Yosemite National Park, Lost Arrow Spire and Redkill cedar. Yosemite National Park, Half Dome and a redkill cedar. Yosemite National Park, El Capitan and redkill ponderosa pine. Redkill is shorthand for a tree killed by bark beetles. The first year of the kill all the needles on the tree turn red. Depending on the altitude, where higher altitudes have much shorter warm seasons, the red needles can stay on the tree for one to four years. One can tell it's a ponderosa pine because of the reddish yellow straw color. Yosemite National Park, Bridal Veil Falls and redkill cedar or sequoia. Yosemite National Park, Redkill fir and Half Dome on Inspiration Point Teton National Park, redkill, snake river and Grand Teton. These are lodgepole pine. Somewhere near 100,000 million acres of lodgepole pine have been killed across North America by the native mountain pine bark beetle. This area includes most of the large stands of lodgepole in North America. The attack started about the turn of the century and is down to a million or two acres of new attack per year now because the beetles have killed most of their primary prey, approximately 20 percent of the forests in western North America were lodgepole pine. Rio Grande National Forest on the Borer of Colorado and new Mexico. The San Luis Valley and Sangre De Cristo Mountains are in the background. The kill here is spruce beetle and it is almost complete. Across south central and southwest Colorado and northern New Mexico, about 4 million acres of spruce have been killed above 11,000 feet, and in these areas the kill, like this one, is almost complete. Lodegepole pine beetle kill about 10 miles north of Silverthorne on I70 west of Denver Sequoia National Monument beetle kill on Trail of 100 Giants. Note the person on the paved trail for scale; lower right. The trees on the ground cut by chainsaws are more beetle kill, mostly sugar pine, cut to prevent tourist mortality from falling trees. Sequoia National Monument is the place to go if you want to actually touch the trees. It is just south of Sequoia National Park. Beetle kill, Sequoia National Monument, Trail of 100 Giants. The monument is just south of Sequoia National Park. The cut trees are mostly sugar pine killed by pine bark beetles felled to prevent tourist mortality, but centered in the background is a single sequoia giant killed by bark beetles. Bark beetle wounds created when a tree's sap literally "pitches" the beetle out of its borehole. This is a tree's primary means of defense that is badly compromised during drought when a tree can only produce a limited amount of sap. Nonlinearly increasing drought creates nonlinearly greater forest stress, like an avalanche. A little warming does not create a little more evaporation, it creates a lot more via the nonlinear evaporation feedback. The native mountain pine bark beetle responsible for this forest mortality is a native beetle, driven berserk from warming. Over 10,000 beetles can attack a single tree where their galleries beneath the bark girdle the tree killing it rather quickly. Unkillable sequoias are now being killed by bark beetles. Their 2-foot thick bark is no longer an effective deterrent because forest stress is greater than any time during the life multi-millennial life of these giants. This one is in Sequoia National Monument, just south of Sequoia National Park. Sugar pines killed by bark beetle at the Trail of 100 Giants in Sequoia National Monument. Note the scores of pitch tubes in the bark on the tree on the right; each one where the tree tried to expel the bark beetles with copious amounts of sap. This mountainside of beetle attack is just a small part of the entire range of mountains in Japer National Park that was killed by mountain pine beetle. The beetle kill here is just a short hike from the main road in Jasper National Park, British Columbia. Most of the forest in Jasper has been attacked with mortality from 50 to 80 percent. The mountain pine beetle has killed most of its prey and is in decline. Now, other native bark beetles are attacking the rest of the forests. These trees are spruce, killed by spruce beetle. SteamboatSpringsLakeStatePark,colorado Steamboat Lakes State Park, Colorado, redkill. These ponderosa pines were killed by mountain pine beetle. This collapse will not regenerate. It is too warm already. The warmth is exactly the reason why the beetles have attacked in area 50 times greater than has ever happened in contemporary times. Bark beelte redkill, Jasper National Park, British Columbia. Dendroctonus ponderosae, mountain pine bark beetle. The red is lodgepole pine and the light orange is ponderosa pine; both killed by mountain pine bark beetle. The grey pointy trees are also lodgepole, only these have been dead two or more years and have lost their red needles. Mountain pine beetle spotting, is where small groups of trees are attacked. This is early on in the attack. As more beetles acrue year after year, the spotting becomes more dense and soon coalesces into broad mountainsides of redkill. Ponderosa pine spotting. The light orange color gives away the ponderosa pine response to a mortal bark beetle attack. It won't be but just a few more years until this spotting coalesces into an entire mountainside of redkill. Rocky Mountain National Park Redkill Rocky Mountain National Park Westgate entrance monument, native pine bark beetle kill. Across the world our greatest treasures are under attack. The attack will not stop until we return Earth's temperature back to within the boundaries of our Earth's systems evolution at less than 1 degrees C warming above normal, or less than the temperature today that has caused these Earth systems to begin collapsing. Rocky Mountain National Park redkill, upper Colorado River. Forest across the world are degraded and are collapsing. these natural systems cannot and will not regenerate. Not only will they not recover and return to carbon sequestration machines, they are now emitting greenhouse gases, not absorbing them. Rocky Mountain National Park redkill. These collapses will become worse and worse even if we could magically halt all warming tomorrow morning. These tipping points do not self restore unless Earth's temperature is restored to within the evolutionary boundaries of it's systems. think of it like this: climate warning is like turning the heat up under the pot on the stove. If we stop all emissions, we only stop turning hte heat up. the heat is still on, and the pot still boils. An Earth systems collapse threshold is no different. It will not self restore unless boundary evolution conditions are restored. These trees are definitely not water stressed, but they have been killed by bark beetles nonetheless. What is now happening is that baseline conditions, because we are much warmer now at high altitude and high latitude, creates enough stress to allow the beetles to create successful mortality. Lodgepole Redkill Rocky Mountain National Park In excess of 100 million acres of forest have been killed in western North America by native bark beetles driven berserk from warming, an area larger than new England, New York and New Jersey combined. Redkill at the headwaters of the Colorado River. A bark beetle trap to determine the presence and concentration of bark beetles. The trap is baited with a pheromone the beetles emit that attracts other beetles so they can mass attack a single tree to create mortality, which allows the beetle broods to mature. More beetle kill at the headwaters of the Colorado River Alpine sunflowers and native pine bark beetle redkill, Steamboat Springs Lake State Park, Colorado. The mountain pine beetle, dendroctonus ponderosae, had never before crossed the continental divide in a single attack, the mountains were just too high. They had never before attacked species that were not pines. Until climate change changed our world. The beetles have now done all of the above travelling three-hundred miles on the winds of a single massive thunderstorm across the continental divide, and attacking not only pines, but fir and spruce as well. Jasper National Park, British Columbia, Canada. The grey and slightly greenish trees are aspen. They have been attacked by aspen leaf miner, a fly larvae that eats the chlorophyll from between the upper and lower surfaces of the aspen leaves. The leaf miners don't kill directly, but after years of having their leaves eaten out, the aspens succumb to other diseases or insect attacks. The redkill is sugar pine in Sequoia National Monument, Trail of 100 Giants. The formerly impervious sequoia realm is now a thing of the past as their two-foot thick bark and tremendous stamina can no longer protect them when their evolutionary boundary conditions have changed. Sequoia have lived for thousands of years in a stable climate, until now. This giant has lain on the ground for maybe another millenia. Now the redkill has come and can only be stopped if we restore Earth's temperature to within the evolutionary boundary conditions where her ecologies evolved. This 60 inch lodgepole pine stump shows the classic blue stain around it's outer bark that comes from an infestation of mountain pine bark beetle. The stain is a result of fungus and makes the wood of the tree extremely brittle, limiting its usefulness in the lumber industry. A solitary lodgepole redkill in a sea of beetle kill. This happens every time our climate changes abruptly. Spruce bark beetle kill, Snowden Peak, 13,077 feet, viewed from Molas Pass, Southwest Colorado, State Highway 165 between Durango and Silverton. Spruce bark beetles are native, and one of a dozen or more species of bark beetles driven berserk from warming, that have killed what is likely over a 100 million acres of conifers across high altitude and high latitude North America. Spruce bark beetle kill, Snowden Peak, 13,077 feet, viewed from Molas Pass, Southwest Colorado, State Highway 165 between Durango and Silverton.
