Provincial-Level Projection of
the Current Mountain Pine Beetle Outbreak

Year 6 (Current Results)

In the past year (2008/2009), the beetle projection portion of the model has been slightly altered and projections updated based on the results of the 2008 Provincial Aerial Overview of Forest Health. This work represents "updates" to the efforts of Year 5.  The current projection results do not project the forest management response to the current outbreak.

Reports

• Infestation Projection: updated to include the 2008 Provincial Aerial Overview of Forest Health

• Methods updates: describing revisions to the model resulting in BCMPB.v6

PLEASE NOTE that there were problems with the 2008 Aerial Overview of Forest Health that have impacted the current infestation projection.  Please consult the Infestation Projection report available below to obtain further information regarding the uncertainty and problems with the current infestation projection.

Spreadsheets

• A Microsoft Excel workbook is available depicting the observed and projected pine loss due to the current mountain pine beetle infestation. The workbook contains tables and charts for each of the forest management units where pine constitutes greater than 10% of the forest volume harvested. However, this spreadsheet is only available upon request due to the problems with the 2008 Aerial Overview of Forest Health and the resulting impacts on the provincial projection (please consult the Infestation Projection report available above to obtain further information regarding the uncertainty and problems with the current infestation projection). Please contact Adrian Walton if you would like to receive a copy of this spreadsheet.

Cartographic Maps

The following series of cartographic maps represents the state of the outbreak as seen in 2008, and as projected for 3 different years in the future.  They are PDF files approximately 2 megabytes in size.  [If the PDF files do not load properly within your browser, right-click on a link, save to your computer, then load manually with Adobe Reader.]

• Observed percentage of pine volume killed (red- and grey-attack) in 2008

• Projection of percentage of pine volume killed (red- and grey-attack) by 2009

• Projection of percentage of pine volume killed (red- and grey-attack) by 2013

• Projection of percentage of pine volume killed (red- and grey-attack) by 2017

GIS Maps

Geographic Information System (GIS) maps are available on BCMPB portion of the Ministry of Forests and Range FTP site (ftp.for.gov.bc.ca/HRE/external/!publish/BCMPB). The site contains a number of zip files, each of which contain a number of ArcGIS ASCII format grids and a text file with metadata.   Please refer to the 'readme.txt' and the metadata before using any of the provided data.

• NOTE that there were problems with the 2008 Aerial Overview of Forest Health that have impacted the current infestation projection and corresponding GIS data.  Please consult the Infestation Projection report available above to obtain further information regarding the uncertainty and problems with the current infestation projection. Use and interpret the data accordingly.

• The projection provided is one instance of the output from a stochastic model (BCMPB.v6).  It is a projection of what might happen rather than a prediction of what will happen. We are reasonably confident in the end result, at the provincial and district scale, but the specific progression of the outbreak at finer scales, such as a "watershed", is uncertain, primarily because we can not "predict" the weather over the province during the next 20 years.