Posts tagged CDA
City, county, state declare war on Emerald Ash Borer
Nov 13th
Firewood is a main culprit
The Colorado Department of Agriculture (CDA) today issued an emergency quarantine in the Boulder County area related to the recent discovery of the Emerald Ash Borer (EAB) beetle in Boulder in late September. The quarantine is effective immediately.
“Our urban trees provide enormous environmental, economic and social benefits to our community, and ash trees contribute greatly to our urban tree canopy,” said City Forester Kathleen Alexander. “We are currently developing a plan to minimize the impact of the highly destructive Emerald Ash Borer to the city of Boulder, and the quarantine is an important step to limit the infestation and slow the spread, which allows other Front Range communities time to prepare.”
The emergency quarantine prohibits the sale and/or movement of all plants and plant parts of ash trees, including but not limited to:
· Logs and green lumber
· Nursery stock
· Chips and mulch, either composted or uncomposted
· Stumps, roots and branches
· Firewood of any non-coniferous (hardwood) species (Because ash is difficult to distinguish from other hardwood species when cut into firewood, the quarantine is for all hardwood firewood.)
The following areas are included in the emergency quarantine:
· Boulder County
· The entire town of Erie
· The area extending east from Boulder County to the south including Highway 7, to the north including Highway 52 and to the east including Weld County Road 7
· Highway 93 extending south from the Boulder County line to the entrance of Republic Landfill, including the entire landfill property, and including the entire property at 11218 Highway 93 on which the business of the Singing Saw Woodworks is operated
· The 15-acre, fenced Community Sort Yard located at 8200 Highway 7 in Allenspark, on the Boulder/Larimer county line
Quarantined items may be transported within the quarantined area but may not be moved outside its borders without specific authorization from the commissioner of agriculture or the United States Department of Agriculture. Any person violating this quarantine is subject to civil penalties up to $1,000 per violation. The full text of the quarantine, including additional restrictions, can be found at www.EABcolorado.com.
EAB in Colorado
A suspect ash tree was spotted in Boulder County on Sept. 23 by City of Boulder’s Forestry staff. Insect specimens from the ash tree, located near the intersection of 30th and Iris, were collected and sent to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Systematic Entomology Laboratory, where the identity of the insects was confirmed. The confirmation of EAB in Colorado marks the western-most occurrence of this invasive pest in North America. Colorado is the fourth state to detect EAB in 2013.
Ash trees are popular in Colorado with an estimated more than 90,000 in the city of Boulder alone; the Denver metro area has an estimated 1.45 million ash trees.
EAB general information
EAB is an invasive insect that has been responsible for the death or decline of more than 50 million ash trees in 21 states. It is a small, green metallic beetle, originally from Asia, first detected in North America in 2002 in southeastern Michigan. The emerald ash borer attacks only ash trees and all ash species – including green, white, black and blue – are at risk. Signs of emerald ash borer infestation include a general decline in the appearance of the tree, thinning of upper branches and twigs, loss of leaves, and serpentine tunnels produced by EAB larvae under the bark. Woodpeckers may often be observed removing the bark of infested trees to access the larvae.
It is possible that EAB could infest an ash tree for three or four years before visible signs of decline of the tree. If you suspect your ash tree maybe infested with EAB, residents are encouraged to have it inspected by a city of Boulder licensed certified arborist , contact CDA at 888-248-5535, or the City of Boulder Forestry office at 303-441-4406. Infestation signs include:
· Sparse leaves or branches in the upper part of the tree
· D-shaped exit holes about 1/8 inch wide
· New sprouts on the lower trunk or lower branches
· Vertical splits in the bark
· Winding S-shaped tunnels under the bark
· Increased woodpecker activity
How You Can Help
“The public can play a vital role in preventing the spread of this destructive bug by simply not moving firewood,” said Mitch Yergert, CDA’s Plant Inspection Division director. “EAB larvae can survive underneath the bark of ash firewood, and when it’s moved from one place to another, the pest can hitchhike to a new location. Furthermore, it’s important to note that trees begin to decline a bit during fall months but there are certain features of an EAB-infested tree that residents can look for.”
Emergency Quarantine Issued to Protect Colorado Ash Trees in Boulder County, parts of Larimer, Jefferson, Weld Counties
Boulder County, Colo. – The Colorado Department of Agriculture has established an emergency quarantine in and around Boulder County including parts of southern Larimer, western Weld and northern Jefferson Counties (see quarantine map) related to the recent discovery of the Emerald Ash Borer (EAB). The quarantine is effective immediately. Boulder County is working with the Colorado Department of Agriculture, the City of Boulder, and other affected entities to address the quarantine and plan for the potential impacts of the EAB in Boulder County.
“We have cooperated with the state on the implementation of the temporary quarantine and will continue to work to understand the potential impacts of the EAB in Boulder County,” said Boulder County Commissioner Elise Jones. “Boulder County, in conjunction with the state and affected local partners, has begun to develop a response plan that will outline potential actions on county owned lands and provide guidance for private residents.”
The emergency quarantine prohibits the sale and/or movement of all plants and plant parts of the genus Fraxinus, including but not limited to:
· Logs and green lumber
· Nursery stock, scion wood, and bud wood
· Chips and mulch, either composted or uncomposted
· Stumps, roots and branches
· Firewood of any non-coniferous (hardwood) species
Quarantined items may be transported within the quarantined area but may not be moved outside its borders without specific authorization from the Commissioner of Agriculture or the United States Department of Agriculture.
Quarantined items can be transported within the quarantined area to:
· Denver Regional Landfill, 1441 Weld County Road 6, Erie
· Front Range Landfill, 1830 Weld County Road 5, Erie
· Republic Landfill, 8900 Colorado Highway 93, Golden
Residents participating in Boulder County operated flood-debris removal programs, including curbside debris collection do not have to take any special steps to maintain compliance with the quarantine. Debris collected by Boulder County is being treated and transported according to the requirements of the quarantine.
Any person violating this quarantine is subject to civil penalties up to $1000 per violation. The full text of the quarantine, including additional restrictions, can be found at www.EABcolorado.com.
If you think you have EAB in your ash trees, or if you have any questions or concerns, or would like additional information, please contact the CSU Extension in Longmont at 303-678-6238, email EAB@BoulderCounty.org or visit www.bouldercounty.org/property/forest/Pages/eab.aspx.
A plague of ash borers? Not yet.
Nov 7th
Emerald ash borer pest found in Boulder ash trees; delimitation survey begins Nov. 4
In late September, the emerald ash borer (EAB), an invasive pest of ash trees was identified within the city limits of Boulder. Since that time, staff from the City of Boulder Forestry Division and the Colorado Department of Agriculture (CDA) have worked cooperatively to complete a visual assessment of all public and private ash trees within a half mile of the initial infestation.
Staff visually assessed hundreds of ash trees from the ground, looking for symptoms of infestation, which include large branch dieback in the tree crown, woodpecker damage and excessive sprouting. Fortunately, no obviously symptomatic ash trees were discovered outside of the initial cluster of infested trees, however; EAB is very difficult to detect in early stages. To determine the full extent of infestation, a delimitation survey begins this week. The survey is being conducted by staff from city forestry, CDA, Colorado State University Extension, and forestry staff from other Front Range cities who have graciously offered to assist. It is anticipated to take up to six weeks to complete.
For the delimitation survey, the city has been divided into plots or grids of one-square mile each. Crews will remove two small branches from each of 10 ash trees near the center of each plot. The branch samples will be peeled and examined closely for the presence of emerald ash borer life stages. The branch sampling protocols were developed by the Canadian Forest Service (CFS). The CFS found by performing random branch sampling on asymptomatic trees with this technique, they were able to detect EAB several miles away from the original location before trees become symptomatic. The goal is to determine the full extent of infestation within the city limits. The results of the survey will also help guide the future city of Boulder EAB Response Plan to manage the infestation within the city and potentially slow the spread to nearby communities.
On Tuesday, Nov. 5, the city of Boulder is hosting an EAB “tree dissection” for forestry staff from other Front Range cities and Wyoming. Staff from CSU Extension, Colorado Department of Agriculture and U.S. Department of Agriculture, Animal Plant Health Inspection Service, Plant Protection and Quarantine (USDA APHIS PPQ) will be on hand to teach other forestry professionals what EAB looks like and to demonstrate branch peeling techniques to find EAB larvae. More dissections are planned to educate tree care companies.
There are approximately 38,000 city park and public street rights-of-way trees under the jurisdiction of the Boulder Parks and Recreation Urban Forestry Division; approximately 6,000 are ash trees (15 percent of the public tree population).
For more information, please contact the City of Boulder Parks and Recreation Department’s Forestry Division at 303-413-7245.
–CITY–
STRONGEST EVIDENCE YET INDICATES ICY SATURN MOON HIDING SALTWATER OCEAN
Jun 22nd
Samples of icy spray shooting from Saturn’s moon Enceladus collected during Cassini spacecraft flybys show the strongest evidence yet for the existence of a large-scale, subterranean saltwater ocean, says a new international study led by the University of Heidelberg and involving the University of Colorado Boulder.
The new discovery was made during the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn, a collaboration of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. Launched in 1997, the mission spacecraft arrived at the Saturn system in 2004 and has been touring the giant ringed planet and its vast moon system ever since.
The plumes shooting water vapor and tiny grains of ice into space were originally discovered emanating from Enceladus — one of 19 known moons of Saturn — by the Cassini spacecraft in 2005. The plumes were originating from the so-called “tiger stripe” surface fractures at the moon’s south pole and apparently have created the material for the faint E Ring that traces the orbit of Enceladus around Saturn.
During three of Cassini’s passes through the plume in 2008 and 2009, the Cosmic Dust Analyser, or CDA, on board measured the composition of freshly ejected plume grains. The icy particles hit the detector’s target at speeds of up to 11 miles per second, instantly vaporizing them. The CDA separated the constituents of the resulting vapor clouds, allowing scientists to analyze them.
The study shows the ice grains found further out from Enceladus are relatively small and mostly ice-poor, closely matching the composition of the E Ring. Closer to the moon, however, the Cassini observations indicate that relatively large, salt-rich grains dominate.
“There currently is no plausible way to produce a steady outflow of salt-rich grains from solid ice across all the tiger stripes other than the salt water under Enceladus’ icy surface,” said Frank Postberg of the University of Germany, lead author of a study being published in Nature on June 23. Other co-authors include Jürgen Schmidt from the University of Potsdam, Jonathan Hillier from Open University headquartered in Milton Keynes, England, and Ralf Srama from the University of Stuttgart.
“The study indicates that ‘salt-poor’ particles are being ejected from the underground ocean through cracks in the moon at a much higher speed than the larger, salt-rich particles,” said CU-Boulder faculty member and study co-author Sascha Kempf of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics.
“The E Ring is made up predominately of such salt-poor grains, although we discovered that 99 percent of the mass of the particles ejected by the plumes was made up of salt-rich grains, which was an unexpected finding,” said Kempf. “Since the salt-rich particles were ejected at a lower speed than the salt-poor particles, they fell back onto the moon’s icy surface rather than making it to the E Ring.”
According to the researchers, the salt-rich particles have an “ocean-like” composition that indicates most, if not all, of the expelled ice comes from the evaporation of liquid salt water rather than from the icy surface of the moon. When salt water freezes slowly the salt is “squeezed out,” leaving pure water ice behind. If the plumes were coming from the surface ice, there should be very little salt in them, which was not the case, according to the research team.
The researchers believe that perhaps 50 miles beneath the surface crust of Enceladus a layer of water exists between the rocky core and the icy mantle that is kept in a liquid state by gravitationally driven tidal forces created by Saturn and several neighboring moons, as well as by heat generated by radioactive decay.
According to the scientists, roughly 440 pounds of water vapor is lost every second from the plumes, along with smaller amounts of ice grains. Calculations show the liquid ocean must have a sizable evaporating surface or it would easily freeze over, halting the formation of the plumes. “This study implies that nearly all of the matter in the Enceladus plumes originates from a saltwater ocean that has a very large evaporating surface,” said Kempf.
Salt in the rock dissolves into the water, which accumulates in a liquid ocean beneath the icy crust, according to the Nature authors. When the outermost layer of the Enceladus crust cracks open, the reservoir is exposed to space. The drop in pressure causes the liquid to evaporate into a vapor, with some of it “flash-freezing” into salty ice grains, which subsequently creates the plumes, the science team believes.
“Enceladus is a tiny, icy moon located in a region of the outer Solar System where no liquid water was expected to exist because of its large distance from the sun,” said Nicolas Altobelli, ESA’s project scientist for the Cassini-Huygens mission. “This finding is therefore a crucial new piece of evidence showing that environmental conditions favorable to the emergence of life may be sustainable on icy bodies orbiting gas giant planets.”
The Huygens probe was released from the main spacecraft and parachuted through the atmosphere to the surface of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, in 2005.
The Cassini spacecraft is carrying 12 science instruments, including a $12.5 million CU-Boulder ultraviolet imaging spectrograph designed and built by a LASP team led by Professor Larry Esposito.
