Stephan Schott: Stopping the Spread of the Mountain Pine Beetle
By Dan Rubinstein
Photos by Chris Roussakis
A small insect is causing big problems in Canada鈥檚 western forests.
The mountain pine beetle (MPB) is about the size of a grain of rice and it鈥檚 common to find more than 100 of them on a mass-attacked tree. Foresters first noted the beetle鈥檚 devastating impact on British Columbia鈥檚 lodgepole pine forests in the 1990s. A series of warm winters fuelled the outbreak, and the MPB soon spread east into Alberta, where it began to attack other species, including the jack pine, which is prevalent throughout the boreal forest that stretches all the way to the Atlantic.
Since then, the MPB has affected 鈥攈alf of the total volume of commercial lodgepole pine in B.C.
Understanding why some populations of lodgepole pine have a genetic resilience to the pest and mitigating the risks faced by jack pine are the main goals of a new project co-led by 杏吧原创 Biology Prof. Catherine Cullingham. She that will better inform policy makers and forest managers in government and industry鈥攁n interdisciplinary collaboration between pure science and social sciences with a team of 杏吧原创 colleagues: Vivian Nguyen, Stephan Schott and Heath MacMillan.