Beetles turn forest into CO2 Producer

From a study in Nature - "Mountain pine beetle and forest carbon feedback to climate change"
One of the effects of the global temperature rise is that the winter temperatures are no longer cold enough to kill mountain pine beetles in British Columbia. The warmer weather in the summer provides better conditions for the beetle as well. The result is that the mountain pine beetles are killing huge numbers of trees in the British Columbia forests.
Natural Resources Canada

(Red means dead in pine forests.) The dead trees release the carbon that they have captured throughout their lives making the British Columbia forests a net carbon producer until at least 2020. The pine beetle blight is now affecting 32 million acres, at least an order magnitude larger area than any previous recorded infestation. The result will be an average release of 13 million metric tons of CO2 each year between the year 2000 and 2020.



To put this in context, the amount of carbon released from this section of British Columbia is about 75% of all the carbon released from all Canadian forest fires.



As more carbon is released, the earth's temperature rises and allowing the pine beetle to expand into larger areas of the forest. Positive Feedback Loop.



The NY Times wrote about this in an article titled "The Beetle Factor in a Carbon Calculus"