The Osculent Chirp of Death

Special Week Special No. 4

Today during Special Week at SOS Forests, we present the first Blogosphere pictures of the Black Crater Burn.

The Black Crater Fire started last July in the Three Sisters Wilderness of the Deschutes National Forest, west of Sisters, Oregon. By the time it was contained, nearly 10,000 acres had burned and nearly $10,000,000 had been spent fighting the fire. Most of the acreage burned was on public and private lands outside the designated wilderness.

The Black Crater Fire was contained in mid-August. These pictures were taken today, Friday, 9/29/06.

At the entrance of the 15 Road near Highway 246 is this macabre sign: a warning, become an omen, become grim reality.

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The forest that burned was, like so many western forests, multi-cohort ponderosa pine. The older cohort consisted of 10 to 20 trees per acre, all over 150 years old, but of varying ages up to 300+ years. The younger cohort had as many as 1,000 trees per acre, all 120 years old and younger.

This is what the forest looked like before the fire. Note the scattered old trees, one of them recently deceased. The thicket below competes with the older trees, not for sun, but for soil moisture. (The debris is pushed up from the fireline behind the camera.)

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The older cohort trees are the remnant relics from the open, park-like forest that once covered much the West. The open forest, almost a conifer savanna, was maintained by frequent, regular, anthropogenic fire, i.e. fire set by anthropoids, the human residents of the region for millennia past. In the absence of the Tenders and their firesticks, a thicket of doghair, “bull pine” ponderosa has arisen underneath the older cohort.

The ancient fires protected forests. Modern fires destroy them. For example, not 200 feet away from the last pic, but inside the fireline, this old growth, ancient, heritage tree was killed by the fire.

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This old growth tree was shooting sparks and had to be felled and bucked. It was 222 years old 8 feet off the ground, so approximately 240 years old. It germinated around 1760.

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This old tree had lived through many fires, but this fire burned it through, and it fell. Firefighters bucked the burning butt log off. The tree had 264 rings at 12 feet off the ground, so was approximately 290 years old, germinating around 1710.

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The dead forest is nearly silent now. There are no birds, or squirrels, or chipmunks. There is a faint hum, though. Almost every dead tree emits a tiny chirping noise. Softer than a cricket, regular and rhythmic, the chirps sound like little kisses.

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They are kisses of death: the mating calls of the male mountain pine beetle, Dendroctonus ponderosae. The male beetles invade the freshly killed trees, depositing a blue stain fungus, Ophiostoma sp., in the still wet cambiums. The females are attracted by the osculent chirping. The beetles mate as enthusiastically as small insects can, and the females deposit eggs in galleries under the bark. The larvae that hatch shortly thereafter, together with the blue stain fungus, girdle and plug up vessels in living trees, which are also invaded after the fire.

This old growth ponderosa pine survived the fire. It will not survive the beetle infestation.

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A few patches of doomed green trees here and there, less than 5 percent of total burn area that we walked through, and the eerie, rhythmic chirping of the bark beetles, were the only signs of life today in the Black Crater Burn.