Forests at Risk: Climate Change and the Future of the American West

Climate change poses a huge threat to the West. The current mountain pine beetle epidemic with over 50 million acres of dying trees in western North America has created a powerful “teachable moment” across the region.

A primary goal of the Forests At Risk symposium was to reframe the nation’s climate change dialogue by making the issue both personal and real to many who may not appreciate its connection to the immediate world around them. While some may have difficulty relating to rising sea levels, falling water tables, imperiled polar bears and melting glaciers in far-off places, they are still shocked by the sight of vast dying forests around their homes. The Forests At Risk symposium explored the statement by Andy Jacobson, a carbon cycle scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, that “this is the kind of feedback we're all very worried about in the carbon cycle ... a warming planet leading to, in this case, an insect outbreak that increases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which can increase warming.”

The overwhelming scientific consensus holds that climate change is one of the most serious threats facing humankind today. We have a soberingly short time in which to reduce atmospheric greenhouse gases if we are to preserve our quality of life and environment. In addition to the global urgency, the American West is deeply dependent on the health of its forests, mountains and streams for both its quality of life and its economy. Put simply, if global warming shortens our winters, diminishes our recreation, and unleashes wildfires, diseases and insect epidemics that devastate our forests, the regional damage would be incalculable.

NOW is the perfect time to learn more in this ebook.  The Forests At Risk symposium represented the first substantial public forum focused directly on the connection between climate change and forest health in the American West. In the wake of millions of acres of pine beetle devastation across our continent, this is the ideal moment to highlight the climate change connection and focus on the question of what happens when our forests transform from carbon sinks into carbon sources.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Island Press
• Release date: Jul 25, 2012
• ISBN: 9781610914246

Book preview

Table of Contents

Introduction by John Bennett, The Aspen Center for Environmental Studies

Jim Worrall, U.S. Forest Service

Sudden Aspen Decline & Climate Change – Why More SAD May Await Us

Diana Six, University of Montana

Climate, Forests & Insects: From Montana White Pine to South African Euphorbia

Phillip van Mantgem, U.S. Geological Survey

Can Our Forests Take the Heat? Increasing Tree Mortality Rates Across the Western U.S.

Tom Swetnam, University of Arizona

Wildfire, Climate & People: Perspectives and Warnings from the Past

Werner Kurz, Canadian Forest Service, Natural Resources Canada

Sinks & Sources: The Role of Forests in Carbon Sequestration … and Why It Matters

Craig Allen, U.S. Geological Survey

We’re Not Alone: Forest Die-off Risks Around the Globe

Linda Joyce, U.S. Forest Service

The Future of Our National Forests: Enhancing Adaptive Capacity

Tom Cardamone, Aspen Center for Environmental Studies

Sequestering Carbon in a High Elevation Peat Bog

A record of the presentations from the Forests At Risk Symposium in Aspen, Colorado on Februrary 18, 2011

Our Forests At Risk

by John Bennett, The Aspen Center for Environmental Studies

The top scientists and policy makers who gathered at our 2011 Forests At Risk symposium represented a remarkable acknowledgement that climate change is profoundly affecting the region many of us call home – the Rocky Mountain West.

For those of us living in Colorado, the destruction of millions of acres of pine forests by the mountain pine beetle, and hundreds of thousands of acres of aspen, spruce and fir from other parasites and infestations, is not news. What’s new is the emerging scientific consensus that climate change lies behind many of these forest threats and that our environment, quality of life and local economies hang in the balance. Consider the following:

•According to the study led by scientist Phil van Mantgem of the USGS, the death rate of the West’s old growth forests has more than doubled over the last two decades.

•Werner Kurz of the Canadian Forest Service and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change calculates that the 41 million acres of beetle-killed forests in British Columbia are adding roughly a billion tons of CO2 to our atmosphere. (And that’s minor compared to what will happen if the permafrost continues to melt and release its vast store of carbon.)

•Dr. Thomas Swetnam of the University of Arizona points out that the annual wildfire season in the West is already 78 days longer than just 20 years ago. Since the 70’s, the Rocky Mountains have witnessed a 60 percent increase in large fires. If warming trends continue, Swetnam and others predict we could lose half the forests of the West during this century.

•According to Diana Six at the University of Montana, the whitebark pine, a keystone species in high elevation zones of the Northern Rockies, is dying across most of its range. This could precipitate the loss or reduction of many plant and animal species, including the endangered grizzly bear.

These are startling trends. If the forests of the West are our canary in the coal mine, the canary is not doing so well.

The 2011 symposium – FORESTS AT RISK: Climate Change & the Future of the American West – was an opportunity to engage in thoughtful discussion and focus on serious challenges. It also highlighted the opportunity that arises when people – and their leaders – recognize challenges and are motivated to act.

We’ve arrived at a critical time and place in history.

The landscape of the West is undergoing a profound and complex transformation. Four million acres of Colorado pine forests killed by the mountain pine beetle are now decaying, releasing their carbon into the atmosphere. The old-world view that forests always renew themselves, let nature take its course is clearly obsolete. Forests require up to a century to recapture all of the carbon released in a beetle epidemic, wildfire or other die-back, and climate scientists are virtually unanimous about the fact that we don’t have that long. Put simply, if the great forests of the West continue turning from carbon sinks into carbon sources, we’re all in deep trouble.

We’re going to win or lose the great carbon battle in the here and now, in our short lifetimes, so what can we do? Two answers come to mind: forest stewardship and clean energy.

At a regional level, we can employ scientifically based forest stewardship over large landscapes that are home to myriad types of flora and fauna. Outside of protected wilderness areas, good stewardship practice could begin to make up for past fire suppression policies that Forest helped at Risk create unnaturally dense, mono-culture forests that undermined forest health and wildlife habitat.

In forests across the West, we can support the efforts of the U.S. Forest Service to restore critical wildlife habitat through prescribed burns, thinning and other forest health measures. We can also support the efforts of local communities to protect forest health in the wildland/urban interface and forge a balance between ecological and recreation values in these backyard community forests where we enjoy both nature and recreation.

Most important, we can develop enlightened energy policies at the local, state and national levels to break our addiction to fossil fuels. We could generate biomass energy from beetle-killed trees, develop uses for biochar in restoring our environment, and expand the use of wind, solar and appropriate hydro power. While reducing atmospheric CO2, these steps would also stimulate our clean energy economy, create millions of new jobs and enable us to compete internationally with countries like China, which are pulling ahead in the clean energy race.

Our choices are clear. As individuals we can act to reduce our impact on