Abstract
In the late summer of 2008, Ted Hogg and Mike Michaelian, scientists with the Canadian Forest Service, drove to the Fort McMurray area to follow up on an aerial photo survey conducted the previous year by their colleagues. That 2007 survey had showed extensive browning of the white spruce forests in the region and a notable absence of leaves on the aspen trees. Initially, Hogg thought that the spruce browning might have been caused directly by drought, which has been drying out the region since the turn of this century. As Hogg soon discovered, however, it was the spruce budworm that did the damage to the spruce and forest tent caterpillars that severely defoliated the aspen.
Not green the foliage, but of color dusky; not smooth the branches, but gnarled and warped.
— Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy
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Notes
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Steven C. Grossnickle, Ecophysiology of Northern Spruce Species: The Performance of Planted Seedlings (Ottawa, ON: National Research Council of Canada, 2000).
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Timothy Egan, “A Walk in the Dead Woods,” New York Times, May 27, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/27/opinion/a-walk-in-the-dead-woods.html.
- 3.
E. H. Hogg, J. P. Brandt, and B. Kochtubajda, “Growth and Dieback of Aspen Forests in Northwestern Alberta, Canada, in Relation to Climate and Insects,” Canadian Journal of Forest Research 32 (2002): 823–32; E. H. Hogg and P. A. Hurdle, “The Aspen Parkland in Western Canada: A Dry-Climate Analogue for the Future Boreal Forest?” Water, Air, and Soil Pollution 82 (1995): 391–400.
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Prairie Drought Initiative: white paper.
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- 6.
Personal communication, Colleen Biggs.
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D. Sauchyn and S. Kulshreshtha, “Prairies,” in From Impacts to Adaptation: Canada in a Changing Climate, ed. D. S. Lemmen et al. (Ottawa, ON: Government of Canada, 2008), 275–328.
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Environment and Climate Change Canada, “Top Ten Weather Stories of 2002.”
- 9.
Gary Filmon, “Firestorm 2003: Provincial Review,” February 15, 2004, http://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/farming-natural-resources-and-industry/forestry/wildfire-management/governance/bcws_firestormreport_2003.pdf; David Phillips, “Top Ten Weather Stories for 2003,” Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society Bulletin 32, no. 1 (February 2004): 9–14.
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Jennifer H. Carey, “Pinus banksiana,” in Fire Effects Information System, US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Fire Sciences Laboratory (Producer), May 10, 2017, https://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/plants/tree/pinban/all.html#INTRODUCTORY.
- 11.
D. M. Shrimpton, “Forest Succession Following the Mountain Pine Beetle Outbreak in Kootenay Park which Occurred during the 1930’s,” report for Forest Health, British Columbia Ministry of Forests, December 1994, https://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfd/library/mpb/bib107981.pdf.
- 12.
Garrett W. Meigs et al., “Do Insect Outbreaks Reduce the Severity of Subsequent Forest Fires?,” Environmental Research Letters 11, no. 4 (2016), http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/11/4/045008/meta.
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Martin Simard et al.,” Do Mountain Pine Beetle Outbreaks Change the Probability of Active Crown Fire in Lodgepole Pine Forests?,” Ecological Monographs, February 1, 2011, doi: 10.1890/10-1176.1.
- 14.
Wesley G. Page, Martin E. Alexander, and Michael J. Jenkins, “Effects of Bark Beetle Attack on Canopy Fuel Flammability and Crown Fire Potential in Lodgepole Pine and Engelmann Spruce Forests,” in Proceedings of the Large Wildland Fires Conference, ed. Robert E. Keane et al., May 19–23, 2014, Missoula, MT, Proc. RMRS-P-73 (Fort Collins, CO: US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, 2015), 174–80, quoted in “US Faces Worst Droughts in 1,000 Years, Predict Scientists,” The Guardian, February 12, 2015.
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Benjamin Cook, Toby Ault, and Jason Smerdon, “Unprecedented 21st Century Drought Risk in the American Southwest and Central Plains,” Science Advances 1, no. 1 (February 12, 2015): e1400082, doi: 10.1126/sciadv.1400082.
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John Pomeroy et al., “Sensitivity of Snowmelt Hydrology on Mountain Slopes to Forest Cover Disturbance,” Centre for Hydrology Report No. 10, Centre for Hydrology, University of Saskatchewan, June 23, 2011.
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© 2017 Edward Struzik
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Struzik, E. (2017). Drought, Disease, Insects, and Wildfire. In: Firestorm. Island Press, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-819-0_8
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