Estes Park – Senators, Mark Udall and John McCain stopped in Rocky Mountain National Park this past Monday to tour the park and observe, firsthand, change taking place. Following their tour and discussion with rangers they moved on to the Town Hall to get input from four experts regarding climate change in our national parks. The panel of experts proposed changes the National Park Service should implement among changes already underway within the park service. The expert panel consisted of Dr. Herbert C. Frost, Dr. David Schimel, Alice Madden, and Stephen Saunders.

In Hollowell Park, the senators were drawn to the trees devastated by the mountain pine beetle. Sen. McCain quickly noted, “All you have to do is look around and see the trees that are dying because of the pine beetle.”

The mountain pine beetle has had a constant presence in Rocky Mountain National Park. In the past ten years the population has become out of balance. Alice Madden, Colorado’s Climate Change Coordinator stated that many factors have contributed to the growth and infestation of the pine beetle. She said that in addition to decades of policy promoting fire suppression the other factors are, “longer, warmer summers, and fewer periods of intensely cold winter weather.”

Looking at the forest as a whole, there are many other concerns in addition to and stemming from pine beetle infestation. These are the exceeding death of mature trees over the rate of new generation, “sudden aspen decline”, carbon uptake, and fire.

Stephen Saunders, President of the Rocky Mountain Climate Association, referenced a recent study of undisturbed forest plots across the West. The study found that trees are dying at higher rates, including both young and old trees and is attributed to the changing climate.

Dr. Herbert C. Frost, Associate Director, Natural Resource Stewardship and Science, National Park Service, mentioned that there is, according to USGS long-term records, “earlier tree death without the compensating growth of young seedlings.”

The phenomenon of “sudden aspen decline” was first observed in 2004 when people began to notice that “aspen trees in Colorado were dying in large numbers and that the dead trees were not regenerating as usual through new trees growing from the roots of the old,” Stephen Saunders said.

With forests in decline a concern is that forests will shift from being carbon sinks to carbon sources. South of Rocky Mountain National Park signs show that a one-month change in the timing of snowmelt reduced carbon capture in forest ecosystems by one-half.