SandBoxBlogs: KUNC "Tax Break for Beetle-Kill Wood Products Expands"

Erin O'Toole:
"As vacationers head to the Colorado mountains this summer, it will be hard to miss the large swaths of dead and dying trees caused by the mountain pine and spruce beetle epidemic. But a bill signed into law earlier this month by Governor Hickenlooper could help speed up the recovery process.

Rep. Laura Bradford (R, Collbran) sponsored the bill, which extends and expands a tax exemption on the sale of products made from wood harvested from beetle-kill trees. The tax break covers items such as furniture - as well as products like firewood, lumber, and sawdust.

Decorator Charise Buckley praised the wood's versatility last year in a Denver Post article:

The distinct look of beetle-kill pine — produced by the infestation — also strikes a chord with home design fans. Beetles invade the bark of mature lodgepole and ponderosa pines and lay eggs. The resulting larvae feed on and ultimately kill the tree.

Though the interior wood of the tree remains unchanged and structurally sound, a blue fungus carried by the beetles stains the wood, leaving telltale blue, green and gray streaks.

Bradford says removing beetle-kill trees is critical to future forest health – and with more than 3 million acres of trees destroyed, Colorado needs to approach the problem from every angle.

“We need to incentivize the marketplace to get these trees off the forest lands before there’s a catastrophic fire,” she says...."  (Read more?  Click title)

"Unapologetic pursuit and tracking of patterns within the news others make since 2010."

SandBoxBlogs: Grand Junction Daily Sentinel "Bark beetles take bite out of air quality, study says"

Matthew Berger:
"It appears that bark beetles are attacking more than just the trees.

Research conducted outside Steamboat Springs has found that the beetles that have decimated pine and spruce forests throughout the western United States have also inadvertently contributed to the air quality problems that plague much of the region.

Lodgepole pines infested with bark beetles can release 5 to 20 times the amount of gases that can contribute to haze and airborne particulate matter than non-infested trees, according to a study published last week in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

“When thinking about bark beetle infestations maybe we need to think about not just the forest but what is it going to do to air quality and climate change,” said Kara Huff Hartz, one of the study’s authors, from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where she is an assistant professor.

The gases released by the infested trees, called volatile organic compounds, can contribute to the formation of particulate matter air pollution, which can cause human health problems and affect climate change.

Why exactly the infestations result in higher emissions of these volatile organic compounds is still not clear, said Huff Hartz.

One of several possibilities is that when the beetles bore into the bark they are creating a sort of pipeline for the compounds in the tree’s resin to escape into the atmosphere, she said...."  (Read more?  Click title)

"Unapologetic pursuit and tracking of patterns within the news others make since 2010."