Insect outbreaks help fight natural disasters

Scientists have unjustly solved insects on the destruction of forest trees today.

While the US government is suffering from large outbreaks of insect outbreaks, devastating millions of forest trees in the Northwestern United States, forestry scientists from Vermount University (USA) ) has found an unexpected benefit of this phenomenon: insect epidemic has significantly reduced the severity of forest fires.

This study is in stark contrast to previous research by scientists in this area.

"This is amazing," said Garrett Meigs, a forestry professor at Vermount University, the lead author of the study. "Forest fires and epidemics have increased rapidly in recent decades. This has led some other scientists to try to link these two phenomena together."

Forest fires in areas that have experienced insect pests will have significantly lower severity than conventional forest areas.

After analyzing 81 forest fires that have occurred over the past 25 years, scientists have simultaneously evaluated and studied the severity of these wildfires after insect outbreaks. They focused on the two states of Oregon and Washington, along with the connection of two insect species, the mountain pine-eating beetles and the sprinkle-eating beetles.

Researchers will measure the severity by assessing the area of ​​vegetation lost by using satellite imagery taken before and after a forest fire occurs.

The results of the study show that forest fires in areas that have experienced insect pests will have significantly lower severity than conventional forest areas. This is true regardless of the size of the fire and the degree of drought.

"The epidemic of insects and forest fires will continue to increase in the future due to climate change. But this study will help us improve forest management and better understand the links in nature. " said Garrett Meigs.

The researchers said that this phenomenon could be explained by the "thinning" effect . This happens when insects kill some trees and leave some other trees in existence. At that time, forest density will decrease, weakening the severity of the fire.

The scene is devastated after a serious forest fire.(Image source: infonet).

However, there are still some other scientists who hold the view that insects make the consequences of forest fires worse. If there is an outbreak of beetles eating bark, there will be a lot of dead trees. Dry wood will be a potential cause of large-scale fires.

Usually the female pits the previous tree, followed by the male. After mating, both dig an egg tunnel that runs parallel to the grain. When the larvae hatch right below the outer bark, they will be perpendicular to the tunnels that they chisel around the tree, cutting off nutrients that pass through the bark (libe) and kill dead tree. The needles of the tree turn red, then gray, and eventually the wind sheds the dead tree.

Winter temperatures down to minus 40 degrees Celsius killed the larvae, but that cold temperature now rarely occurs because of climate change. And warmer summers have helped some beetles to complete their reproductive cycle in a year instead of two years, accelerating the rate of population growth.