Bark Beetle-Induced Mortality Impacts on Forest Biogeochemical Cycles are Less than Expected

Abstract:

Bark beetles increased conifer tree mortality across western North America due to past land use interacting with climate change. For both mountain pine and spruce beetles, the mechanism of mortality is hydraulic failure due to xylem occlusion by beetle-carried blue stain fungi, which causes the trees to die from symptoms that are the same as extreme drought. As the mortality event peaked in the last decade, the hypothesized effects on forest biogeochemical processes were 1) lower forest water use from xylem occlusion, 2) less carbon uptake from limited canopy gas exchange, 3) increased nitrogen cycling from increased litterfall and soil moisture and 4) increased streamflow and organic N and C loading at the watershed scale from the first three consequences. The stand-scale effects during mortality were as predicted with transpiration falling by 10-35% in proportion to the occluded xylem, carbon uptake declining by > 50% due to lack of canopy gas exchange and nitrogen cycling increasing from elevated litter inputs and stimulated organic matter decomposition. Some stands, especially mid-elevation lodgepole pine, did not follow these trends because of residual vegetation taking advantage of the increased resources from the dead trees and rapid succession within 5 years of new grasses, shrubs and tree seedlings as well as increased resource use by surviving canopy trees. In a high elevation spruce stand, the lower water use lasted for only three years while summer carbon uptake was only significantly reduced for a year. At the scale of small to medium-sized watersheds, the impact of mortality was not detectable in stream flow due to the spatial and temporal scale muting of the mortality signal as temporal and spatial scales increase. Current ecosystem and watershed models miss these compensating mechanisms with increasing scale and thus over predict the impact of bark beetle mortality.