The balsam woolly adelgid, a tiny nonnative flightless insect, is spreading across the American West killing subalpine fir in northern Utah's recreation-heavy mountain ranges and canyons. Rsearchers document a close association between the pest's spread and warming temperatures.
The balsam woolly adelgid, a tiny nonnative flightless insect, is spreading across the American West killing subalpine fir in northern Utah's recreation-heavy mountain ranges and canyons. Rsearchers document a close association between the pest's spread and warming temperatures.
New research from the University of Utah, conducted in partnership with the U.S. Forest Service, has documented the current extent of the adelgid infestation and created a model for predicting its severity around the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest. The study appears this month in the journal Forest Ecology and Management. Co-authors include U Biology Professor William Anderegg, director of the Wilkes Center for Climate Science and Policy.
Aside from an appetite for conifers, this new arrival to Utah has little in common with the native bark beetles that have devastated stands of lodgepole pine, ponderosa and Engelmann spruce all over the West in recent decades. While beetles gnaw away and burrow through the phloem under the trees' bark, the much smaller, flightless adelgid sucks out the trees' fluids and leaves behind a toxic saliva.
Infested trees can die with three to five years, while white fir withstand infestation with no apparent ill effects. In Farmington Canyon north of Salt Lake City, where BWA was first documented in Utah, subalpine fir is experiencing widespread mortality.
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