Great, now we have to worry about beetles... From CSM:
Billions of tiny mountain pine beetles are treating Canada’s boreal forest like a 3,000-mile-long salad bar, transforming a key absorber of carbon dioxide greenhouse gas into a CO2 emitter instead.
In just a decade, exploding beetle populations and a rise in wildfires have flipped Canada’s boreal forest from its longstanding role as a natural carbon vacuum – sucking up 55 million or more tons of CO2 annually – to that of a giant tailpipe emitting up to 245 million tons of CO2 each year, according to the Canadian Forest Service.
That sharp about-face is raising questions about the future of northern forests worldwide that are being hit hard by global warming – including Russia’s massive boreal expanse, where wildfires have risen dramatically.
2 comments:
That's very bad news. Something definitely needs to be done about this, maybe some chemicals would solve this problem but of course Greenpeace will be all over that. But the trees are more important these days then few million bugs. I hope the forests won't just be left to die out and something will be done about it.
Take care, Lorne
Agreed - this is definitely bad. And the world's forests have enough problems with legal & illegal logging and deforestation!
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