CO2 Boosts Trees, but Ups Damage from Forest Pests

Greenhouse gas pollution often gives forests helpful growing boosts, but burgeoning bounties of carbon dioxide-fertilized canopies can also whet the appetites of leaf-munching bugs.

Scientists warn that damage inflicted by tiny forest pests could worsen as carbon dioxide levels rise.  Early research suggests that attacks by caterpillars, beetles, termites and other insects in some forests could be enough to cancel out projected increases in tree growth rates.

Forests are critical sponges for sucking carbon dioxide out of the air, and storing the carbon in their trunks and soils — keeping it out of the atmosphere and combating climate change — and the findings from a three-year experiment in northern Wisconsin warn of an emerging global warming feedback riding in the guts of countless creepy crawlies.

“Models that predict how much carbon storage will be in forests in the future under elevated levels of carbon dioxide typically do not include background levels of canopy damage by insects,” John Couture, a scientist in the University of Wisconsin at Madison’s forestry and ecology department, said.  “They do include potential outbreaks but, generally, background levels that are seen every year are overlooked and considered negligible.”

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