detection of selection, functional genetic analysis, mating system confirmation, hybrid stability tests, and integrated genetic studies of multiple taxa. These resources and subsequent findings have accelerated our understanding of the mountain pine beetle system, facilitating improved management strategies (e.g., enhancements to stand susceptibility indices and predictive models) and highlighting mechanisms for promoting resilient forests. Further, work from the TRIA project serves as a model for the increasing number and severity of invasive and native forest insect outbreaks globally (e.g., Dutch elm disease and thousand cankers disease).

Mountain pine beetle, global markets, and the British Columbia forest economy

2009 ◽  
Vol 39 (7) ◽  
pp. 1313-1321 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brant Abbott ◽  
Brad Stennes ◽  
G. Cornelis van Kooten
Keyword(s):  
British Columbia ◽  
Mountain Pine Beetle ◽  
Forest Products ◽  
The United States ◽  
Timber Supply ◽  
Trade Model ◽  
Mountain Pine ◽  
Export Tax ◽  
Pine Beetle ◽  
Near Term

A number of near-term timber supply shocks are projected to impact global forest product markets, particularly mountain pine beetle induced timber reductions, a Russian log export tax, and timber supply increases from plantation forests in the Southern Hemisphere and Sweden. We examined their effect on a number of global jurisdictions using a dynamic global forest products trade model that separates British Columbia (BC) into coastal and interior forest sectors. The results suggest that global increases in plantation timber would have negligible effects on BC log and lumber markets, that the Russian tax would have minor effects on this market, and that the beetle-induced timber supply drop would moderately increase BC prices (primarily log prices). In the United States South, lumber and log prices could rise as a result of the mountain pine beetle, while other shocks will have a negligible impact on prices. Yet, lumber production will fall because log prices will increase substantially more than lumber prices. Japan could be impacted much more than other regions by the Russian tax on log exports. In the absence of export taxes, a beetle-induced timber shortage would cause lumber production in Japan to rise (as Japan can access nearby Russian logs), while the export tax would reduce lumber production because log prices rise disproportionately more than in other regions.

Effects of fire return rates on traversability of lodgepole pine forests for mountain pine beetle (Coleoptera: Scolytidae) and the use of patch metrics to estimate traversability

2005 ◽  
Vol 137 (5) ◽  
pp. 566-583 ◽  
Author(s):  
Huge J. Barclay ◽  
Chao Li ◽  
Laura Benson ◽  
Steve Taylor ◽  
Terry Shore
Keyword(s):  
Age Structure ◽  
Mountain Pine Beetle ◽  
Fire Regime ◽  
Lodgepole Pine ◽  
Timber Supply ◽  
Beetle Population ◽  
Return Rates ◽  
Mountain Pine ◽  
Pine Beetle ◽  
The Mean

AbstractMonte-Carlo simulation was used to examine the effects of fire return rates on the equilibrium age structure of a one-million-hectare lodgepole pine forest (Pinus contorta var. latifolia Engelm. ex S. Wats.; Pinaceae) and yielded a mosaic of ages over the one million hectares for each fire regime modelled. These mosaics were used to generate mosaics of susceptibility to mountain pine beetle (MPB) (Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins, 1902) attack. This susceptibility was related to the age distribution to calculate the mean susceptibility of the forest. Susceptibility maps were produced for two timber supply areas in British Columbia, as well as for the whole of B.C. In addition, we defined a quality, called traversability, that describes the ability of a beetle population to disperse across a landscape according to defined rules of susceptibility and maximum distance for dispersal through unsuitable habitat. Using each of 40 combinations of susceptibility classifications and dispersal limits, the landscape was categorized as traversable or non-traversable. This represents the suitability of a landscape to the unimpeded spread of an incipient beetle population. It was found that (i) long fire cycles yield an age structure highly susceptible to beetle attack; (ii) fire suppression reduces the frequency of fires and yields an age structure highly susceptible to beetle attack; and (iii) harvesting one age class reduces the mean susceptibility to MPB attack, and this reduction decreases with increasing harvest age and increasing fire cycle length. When fires were limited in size to less than 100 ha, the area was always traversable. For larger fires, traversability declined, and for the largest fires (up to one million hectares), the area was often not traversable. Harvesting reduced the mean susceptibility and traversability, often substantially. Traversability was calculated for the whole of B.C. in blocks of about one million hectares using B.C. Ministry of Forests and Range inventory data for the year 2000. The area most traversable was the area around Tweedsmuir Park and the Lakes Timber Supply Area, where most of the present outbreak of MPB is centred. FRAGSTATS patch metrics were calculated for each of the simulations and were related to traversability using discriminant analysis. This analysis was then applied to the B.C. inventory; the concordance was high, with 93.3% of conditions being correctly classified.

Augmenting the existing survey hierarchy for mountain pine beetle red-attack damage with satellite remotely sensed data

2006 ◽  
Vol 82 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
M A Wulder ◽  
J C White ◽  
B J Bentz ◽  
T. Ebata
Keyword(s):  
Mountain Pine Beetle ◽  
Survey Methods ◽  
Remotely Sensed ◽  
Detailed Data ◽  
Remotely Sensed Data ◽  
Temporal Precision ◽  
Management Objectives ◽  
Mountain Pine ◽  
Pine Beetle ◽  
Data Source

Estimates of the location and extent of the red-attack stage of mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins) infestations are critical for forest management. The degree of spatial and temporal precision required for these estimates varies according to the management objectives and the nature of the infestation. This paper outlines the range of information requirements associated with mountain pine beetle infestations, from the perspectives of forest inventory, planning, and modeling. Current methods used to detect and map red-attack damage form a hierarchy of increasingly detailed data sources. The capability of satellite-based remotely sensed data to integrate into this hierarchy and provide data that is complementary to existing survey methods is presented, with specific examples using medium (Landsat) and high (IKONOS) spatial resolution imagery. The importance of matching the information requirement to the appropriate data source is emphasized as a means to reduce the overhead associated with data collection and processing. Key words: mountain pine beetle, red-attack, remote sensing, detection, Landsat, IKONOS

Bark temperature patterns in ponderosa pine stands and their possible effects on mountain pine beetle behavior

1991 ◽  
Vol 21 (10) ◽  
pp. 1439-1446 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. M. Schmid ◽  
S. A. Mata ◽  
R. A. Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Ponderosa Pine ◽  
Mountain Pine Beetle ◽  
Black Hills ◽  
Growing Stock ◽  
The North ◽  
North Side ◽  
Mountain Pine ◽  
Pine Beetle ◽  
The Mean ◽  
North And South

Bark temperatures on the north and south sides of five ponderosa pines (Pinusponderosa Laws.) in each of four growing stock levels in two areas in the Black Hills of South Dakota were monitored periodically from May through August 1989. Temperatures were significantly different among growing stock levels and between sides of the tree. The magnitude of differences between the mean bark temperatures in partially cut stands and uncut controls was inversely related to stocking level. Maximum differences in mean bark temperatures among the growing stock levels occurred between 10:00 and 14:00, when differences between the lower growing stock levels and the controls reached 9 to 10°F (Fahrenheit temp. = 1.8(Celsius temp.) + 32). Diurnal differences were greatly influenced by the amount of cloud cover. Nocturnal temperatures generally differed by 1 to 2°F. North-side temperatures were cooler and less variable than south-side temperatures. Temperature relationships and mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonusponderosae Hopk.) behavior are discussed.

Water potential in ponderosa pine stands of different growing-stock levels

1991 ◽  
Vol 21 (6) ◽  
pp. 750-755 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. M. Schmid ◽  
S. A. Mata ◽  
R. K. Watkins ◽  
M. R. Kaufmann
Keyword(s):  
South Dakota ◽  
Water Potential ◽  
Ponderosa Pine ◽  
Mountain Pine Beetle ◽  
Black Hills ◽  
Growing Stock ◽  
Mountain Pine ◽  
Water Potentials ◽  
Pine Beetle ◽  
Pine Stands

Water potential was measured in five ponderosa pine (Pinusponderosa Laws.) in each of four stands of different growing-stock levels at two locations in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Mean water potentials at dawn and midday varied significantly among growing-stock levels at one location, but differences were not consistent. Mean dawn and midday water potentials within growing-stock levels significantly decreased during the summer but showed minor increases during the overall decline. Stress levels were considered high enough to influence physiological functioning and, therefore, influence susceptibility to mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonusponderosae Hopk.) attack. Mountain pine beetle infestations did not develop within the stressed stands, which suggests that resistance may be only one factor in the outbreak scenario.

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