[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 102 (Wednesday, July 24, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7306-S7307]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  EFFECTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE IN ALASKA

  Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, a recent article from the New York Times 
describes the infestation of spruce bark beetles on the Kenai Peninsula 
in Alaska. This is another aspect of global climate change that has 
deadly implications in my state. On the Kenai Peninsula, the spruce 
bark beetle has infested nearly 95 percent of the spruce trees, which 
represents about four million acres of dead or dying forest. Some 
scientists believe that a succession of warm years in Alaska has 
allowed spruce bark beetles to reproduce at twice their normal rate. 
This warming trend in Alaska has coincided with a huge outbreak of 
these beetles and the death of a forest nearly twice the size of 
Yellowstone National Park. This terrible situation, in one of my 
state's most beautiful tourist destinations, has created a dangerous 
environment for a large scale fire in this region.
  Over half of the people of Alaska live in the path of this fire.
  The Forest Service, under the previous Administration, in my State 
would not permit the selective cutting of infested trees, which would 
have mitigated, if not stopped, the outbreak of the deadly beetle. When 
timber sales were offered in this area extreme environmental lawsuits 
stopped any removal of the ever growing fuel load. My state is now in a 
very dangerous situation--eight years of beetle kill stands in the 
forests on the Kenai Peninsula and the insect continues to spread.
  This article demonstrates that. I call it to the attention of the 
Senate because of the emphasis placed on fires already started in the 
West and that are ongoing.
  This is the most deadly situation I have ever encountered in terms of 
potential fire and the hazard in this enormous area--4 million acres of 
dead or dying trees caused by this beetle. I think it ought to be dealt 
with by all concerned. I hope we have some money in the regular bill 
for this matter.
  I ask unanimous consent that the article be printed in the Record. I 
call it to the attention of the Senate.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the Science Times, June 25, 2002]

                 On Hot Trail of Tiny Killer in Alaska

                           (By Timothy Egan)

       Soldotna, Alaska--Edward Berg has a pair of doctorates, one 
     in philosophy and another in botany, but for the last decade 
     he has been a forensic detective in the forest, trying to 
     solve a large murder mystery.
       The evidence surrounds him on his home in the Kenai 
     Peninsula: nearly four million acres of white spruce trees, 
     dead or dying from an infestation of beetles--the largest 
     kill by insects of any forest in North America, federal 
     officials say.
       Beetles have been gnawing at spruce trees for thousands of 
     years. Why, Dr. Berg wondered, has this infestation been so 
     great? After matching climate records to the rate of dying 
     trees, Dr. Berg, who works at the Kenai National Widlife 
     Refuge, believes he has come up with an answer.
       He says a succession of warm years in Alaska has allowed 
     spruce bark beetles to reproduce at twice their normal rate. 
     Hungry for the sweet lining beneath the bark, the beetles 
     have swarmed over the stands of spruce, overwhelming the 
     trees' normal defense mechanisms.
       If Dr. Berg is correct--and he has won many converts as 
     well as some skeptics--then the dead spruce forest of Alaska 
     may well be one of the world's most visible monuments to 
     climate change. On the Kenai, nearly 95 percent of spruce 
     trees have fallen to the beetle. Now, conditions are ripe for 
     a large fire and could lead to bigger changes in the 
     ecosystem, affecting moose, bear, salmon and other creatures 
     that have made the peninsula, just a few hours' drive from 
     Anchorage, a tourist mecca.
       ``The chief reason why the beetle outbreak has been the 
     largest and the longest is that we have had a unprecedented 
     run of warm summers,'' said Dr. Berg, 62 a soft-spoken man in 
     suspenders and running shoes.
       Temperatures in Alaska have risen sharply in the last 30 
     years, causing sea ice to break up off the northern 
     coastlines, some glaciers to recede and permafrost, to melt. 
     But until Dr. Berg began matching raising temperatures to the 
     number of trees killed by beetles, no one of had tied the 
     death of a forest nearly twice the size of Yellowstone 
     National Park to warming temperatures.
       Dr. Berg believes the larger culprit is global warming, 
     brought on by increased emissions of greenhouse gases, which 
     trap heat in the atmosphere. But that is a bigger debate, one 
     which Dr. Berg's findings for other forests vulnerable to 
     bugs is that as climate warms in the north, some species of 
     evergreen trees that cover vast acreage could be mowed down 
     by an ever-expanding population of bettles.
       The dead spruce forest of Alaska is also a lesson, to some 
     ecologists, of how warmer temperatures present intractable 
     problems for living things anchored to a certain area. People 
     can adapt, or even more, but trees that have been growing in 
     one area for 8,000 years cannot--at least not quickly enough.
       Other scientists who work on global warming issues are now 
     looking at Dr. Berg's findings.

[[Page S7307]]

       ``His work is very convincing; I would even say 
     unimpeachable,'' said Dr. Glenn Juday, a forest ecologist at 
     the University of Alaska. ``For the first time, I now think 
     beetle infestation is related to climate change.''
       While Dr. Juday did not collaborate on Dr. Berg's spruce 
     studies, he relayed some of the findings at a recent 
     conference on climate change in Oslo, as part of the Arctic 
     Climate Impact Assessment Project, a study by scientists from 
     several nations. It was also presented by Dr. Berg himself in 
     a speech at an American forestry conference this year.
       ``There is enormous excitement over Ed Berg's studies,'' 
     Dr. Juday said.
       But other scientists are still skeptical, saying it may be 
     only a coincidence that rising temperatures go hand in hand 
     with growing beetle infestations. Some say he has found a big 
     piece of the puzzle, but not all of it.
       ``I think Ed Berg is only partially correct,'' said Dr. Ed 
     Holsten, who studies insects for the Forest Service in 
     Alaska. The trees on the Kenai are old, and ripe for beetle 
     outbreaks. If they had been logged, or burned in fire, it 
     might have kept the bugs down, Dr. Holsten said.
       The spruce beetle, which is about a quarter-inch long with 
     six legs, is barely visible to most people who roam through 
     evergreen forests in the West and Alaska. Large swaths of 
     forest in Colorado, Idaho and Wyoming have been felled by the 
     bug. But nothing has approached the Alaska kill.
       The beetles take to the air in spring, looking for trees to 
     attack. When they find a vulnerable stand, they will signal 
     to other beetles ``a chemical message,'' Dr. Holsten says. 
     They burrow under the bark, feeding on woody capillary tissue 
     that the tree uses to transport nutrients.
       In Dr. Berg's office, he has a cross-section of a tree that 
     has been under attack by beetles. They build a web of canals 
     as they eat. Eventually, the tree loses its ability to feed 
     itself; it is essentially choked to death, a process that can 
     take several years, Dr. Berg said.
       Spruce trees produce chemicals, called terpenes, that are 
     supposed to drive beetles off. But when so many beetles go 
     after a single tree, the beetles usually win. As it dies, the 
     normally green needles of spruce will turn red, and then, in 
     later years, silver or gray. Ghostly stands of dead, silver-
     colored spruce--looking like black and white photographs of a 
     forest--can be seen throughout south-central Alaska, 
     particularly on the Kenai. Scientists estimate that 38 
     million spruce trees have died in Alaska in the current 
     outbreak.
       ``It's very hard to live among the dead spruce; it's been a 
     real kick in the teeth,'' said Dr. Berg. ``We all love this 
     beautiful forest.''
       One reason Dr. Berg may have been able to see the large 
     implications of the beetle attack when others saw only dead 
     trees is that he is one of few government scientists for the 
     Fish and Wildlife Service who is paid to study the big 
     picture.
       His title is ecologist for the Kenai refuge. ``When they 
     hired me they felt the need to look at things from a broader 
     scale rather than simply do moose counts,'' he said.
       Working with a doctoral student, Chris Fastie, on a federal 
     grant, Dr. Berg has been matching the volume of dead trees to 
     climate. Since 1987, he said, the Kenai Peninsula has had a 
     string of above-normal temperature years, particularly in the 
     summer. Each of those years coincided with huge outbreaks of 
     beetle infestation and dead trees, matching warmer years and 
     a rise in spruce kills in the early 1970's. Dr. Berg found a 
     similar pattern in the Kluane area of the Canada's Yukon 
     Territory, where it is much colder.
       Spruce beetle eggs normally hatch by August, then spend the 
     winter, dormant, in larvae beneath the bark. They can 
     withstand temperatures of up to 35 degrees below zero. The 
     normal life of a spruce beetle--if not picked off by 
     woodpeckers or other birds--is two years. But in the warmer 
     years, Dr. Berg and others found that the beetles were 
     completing a two-year cycle in a single year. This mass of 
     insects has consumed nearly every mature spruce tree on the 
     Kenai, until there is very little left to eat. Most of the 
     trees are more than 100 years old.
       Other scientists say the warming climate may be responsible 
     for a big part of the huge bug outbreak, but not all of it.
       ``These bugs are coldblooded,'' Dr. Holsten said. ``They 
     are an early warning indicator of climate change. If it warms 
     up enough they can complete that two-year life in a single 
     year.''


           warmer weather allows voracious insects to thrive

       Spruce has grown on the Kenai Peninsula for about 8,000 
     years. Other infestations have killed up to 30 percent of a 
     forested area, before bug populations died from fire or 
     freeze or other natural causes. The current infestation never 
     slowed until the beetles ran out of food.
       ``It slowed down only after they had literally eaten 
     themselves out of house and home,'' Dr. Berg said.
       The Forest Service has been studying beetle-killed spruce 
     for some time, but has yet to come up with any way of 
     attacking the insects, other than suggestions of logging and 
     controlled-burn fires--each of which is hotly contested.
       What may follow in the path of the dead forest will be 
     likely be a mix of grasses, and more hardwood trees like 
     birch, alder and aspens, said Dr. Berg.
       Climate records have been kept for barely a hundred years 
     in most places in Alaska. By studying tree rings--which 
     expand in warmer years and barely grow in cold years--
     scientists in Alaska say the current warming period is 
     unmatched for at least 400 years. By studying dead trees, 
     they say they can find no evidence of a spruce beetle 
     outbreak of this magnitude, ever.

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