Dr. Susan Prichard and Pine Beetles

Notes from our reviewers

The CLEAN collection is hand-picked and rigorously reviewed for scientific accuracy and classroom effectiveness. Read what our review team had to say about this resource below or learn more about how CLEAN reviews teaching materials.

• Teaching Tips
  Provides a great introduction to the complex relationships among climate, trees, bark beetles, and wildfires.
• About the Science
  With mild winters, early springs and longer summers, bark beetles have more opportunities to burrow into trees and eventually kill them. Drought also increases stress on trees and makes them more susceptible to bark beetles. Comment from expert scientist: Video provides a good, basic overview of mountain pine beetle ecology and fire ecology in the inland US West. Provides a good mechanistic link between climate change and these disturbances, as well as information related to the actual mechanism of the disturbance as well.
• About the Pedagogy
  There is no background material provided with this video. Although this video focuses on the bark beetle problem in Washington state, the topic is applicable throughout the Western US.
• Technical Details/Ease of Use
  This resource is available on vimeo - a website that some schools block access to.