Who thought a little beetle could devastate a whole population of trees? This is what is happening in Northern Colorado forests, specifically to the lodgepole pines. So far, millions of acres of forests have been destroyed, and many more are predicted to succumb to this tiny beetle. Foresters and environmentalists are working together to come up with a way to ensure that this does not happen again. The best solution is to thin the forests and use the dead trees as a clean energy source.
In the past, pine beetle infestations have been short-lived due to temperature drops in the mountains that kill them. Due to global warming, the pine beetles have been able to survive the Colorado winters and continue to devastate the forests. They begin by infesting weaker trees, but as their population grows, they begin to attack all pines with little discrimination. The beetles are now migrating to other parts of Colorado forests, promising more destruction.
Colorado foresters are looking to the future by planning to build a forest with better biodiversity so that millions of trees cannot be taken out by one beetle species. This addresses the problem of how to prevent this from happening again, but people are still trying to figure out what to do with all the dead trees. These "skeletons" heighten the risk of forest fires, which is a common problem in the West, and some are worried that they pose a risk to electrical lines and could result in huge blackouts.
Many want to manually thin the forests and cut down most of the dead trees. This would create a lot of excess wood, which could be used for cellulose ethanol. Basically, companies, with funding from the government, will take the dead trees and convert them to cellulose ethanol. I think this is an extremely effective way to deal with the waste produced by forest thinning. It would also relieve the controversy surrounding corn ethanol, another fuel source, because these dead trees cannot be used for anything else whereas corn can be used for food.
The beetle problem in Colorado has devastating effects on the environment of that region, but if managed properly, the forests will regenerate. The carnage remaining should be used to create cleaner fuel, which would help reduce CO2 emissions and stop climate change. Remember, climate change is the reason the beetles were able to have such a catastrophic effect in the first place.
Using the dead trees for cellulose ethanol is a very good idea. Not only is it a benefical use to tree thinning, but it also opens up the land to plant new trees. I do have one question, if CO2 emissions are reduced, and the beetle population drops, won't that have an effect on the cellulose ethanol production?
ReplyDeleteCompared to corn ethanol, cellulose doesn't seem to have too many people fighthing against it. If cellulose ethanol is the better ethanol of the two, maybe a happy tree to beetle ratio should be obtained. That way the beetles have a food source, we have an ethanol source, and the climate stays at its current position.