Mountain Pine Beetle research trip Photo Gallery by Mark Creery at pbase.com

Mountain Pine Beetle research trip

This gallery is a photojournal of a research trip I was on July 2006, which took me and 2 colleagues from Victoria to Cranbrook, B.C. and then to the Pemberton and Lillooet areas, covering 3000 km. of highway and logging roads. The project involves studying the whitebark pine tree, the highest-elevation pine tree in B.C., found anywhere between about 1500m up to the tree line. We were doing an initial study to see the effect of the extensive mountain pine beetle outbreak on the whitebark pine, a much rarer and slower-growing species than the lodgepole pine. Based on our initial observations and climate-suitability data, the future of the whitebark pine looks grim. The information we gathered was very interesting though, and the behaviour of the beetle on whitebark pine seems different than it does on lodgepole. Future trips in September and hopefully the next couple of years should shed some light into this phenomenon.

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Nancy Greene Lake	Mountain pine beetle damage in Wild Horse Creek watershed	More damage near the Cranbrook area on lodgepole pine	alpine flower at 2000m elevation
small alpine meadown	Indian Paintbrush	Our campsite at 2000m near an old trapper hut	More flowers
A cute Pika basking on a scree slope	Pupal chambers...	another view of our camp near a popular ridge viewpoint	More pine beetle destruction...
lodgepole pine vista	IMGP6808_resize.JPG	Patchwork of trees from logging creating grouped age-classes of trees...	Cattle grazing in open ranches
White-tailed deer	Stream along the logging road down from our site	Start of the Rocky Mountains	More Rockies...
Great view from camp	View from our site	Dead whitebark pine trees in the site were cored to see the history of the trees	Being near the tree-line means working on scree slopes sometimes
a waterway used by trappers that was fitted with piping	Moonscape	alpine plant	A fading whitebark pine (red and green needles) that was initially attacked last year
Some faders that we sampled	A longhorn beetle	15cm by 15cm section of bark showing the galleries created on the inside of the bark	More fading whitebarks
Alpine scenery	Our leader checks out detailed maps to find our next site	View of the slash pile and clearcut	another beetle on a whitebark
Another bark sample with side galleries and pupal chambers. Lots of blue stain present	Fresh attack. This bark shows the beetles are cruising through the tree...	Me chiselling out a square section of bark to figure out beetle density and development	Scott drilling a circular saw into the tree...
More sawing...	Our camp on Site 2, near Kimberly, B.C.	another view of our campsite right next to our site	sunset
Lots of large woody debris from dead trees in our plot	A fading whitebark on the left	A beetle-kill salvage logging operation at work.	A large machine is used to fall the trees quickly
Operator loads a logging truck, while we wait to get by	Mountain goat mother and kid licking the road treatment	Mountain goats	Hopping along the scree slope rocks
Oops! Our data and maps strewn everywhere!	Playing 52 Pick-up...	Scenery from Cranbrook to Kimberly	View of St. Mary's Lake near Kimberly
alpine meadow along our almost 2-hour hike up to our third site	waterfalls	Scree-slope view from our site	View across to red lodgepole and whitebark trees
View up the valley to our site	Scott 'filtering' his scotch into a flask	Campfire	Morning view from my tent
A second day of hiking was needed up to the site...	On our way through Roger's Pass	More mountain views on the way to Kamloops for the night	Roadblock! A tractor-trailer accident blocks the #1 Highway for hours
Wreckage of the tractor-trailer which seems to have flipped.	View of Mt. Joffre near Pemberton	Rugged terrain on our way up to the Stein Valley	More mountain vistas from our camp at 2000m
View to some tents below	More scenery at dusk...	Glow off the snow	alpine sunset
Picture of me in the apenglow	More mountains facing east this time	more shots of the alpenglow	Okay, that's probably enough of these...
...but here's another one...	This view shows the road up to edge of the park, which we biked into	Golden view	...
another one...	View into the Stein Valley. Lots of hoary marmots and signs of black bears	Scott walking across the snow to start our descent to our potential site...	Stein Valley
A Clark's Nutcracker	Alpine flower	Blue lupine	View to the valley, while getting attacked by bugs...
Ahhh... relaxing mountains...	Another feel-good sunset	Lots of snow still around, but melting quickly in the 30+ degree weather	View to our truck and camp
Some red lodgepoles near lake	A Canyon on the way from Lillooet to Seton Portage and beyond	Me by the canyon	Camping by a dam

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comment |

Selene		06-Apr-2008 02:37
You are a wonderful photographer! These pictures are so beautiful!

click on thumbnails for full image

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