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North Platte Basin Roundtable Meeting 10.30.2007 <br />There are so few beetle studies, and lots of them don't have good enough data to have <br />conclusive results. <br />PROJECTED beetle effects on hydrology: <br />Reduced interception of snowfall, reduced sublimation, increased snowpack. <br />Interception losses to atmosphere are significant with green or red needles. (they both <br />catch a lot of snow and sublimate a lot of water back in the atmosphere). Reduced <br />summertime ET (evapotranspiration): reduced ET is a given for a dead tree. <br />Red and dead: everything that melts underneath them goes to runoff. Green trees use <br />some of the runoff and ET it back to the atmosphere. <br />How does mountain wine beetle disturbance differ from <br />What we lalow: <br />-Individual tree transpiration declines significantly, 3 wks following a beetle attack. <br />-Decreases in stand transpiration will depend on species composition and understory <br />release <br />*Understanding the magnitude and timing of beetle induced increases in water yield is <br />more complicated than a simple harvest situation. <br />What they are doing at Fraser Experimental Forest: <br />Studying tree-water use in the world of beetles: snow interception (nailing down changes <br />between green, red, and needle-off situations) and evapotranspiration (determine the <br />timing and mechanism of tree mortality following beetle attack, quantify the transpiration <br />component of site water balance). <br />Bark Beetles reduce transpiration by 50% just 3-4 weeks after beetle attack. <br />Also Studying: <br />Nutrient and soil processes <br />Sedimentation <br />Affect on riparian systems <br />Best management practices <br />There was discussion about fires and beetle mitigation for fire and fiiels reduction. <br />Kelly: if you remove lodgepole with fuels treatments, the remaining lodgepole will <br />probably blow down. <br />We should be paying attention to the basic physical process and hydrology, and we need <br />to be paying attention to how we deal with it. <br />There was discussion about whether or not the bark beetle epidenuc will affect the flows <br />of the North Platte through Northgate. <br />Debbie Alpe asked: is there money out there to be utilized for research? <br />Kelly: one thing he'd like to do over here deals with interception and soil moisture. The <br />State Forest has some nice stands of different basal area, and he would come over and put <br />