"We estimate that pine beetles... can travel between 80-100 kilometres in one day.”

 

For years now, the Rocky Mountains were believed to be a natural barrier to the eastward spread of the mountain pine beetle. Well, Albertans should forget about oil for a minute and make Peter Jackson their new best friend.

Dr. Jackson is leading unique research that is answering some fundamental questions: how high do pine beetles fly? How far do they travel? Will they be able to cross the Rocky Mountains and spread eastward through Canada’s immense boreal forest? It would appear that the answer to the last question is yes and that has Alberta very interested in his research. In fact, the Government of Alberta and the Alberta forest industry is funding Dr. Jackson’s latest research at the foot of the Rockies.

Based out of the small town of Mackenzie, which is located right at the start of the Rockies, a research team led by Dr. Jackson has been using a diverse arsenal of tools to answer the questions posed above. These tools include Doppler Sodar to measure wind speed and wind direction at different levels of the atmosphere and Environment Canada’s hyper-sensitive radar equipment in Prince George and Grande Prairie that actually pick up insects as they’re flying in the air up to one kilometre above ground. In fact, it was earlier work with new radar equipment near Prince George that launched the latest study. As that new equipment was being tested, it was picking up large clouds of insects that were moving through the air at certain times of day. The patterns on the radar were consistent with what was known at the time about pine beetle behaviour, but the size of the clouds and the height they were traveling was on a scale never before seen. Previously, researchers had only proven that pine beetles could travel between trees as high as the forest canopy.

While the researchers believed that the “clouds” on the radar screen were pine beetles, they had to be sure. Jackson attached what looked like a modified butterfly net to the wing strut of a plane and then had a pilot fly transects of the atmosphere at different altitudes. Although the odds of actually catching anything with the small net were miniscule, they caught upwards of 30 pine beetles in a single pass and they were the first to prove that pine beetles can fly 850 metres above the treetops; 300 metres higher than the CN Tower.

What does that mean for Alberta? “Once the pine beetles get to that elevation, they can be carried for long distances on the prevailing winds that generally blow from west to east,” says Dr. Jackson. “Even on what seems like a calm day on the ground, those upper elevation winds can blow 20 kilometres per hour or more. We estimate that pine beetles at those high elevations can travel between 80-100 kilometres in one day.”

In other words, the Rockies aren’t a barrier and the big issue now is predicting where the beetles are most likely to arrive in the largest numbers. That was the primary goal of the research based out of Mackenzie this past summer. All of the different research tools – the plane and net, radar, Doppler Sodar, various other meteorological data, and information on where the pine beetles are already – have been key to developing answers.

The data has been fed into UNBC’s high-performance computer to allow Dr. Jackson and his colleagues to develop accurate models for pinpointing where the beetles are likely to go based on various factors, such as the weather and the landscape. This information is vital for the forest industry as well as to the communities that depend on the forest industry. Think of it this way: If combating the pine beetle outbreak is akin to a full-out war, Peter Jackson is leading the reconnaissance effort.

 

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Related Links Environmental Science & Engineering Dr. Jackson's Research  web page

 

Dr. Jackson's Bio Dr. Jackson is a mesoscale meteorologist whose research mostly concerns wind in complex terrain (i.e. in mountains and along coastlines) and environmental applications including dispersion of atmospheric pollutants and insects in those environments. In pursuing this theme, he and his research group use both in-situ (from surface-based weather stations) and remote (from a phased array doppler sodar system) observations, as well as atmospheric models.