Ponderosa pine forests in the Sierra Nevada that were wiped out by western pine beetles during the 2012-2015 megadrought won’t recover to pre-drought densities, reducing an important storehouse for atmospheric carbon.
Ponderosa pine forests in the Sierra Nevada that were wiped out by western pine beetles during the 2012-2015 megadrought won’t recover to pre-drought densities, reducing an important storehouse for atmospheric carbon.
“Forests store huge amounts of atmospheric carbon, so when western pine beetle infestations kill off millions of trees, that carbon dioxide goes back into the atmosphere,“ said Zachary Robbins, a postdoctoral researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Robbins is corresponding author of a new paper published in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Science about carbon stored in living ponderosa pines in the Sierra Nevada of California.
“We also found that because so many trees died during the megadrought, there’s much less risk of another huge die-off this century because the bark beetles will have fewer host trees,” he said.
Read more at: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Warming temperatures and the 2012-2015 megadrought fueled an outbreak of western pine beetles that decimated forests in the Sierra Nevada. Future conditions may limit both the scale of infestations and regrowth of timber to pre-megadrought levels. (Photo Credit: Zachary Robbins/Los Alamos National Laboratory)
