Oak Hill Planning and Environmental Network Aug. Meeting
Bruce Melton, a local engineer who is also an expect on climate change will talk about his trip to Colorado and effects of global warming in the Rocky Mountains. I have included his email (dated this week) below. Everyone welcome.
From Bruce:
I have just returned form a 5,000 mile, 17 day, 14 camp tour through the Rockies of Central North America. I crossed the Continental Divide 11 times. The bark beetle pandemic is worse than ever and not suspected to diminish (according to National Forest Service scientists and silviculturists) until all of the trees are dead. The lodgepole, ponderosa and aspen forest are first in line, spruce and fir are next. This means the widespread, immediate and significant demise of the forests of the Rocky Mountains. The US Forest Service has already predicted the complete destruction of all of the mature lodgepole forests in the US Rockies by 2013. Yes, I know this sounds extreme - because it is extreme. Have you all seen the short film that I produced in 2008? ( http://www.meltonengineering.com/What%20Have%20We%20Done%20low%20res.swf )
In 2008, the pandemic increased to 52 million acres, from 34 million acres in 2007. This is greater than a 50% increase in one year. The Yellowstone Ranger's Reference Manual states that the "Western US will warm by 13.5 degrees F this century, more in the mountains." What we have seen in the current century, mostly in the last 30 years, is a 2.5 degree increase in average temperatures in the Western US. The temperature change that will continue is approximately equal to a 4,000 foot shift in elevation. The resulting decrease in rainfall will drive the existing forest ecosystems right off of their mountains.
The US National Forest Service, just this year, has started giving some of the credit for this pandemic to a warming climate - something nearly every other state, local and international forest agency has been assuming all along (including the Colorado and Wyoming State Forest Services and the Canadian Forest Service). Unfortunately, as of yet, few other than forward looking individual scientists have come to the understanding of the impacts of a greater than 13.5 degree temperature change on a mountain forest ecosystem. All of the forest service associations that I have been able to query are assuming that the forests will not be the same for 100 years, until they grow back. After the beetles and the moths and borers and fungus and cankers and rusts are finished with the trees, they simply will be no growing back. The temperature change will be far too much to support the same ecosystem or any forest ecosystem similar in the Rockies today except maybe the pinon/juniper woodlands. Can you imagine a pinon/juniper woodlands at 11,000 feet in Wyoming?
