Graph of the Day: Total Land Area Affected by Mountain Pine Beetle in BC, 1981-2005

Mountain Pine Beetle in BC (1981-2005) 2, 3 The area of BC forest affected by the Mountain Pine Beetle (MPB) has more than doubled, from 4 million hectares in 2003 to 8.7 million hectares in 2006, with much of this in the Fraser Basin. The MPB reduces trees’ nutrient and water uptake, resulting in defoliation […]

Risk of beetle outbreaks rise, along with temperature, in the warming West

ScienceDaily (Sep. 8, 2010) — The potential for outbreaks of spruce and mountain pine beetles in western North America’s forests is likely to increase significantly in the coming decades, according to a study conducted by USDA Forest Service researchers and their colleagues. Their findings, published in the September issue of the journal BioScience, represent the […]

Arctic ice: Less than meets the eye

By Chris Mooney 31 August 2010 LAST September, David Barber was on board the Canadian icebreaker CCGS Amundsen (pictured), heading into the Beaufort Sea, north of Alaska. He was part of a team investigating ice conditions in autumn, the time when Arctic sea ice shrinks to its smallest extent before starting to grow again as […]

Oil sands polluting Canada river system

  By Jeffrey Jones; editing by Rob Wilson and Janet GuttsmanMon Aug 30, 2010 5:31pm EDT CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) – Canada’s vast oil sands operations are polluting the Athabasca River system, researchers said on Monday, in a report that is bound to fuel the environmental battle over developing the resource. Contradicting Alberta government assertions that […]

After thousands of years, Canada’s ‘majestic’ ice shelves disintegrating

By Margaret Munro, Postmedia News August 28, 2010 Canada is home to plenty of ice, but the ancient, undulating ice shelves on the north coast of Ellesmere Island are something special. For starters, the shelves are “beautiful landscapes,” says earth scientist John England, at the University of Alberta, who considers the “majestic” shelves in Canada’s […]

Huge ice chunk breaks off Ellesmere Island

CBC News Tuesday, August 24, 2010 | 8:09 PM CST A large parcel of ice has fractured from a massive ice shelf on Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, marking the third known case of Arctic ice loss this summer alone. The chunk of ice, which scientists estimate is roughly the size of Bermuda, broke away from […]

Disaster at the Top of the World

By THOMAS HOMER-DIXON, Aboard the Louis S. St-LaurentAugust 22, 2010 STANDING on the deck of this floating laboratory for Arctic science, which is part of Canada’s Coast Guard fleet and one of the world’s most powerful icebreakers, I can see vivid evidence of climate change. Channels through the Canadian Arctic archipelago that were choked with […]

Haze from British Columbia fires expected to worsen in Alberta

By JENNA McMURRAY, QMI AgencyAugust 23, 2010 6:47am CALGARY – Though haze that settled over Calgary and much of Alberta last week due to wafting smoke from B.C. forest fires dissolved somewhat on the weekend, there’s more where that came from, according to Alberta Environment. Bob Myrick, manager for air policy, said though the air […]

Image of the Day: Fires and Smoke in British Columbia Viewed from Orbit, 13 August 2010

Multiple clusters of fires burned in British Columbia, sending a thick plume of smoke over the Pacific Ocean in mid-August 2010. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this natural-color image on August 13. East of the snowcapped Coast Mountains, numerous fires, many of them clustered into large groups, send smoke […]

Prairies choke on smoke from British Columbia forest fires

By Tamara Baluja, The Province; with files from Laura Baziuk August 22, 2010 B.C.’s ferocious wildfires have resulted in an air-quality advisory that remained in effect Saturday for B.C., Alberta and even parts of Saskatchewan as smoke continues to drift east. There have been unconfirmed reports that the smoke has even drifted to the western […]

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