Dutch Elm Disease and Climate Change - what's next?

[Radical Activist]

Environmentalists sometimes divide along lines of energy/public health advocates and land conservationists. In reality, you can't separate the two. Some of the earliest impacts of climate change are the spread of invasive species that threaten to destroy plant and animal life in our few remaining wilderness areas.

Dutch Elm Disease is an invasive species that already wiped out most of America's Elm population. This article is a warning that similar invasive species could destroy other species.

“In 35 years of working with timber, I can’t remember a time when our trees were under so great a threat,” said Mike Seville, County Land & Business Association (CLA) forestry and woodland adviser.

“At least with Dutch Elm disease in the 1970s only one species was affected, but now we have acute oak decline, red band needle blight on Corsican pine and Scots pine and leaf miner on horse chestnuts. Coming from the South West is the rather confusingly named ‘sudden oak death’ which is killing larch and affecting douglas fir and sweet chestnut.”

What was really worrying, he said, was the rapid spread of the disease. The red band needle blight, in particular, was running in a swathe from Suffolk and Norfolk and up into the Midlands. “It isn’t overstating the case to say that in a very short time we could lose some of our woodlands and commercial forests. With them will go the beauty of our landscapes, a vast range of wildlife habitats, a timber resource and vital carbon sequestration at a time of climate change,” Mr Seville said.

http://www.eveshamjournal.co.uk/news/8325569.Tree_diseases_could_alter_our_landscape/

[closeupready]

1. Thing of it is, we KNOW fossil fuel consumption is destroying the environment, YET

nobody is talking about reduction in oil consumption or stemming consumption in ANY WAY.

It's like watching a train wreck - you know that many horrors await ahead, yet, you are powerless to stop it.

[Radical Activist]

3. Obama already took major steps to reduce oil consumption

before the BP gusher. He got major improvements in mileage and auto emissions standards. Cash for clunkers took a lot of old gas guzzlers off the road. The stimulus invested billions in high speed rail. There's more research and support for alternatives like electric cars. The Dept of Transportation is doing more to favor bikes and smart growth over cars. All of this was done before BP.

More needs to be done. The biggest failure is the Senate blocking the climate change bill. Other then the Senate obstructionism, Obama has done exactly the right thing to reduce oil consumption. It's one of his biggest accomplishments, in my view.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

2. Let the elms die.

What's the worst that could happen? :shrug:

[Radical Activist]

5. I wouldn't mind if it stuck to the elm population.

They're already a lost cause. It would be a problem if disease spread to other trees though.

[HughMoran]

11. lol

[Hekate]

12. It could jumps species and spread, like other diseases. Also, dead forests are tinder.

California evolved to burn periodically -- but I don't think most of the rest of the country did. Even with California's ecology, the bark beetle (I think that's what it was) killed off so many pines that forest fires are worse.

Hekate

[HereSince1628]

4. Natural American elms aren't wiped out

They are among the weediest of trees in my woodlot. What's really different is that they don't survive to old age and become the giant forest and shade trees I knew as a kid. The trunks get to be 9-10 inches and by then the tree is dying. That's a problem for using as shade trees in town...

There are several cultivars that are disease resistant. It's my understanding that the University of Wisconsin has developed a successful version that has been put back on city streets in Madison.

Of course that doesn't mean that climate change isn't going to result in biogeographic changes for disease, I've witnessed that in parasites of fish and parasites of sea birds in Norway and Karelia.

[Radical Activist]

6. Interesting.

It would be nice to think there's hope for a resurgence of the elm population.

[HereSince1628]

10. link to some commercially available elms that have resistance...

http://www.botanyshop.com/ValleyForge.htm

[JNelson6563]

7. My neighborhood lost all its' Dutch Elms in the 70's

It was horrible. :-(

Julie

[cilla4progress]

8. I was up in the mountains (Cascades) recently

and there are huge swaths of dying trees... either firs or spruce, possibly caused by spruce budworm. Turning into a torch. Very, very sad. Bugs aren't being killed off like they used to in cold winters - it takes a week or more of below freezing temps to kill them off. Direct effect of climate change. Of course, couldn't get my republican riding buddies to cop to that.

[Radical Activist]

9. The same thing happened in the smokies.

Invasives that wouldn't have survived that far north at those altitudes are on the march. The park service admits it's a direct result of climate change. I think its hemlock woolly adelgids in this case.

[NJmaverick]

13. Good question, just watched the little ice age special last night

amazing the devastation just small changes can bring

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

14. Kick