#spruce budworm

[katephillipsart]

26 Aug, this new comic will be available with EAC and Zuppa Halifax, as part of the 50 Things project. Me and my collaborator (my mom!) are pretty thrilled 😅

[theemperorsfeather]

A small update on wildfire and bark beetles

A small update on wildfire and bark beetles

Sometime last year, I wrote a couple posts about wildfire and/or bark beetles and forest health, so it was really cool to find another article recently explaining how the “devastation” brought by the beetles may actually help prevent more extreme fires in the future. From “Insect outbreaks help forests survive wildfires” (which mentions the  spruce budworm, a moth, as well as bark beetles):…

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[earthandscience]

This is REALLY cool -- so basically a dying tree can send resources to its neighbors, even if they are not the same species. Clearly these networks play an important role in a forest's resiliency following a large disturbance (e.g., drought or western spruce budworm) and are another example of forest ecosystem complexity. "These findings indicate that IDF [interior Douglas-fir] can transfer resources and stress signals to interspecific neighbors, suggesting ectomycorrhizal networks can serve as agents of interspecific communication facilitating recovery and succession of forests after disturbance."