BC forests recovering from pine beetle faster than expected

A bit of good climate change news out today.

The Pacific Institute of Climate Solutions at the University of Victoria says the province’s forests are recovering from the Mountain Pine Beetle much quicker than expected.

Lead researcher Vivek Arora says forests traditionally capture and store CO2, but that all changed in the late 1990’s. “Now with the pine beetle outbreak, when all those trees died, they fell, started rotting and there was a huge carbon pulse. That made our forests a source of carbon.”

However the extra CO2 in the atmosphere, warmer weather and lengthening growing season at high latitudes means BC forests are also getting a boost. They have been growing, and storing carbon, at a rate much faster than anticipated.

The research team predicts BC forests will outgrow pine beetle CO2 loss by 2020, even after taking an expected increase in wildfires into account.

But Arora says this could all be derailed by another infestation. Despite the rapid growth of the Spruce Beetle in recent years, the research team predicted another major infestation would not occur until 2050.

“It is very difficult to model how insect outbreaks will change in the future. Of course we have the conceptual understanding that warmer winter means the larvae will survive the winter, but when exactly the outbreak will happen is difficult to project.”