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| chatnoir... |
 Posted: Sat Oct 17, 2009 2:56 pm |
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125547187504583409.html
Aspen Trees Die Across the West
Mysterious Ailment, in Wake of Pine-Beetle Invasion, Diminishes Fall
Foliage
By STEPHANIE SIMON
DENVER -- This should be the golden season across the West, when aspen
paint hillsides in shades of fall.
..But a mysterious ailment -- or perhaps a combination of factors -- is
killing hundreds of thousands of acres of the trees from Nevada, New
Mexico and Arizona through Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and into Canada,
according to the U.S. government and independent scientists.
The aspen die-off comes on the heels of a pine-beetle invasion that
has destroyed millions of acres of evergreens. Foresters expect to
lose virtually every mature lodgepole pine in Colorado -- five million
acres of them.
Aspen and lodgepole pine intermingle across many Rocky Mountain slopes
at elevations of 5,000 to 8,000 feet. Millions of the trees are now
down or brown, transforming the landscape into a huge fire risk. To
the dismay of hunters, the dying trees are decimating habitat crucial
to elk, as well as to such smaller animals as wolverine, lynx and
yellow-bellied marmot.
State and local officials fear a drop-off in fall-foliage tourism, and
residents complain about diminished views. "It makes a big brown hole
in the fall colors. A whole lot of brown holes," said Rod Sweet, who
lives in Durango, Colo.
Researchers believe they understand why the beetles have been
thriving. Temperatures in the mountains have been unusually warm over
the past several winters, and it takes a long, hard freeze to kill
beetle larvae. Also, decades of logging restrictions and a policy of
fighting most fires rather than letting them burn have left the
forests full of the century-old lodgepole pines that are the beetles'
favorite nosh.
What is killing the aspen is unclear.
In 2002, the U.S. Forest Service began investigating reports that
entire stands of aspen were dying in the San Juan Mountains in
southwest Colorado, and in an odd way. Usually when mature aspen fail,
they send out hundreds of new shoots, called suckers, through their
root systems. Those shoots sprout quickly, and the grove regenerates.
But in the San Juans, the shoots were dying, too, or were failing to
sprout. That phenomenon was named Sudden Aspen Decline, or SAD, but
scientists say they don't fully understand it.
The U.S. Forest Service conducted an aerial survey in Colorado in 2005
and spotted about 30,000 acres of dying aspen. Last year, that figure
climbed to 540,000 acres, or about 15% of the state's aspen forest,
according to the Forest Service's Rocky Mountain Research Station.
It is impossible to tell from the air if those trees are suffering
from SAD, or a run-of-the-mill pest or fungus that takes down the
mature aspen but allows groves to regenerate.
Years of drought in Colorado, Utah and elsewhere appear to have
severely stressed some aspen, leaving them susceptible to systemic
disease, said Dale Bartos, an aspen ecologist with the U.S. Forest
Service.
In northern Arizona, wildlife may be the culprit: With the wolf
population down, elk aren't often on the run from predators, giving
them plenty of time to hunker in an aspen grove and methodically eat
every sucker.
..Fire suppression, which has been emphasized as more homes are built
in forested areas, may play a role, because fires typically spur
regeneration. Another theory is the tree die-off is part of a normal
progression -- albeit on an unusually broad scale -- of aspen giving
way to conifer forests or alpine grassland.
"We're still trying to figure out this puzzle," said Paul Rogers, an
ecologist at Utah State University who runs the Western Aspen
Alliance, a coalition of forest scientists studying the problem.
So far, the die-off has spared some favorite vistas. Karl Storch, who
runs Sun Tours out of Albuquerque, N.M., said his recent Colorado
Aspen Color tour had a disappointing jog through the San Juan
Mountains but found spectacular foliage in a most appropriate spot:
the town of Aspen.
Fall-foliage tourism overall was down this year, said Jim Durr, a
board member of the Colorado Tourism Office. He said aspen deaths were
partly at fault, along with the weak economy.
It could get worse. "SAD is progressing at an exponential rate," said
Wayne Shepperd, who led research into aspen decline at the U.S. Forest
Service before retiring to teach at Colorado State University.
And it has left many locals reeling. "My God, it was a sad year," said
landscape photographer Richard Voninski.
Some of his colleagues photograph the stark skeletons of dying trees,
but Mr. Voninski said he could not bring himself to do that.
"I know what it's supposed to look like," he said. |
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