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after the whirlwind,
in les landes
xavier

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the whirlwind

At four a.m. [04:00] on Saturday, 23rd January 2009, the landscape of the Department of Les Landes was changed for perhaps the next hundred years.

Short video of Klaus moving across southern France. 0:00:19 secs

The winter storm Klaus, an extra-tropical cyclone originating in the Bay of Biscay, swept in from the Atlantic and across southern France and northern Spain, reaching northern Italy and even the Adriatic Sea. A band of strong [60km/h] high-level [9 kilometres up] winds - a jet streak - descended over the Bay of Biscay, stretching from the East Atlantic to western Europe. Ground level wind speeds were recorded at 180 km/h [113 mph] as the cyclone wind first hit the coast. The coastal protective dunes deflected the force of the cyclone up, and it descended with accumulated speed and force on the interior of the department.

There, in the heart of the forest, in places like Rion-des-Landes, Villenave and Suzan, the cyclone descended at a speed of 210 km/h [130 mph]. The mature pines, thirty to forty years old and approaching their harvesting time, were felled or broken; many younger trees were uprooted, but still standing, leaning against their neighbours.

Satellite image of Klaus-related jet streak [red area] approaching France, 00:00 on 23.02.09. Image: MeteoGroup

Storm Klaus caused widespread destruction: building damage, power outages, flooding and travel disruption. It tore off roofs, toppled and broke electric and telephone pylons and towers, and above all in Les Landes, it downed hundreds of thousands of trees. There were also at least twenty deaths, including at a primary school in north Spain. The storm’s effects were felt from Barcelona to the Channel Islands.

“Klaus had a central pressure of 967 millibars on Saturday morning, January 24. As it moved across southern France, the storm's cold front extended southward and raked across the Pyrenées and northern Spain. According to METAR observations, three-second gusts reached up to 139 km/h [83.4 mph] in Biarritz, France, and up to 111 km/h [66.6 mph] in Barcelona, Spain, before the storm entered the Mediterranean and moved toward Corsica.” [Quoted from insurancejournal.com]

Red alerts on a TV forecast map, afternoon of 23rd January

“The French meteorological office, Meteo France, had issued a red alert for five departments in southwest France on Saturday as winds of 160 kilometers per hour and higher were recorded in the region. A gust of 184 kph was recorded in the eastern Pyrenees near Perpignan. Meteo France described the winds as some of the strongest recorded since records began.” [Quoted from businessinsurance.com]

One Landais mayor commented that the storm in 1999 was a joke compared to the 2009 storm.

damage to the infrastructure

“At the height of the storm, some 1.7 million households were without power, and by mid-day Monday more than half a million remained without power. [...] more than 3,000 French utility workers—assisted by additional teams from England, Germany, and Portugal—are working to restore power ...” [Quoted from insurancejournal.com]

“The national power grid manager, Electricite Reseau Distribution France (EDF), said it could take a long time to restore power.” [Quoted from insurancejournal.com]

Thousands of reinforced concrete pylons were not toppled, but were snapped and bent in one or more places, leaving cat’s cradle tangles of cables strewn on the fallen trees and the ground. It took until 5th February, for all households to be provided with some sort of temporary power supply. Many remote homesteads in the forest, as well as isolated hamlets, have been provided with generators from 100kW to 600kW power - over eight hundred have been made available.

A 400 kW generator in a Landes hamlet, amongst fallen tree debris .

Bordeaux, Biarritz and Pau airports were closed and train services in the Aquitaine and Midi-Pyrenees regions were stopped entirely.

Because the widespread loss of power, and also because of damage to pylons and sub-stations, much of the mobile phone and land-line phones were out of action, in some places for almost two weeks.

abelard.org had no mains electricity from Saturday 23rd January until Tuesday 3rd February (11 days), and only then because a long temporary power cable was laid down from the village centre through the devastated forest, over the fallen trunks, and connected to the house. The permanent aerial line was not re-installed until three months later, after the dozens of pines in this part of the forest were cleared away and the job rose to the top of the electricity company’s roster.

Now, 21 months later, the power cables, that previously lined the 15 or more kilometres of road running northwards from the local conurbation, have been buried (and the ugly pylons have been removed). Thus, if there is a next time, there will not be such a widespread deprivation of power.

the cost

“Estimates for the financial consequences of storm Klaus that raged in the south-west of France on 24 January last, have been valued at 1.2 billion euros, announced the French Federation of Insurance Companies (FFSA).”

“The storm is expected to cost between 1 and 1.4 billion euros to insurers, estimated on the claims so far made by 500,000 people, including 400,000 previously reported, said Bernard Spitz, president of the French Federation of Insurance Companies (FFSA).

“Another estimate is in a range of 600 million to 1 billion euros.”

Also see revised costs below.

damage to the forest

“The regions of Gironde and Landes in southern France, one of Europe's largest forest areas, were hard hit by the strong winds. Forestry officials say that more than half the trees in the area, where thousands of people rely on the timber industry for a living, appear to have been toppled.” [Quoted from insurancejournal.com]

The first estimations in France are that between 30 to 50 million cubic metres of trees, mainly pine and poplar, were felled by the storm. It is now estimated that perhaps 60% to 70% of pine forest were felled in Aquitaine - quite disastrous for its lumber industry. The estimation is that the amounts knocked over correspond to eight years, more or less, of normal wood consumption. It would be intended mainly for the packaging and paper industries and for wood energy. Now, because the current global economic difficulties, there is great concern that there will be little market for the wood, particularly pinewood. For instance, the Spanish wood market was closed last summer. This knock down will glut the market for many years, so the prices will go way down just to get rid of the surplus lumber.

The lumber becomes next to valueless if it is not cleared from the damp forest environment, becoming a haven for fungi which spoil and damage the wood. Furniture quality timber, from more mature trees, must be cleared from the forest floor within two to three years. Younger, smaller trees can be left for six to seven years, their timber being used for paper and other processed wood products, as well as for biomass. In 1999, provision was made for managed storage of about one million cubic metres of timber being stocked. Current discussions suggest that, this time, ten million cubic metres of lumber will need long term storage.

In 1999, the last large storm here, 27 million cubic metres of trees fell. It was not as devastating as the 2009 storm, and took ten years to clear up, adding much additional work to the usual logging industry. This time, it will take at least five years to remove the broken and fallen trees, and maybe a further fifteen years to reestablish the forest. It could take a century before the Aquitaine forest can return to its former majesty after the current chaos.

ips sexdentatus - the scourge after the cyclone

Summer 2010: stand of pines dying as a result of ips sexadentatus invasion.
Note that the trees to the left and in the distance are not yet infected.

This stand has now been felled and the ground cleared of logs, branches and tree stumps.
Normally, the trees would be left to grow for a further ten to fifteen years.

As following the vicious storm of 1999, the Aquitaine forest is now (mid-2010) being severely hit by another disaster - a bark burrowing beetle called, in Latin, the ips sexdentatus and nicknamed ‘the stenographer’, because of distinctive patterns left in dead trees by both their egg-laying and larval tunnels created under the tree’s bark. Another French name is le catchote, while the most commonly used name is scolyte.

“Most bark beetles depend on dead or weakened trees but aggressive species switch to healthy trees during epidemic outbreaks. [...] successful bark beetle attacks of living trees occur when a pioneer insect manages to recruit a sufficient number of individuals through the release of aggregation pheromone. During such mass-attacks, insects can overwhelm tree defenses and generally kill it. Among others factors, windthrown timber is considered to trigger or favour bark beetles outbreaks because they offer large amounts of available resource on which insects can build up their populations.” [Quoted from J.-P. Rossi et al.]

This insect infestation started in September 2009, benefiting from the manna of green wood on the ground. Stopped by the winter when the beetle is in ‘diapause’, the infestation proliferated ever more strongly in Spring 2010 as temperatures rose above 15°C. Spring weather in 2010 was been propitious for ips breeding, then it taking six weeks for another generation to appear. By July, that period had reduced to four weeks.

Until recently, the invasion was confined to fallen wood. Now that ‘food’ is exhausted, the insects attack standing, healthy pines. It is estimated that three to six, maybe even ten, million cubic metres of wood are affected so far. The damage can be added to the direct destructive toll wreaked by Cyclone Klaus of 40 million cubic metres.

how the ips kills pine trees

From a distance, the pines appear brown and burnt. Close up, there are little round holes, about 1 to 2 mm across,

Bore holes made by ips sexdentatus.

in the pine bark and, sometimes, sawdust and wormholes.

Bark and phleom damaged by ips sexdentatus, with worm casts and sawdust

The insects dig these little holes in the bark, then the larvae develop under the bark, eating the phloem, or food-conducting tubes. The tree loses its ability to transport sap, particularly from the needles towards the roots. Because of this, the trees dry out very quickly, especially in warm weather. (Remember, there were several hot periods - up to about 38°C/100°F - during the summer of 2010.)

After any great climatic event, there are plant pest problems. This time, the areas killed by the scylotes (scavenger insects) were initially similar to the regions damaged by Cyclone Klaus. But maps drawn up by the Department of Forest Health in June this year show that the scylote damage is more extensive than that of after the 1999 storm. Then, about 2-3 million m³ of wood were lost to ips sexdentatus. In June 2010, the first evaluation showed about 1.5 million m³ had been lost since Klaus. However, the attacks of summer and autumn, reinforced by the favourable weather, mean that the insects have been rife in the forest. While one must wait until the end of autumn to evaluate the damage’s extent, already the damage is estimated at a loss of between 5 to 8 million m³ of wood.
Update, January 2011: 3.9 million m³ destroyed, affecting 30,000 ha.

The ravages of the tiny beetles constrain the sylviculturers, the foresters, to cut the trees down prematurely. Once cut, the wood losses value quickly, the ips infecting the wood with a blue-staining fungus. Thus the wood can only be used for less value end-products, such as cardboard, chipboard and paper pulp, rather than higher quality products such as parquet and timber cladding or planking. This has dropped the wood’s price again 5 to 10 times, as happened just after Cyclone Klaus in January 2009.

In order to rid their pines of this scourge, sylviculturers usually cut the whole parcel containing infected trees, rather than just thinning out those that have been clearly attacked. Thinning provides plenty of fresh cut wood smell, which attracts the ips to attack the remaining pines in the parcel. And there is no authorised chemical treatment to eradicate beetles in the trees.

The pine forest monoculture leaves the spread of invasive infections to be rapid and pervasive. Only if the Aquiatine foresters, brought up on over 150 years of harvesting a single plant, plant a variety of tree species, putting sufficient deciduous trees near or amongst the pines, will the next cycle of magnificent trees be able to withstand this, and other, scourges.

Taxonomic rank of ips sexdentatus:

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Subphylum: Atelocerata
Class: Hexapoda (including Insecta)
Infraclass: Neoptera
Subclass: Pterygota
Order: Coleoptera
Suborder: Polyphaga
Superfamily: Curculionoidea
Family: Curculionidae
Subfamily: Scolytinae
Tribe: Scolytini: Ipina
Genus: Ips

processionary caterpillars

Some processionary caterpillars	processionary caterpillar nest in a maritme pine (the white fibrous ball)

The pine processionary caterpillar is the larva of the Thaumetopoea pityocampa moth. The larva or caterpillars live in tent-like nest high in the pines, marching out in a line, nose to tail, usually at night, to find food. When they are ready to pulpate, they descend to the ground and bury themselves just under the surface of the soil.

Thaumetopoea pityocampa moth
Image: entomart.be

The intensity of damage is highly variable. The caterpillar colonises preferentially sunny edges of well-packed plantations, as well as open woodland and clearings. With mature forest, even total defoliation does not kill the tree. If growing conditions are, favorable, the trees are perfectly capable of withstanding such an attack. However, young plantations or those weakened by disease can suffer repeated and lasting defoliation. Being weaker, they will be less resistant to parasite attacks.

These caterpillars are very hairy, the hairs having a highly irritating poison. Thus even the the slightest touch can cause extreme irritation and even allergic reactions. Do not directly touch a processionary caterpillar. Note that the stinging hairs can also be carried by the wind.

A French entomologist, Jean Henri Fabre [1823-1915], did a famous experiment where he enticed a column of processionary caterpillars to form a circle. The caterpillars continued to walk round in the circle for over a week.

“They proceed in single file, in a continuous row, each touching with its head the rear of the one in front of it. The complex twists and turns described in his vagaries by the caterpillar leading the van are scrupulously described by all the others. No Greek theoria winding its way to the Eleusinian festivals was ever more orderly. Hence the name of Processionary given to the gnawer of the pine.

“His character is complete when we add that he is a rope-dancer all his life long: he walks only on the tight-rope, a silken rail placed in position as he advances. The caterpillar who chances to be at the head of the procession dribbles his thread without ceasing and fixes it on the path which his fickle preferences cause him to take. The thread is so tiny that the eye, though armed with a magnifying-glass, suspects it rather than sees it.”
—
“... it is also important that we should do away with all the silken paths, both new and old, that can put the cornice into communication with the ground. With a thick hair-pencil I sweep away the surplus climbers; with a big brush, one that leaves no smell behind it--for this might afterwards prove confusing--I carefully rub down the vase and get rid of every thread which the caterpillars have laid on the march. When these preparations are finished, a curious sight awaits us.

“In the uninterrupted circular procession there is no longer a leader. Each caterpillar is preceded by another on whose heels he follows, guided by the silk track, the work of the whole party; he again has a companion close behind him, following him in the same orderly way. And this is repeated without variation throughout the length of the chain. None commands, or rather none modifies the trail according to his fancy; all obey, trusting in the guide who ought normally to lead the march and who in reality has been abolished by my trickery.

“From the first circuit of the edge of the tub the rail of silk has been laid in position and is soon turned into a narrow ribbon by the procession, which never ceases dribbling its thread as it goes. The rail is simply doubled and has no branches anywhere, for my brush has destroyed them all. What will the caterpillars do on this deceptive, closed path? Will they walk endlessly round and round until their strength gives out entirely?”
[Quoted from The Life of the caterpillar by Jean Henri Fabre, Chapter III. The Pine Processionary: The Procession]

Taxonomic rank of Thaumetopoea pityocampa
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Insecta
Order: Lepidoptera
Family: Thaumetopoeidae
Genus: Thaumetopoea
Species: T. pityocampa

one year later

• Overall, it took only six hours for Klaus to destroy nearly one third of the Landes forest area Landes, the equivalent of 5 years of timber consumption.
• One local commune says they have managed to clear one third of their communal forest’s mess.
• Roads throughout the forest region are being battered and potholed by the continuous heavy traffic of loaded and unloaded log lorries. The general notion is that major road repair work will wait until the forest is cleared.
• It is reckoned that it will take fifteen years to re-establish the forest. However, some proprietors have already decided to install photovoltaic panel ‘farms’ instead.
• 1.5 million tonnes of felled wood has been stocked in enormous depots. There, the wood is sprayed with water to minimise the appearance of mushrooms and mould, which lowers the aesthetic value of the wood.
• In total, it is said that 42 million m³, of which 37 million m³ was maritime pins, fell during Tempête Klaus.
• 12 million m³ of this wood has been used industrially by the end of 2009.
• 600,000 tonnes has been exported by train and boat. Boats leave Bayonne and Bordeaux for China and Turkey. Wood going to Europe (mostly Germany, Austria and Scandinavian countries) is travelling by 35 trains a week.
• After the required rest period for the land, the plan is to replant as soon as possible, and allow the forest to resume its role as a natural regulator of floods in the waterlogged land of Les Landes (the Moors).

two years after a forest’s destruction

After two years, the assessment of the havoc wreaked by a freak hurricane-strength cyclone can be more complete, showing clearly the extensive ruination of Europe’s largest industrial forest.

• Early on 24 January 2009, in a few hours, 300,000 hectares of forest was brought down, of which a great part was 30 to 80% destroyed. 38 to 40 million m³ of wood was on the ground, equivalent to 5 to 6 years of normal logging activity.
• In 2009 and 2010, forest professionals have cut, then removed from the forest about 30 million m³ wood, of which almost 8 million m³ has been stored under sprayed water (to prevent the wood degrading by the entry of the blue-staining fungus). But remember, this could well be more, because it is not known how much wood has been exported abroad by foreign lorries.
• In comparison, after the previous huge storm of October 1999 that affected much of north-western Europe, 22 million m³ wood was cut and removed, of which 1.5 million m³ was stored.
• 123,000 hectares of forest need to be cleared of broken, fallen, dead and dying trees, tree stumps and wood debris. So far, that has been achieved in 40,000 ha.
• In a normal forestry year, 15-16,000 ha of forest are cut and replanted.
  Now, the professionals estimate that 200,000 ha need to be replanted.
• Of the 10,500 ha so far where the owners have applied for subsidies to help replanting, only 400 ha have been replanted.
  However, after the land has rested, the replanting rhythm will accelerate to 20-30,000 ha a year.
• Owners are waiting for the threat of scolytes and other ravaging insects to have disappeared before replanting (the very cold temperatures so far this winter should be helping to reduce this insect population to acceptable levels).

It is probable that most of the devastated land will be replanted as forest, even though it will be ten, or even twenty years before there can again be some real semblance of a healthy, functioning forest. Although a few have taken the opportunity of cleared forest and insurance compensation to install photovoltaic farms, or in one case, a duck farm for foie gras, for most foresters, the pine sap is in their blood and their drive is to rebuild the life they know and love.

Remember, with trees that can take fifty, sixty or even more years to be felled, many foresters were born amongst young trees and have lived all their lives deep in this great forest, in the swaying black columns of a natural cathedral, roofed by rustling viridian needles. (More at the forest as seen by Francois Mauriac, and today.) There is the further factor that the other main use of this sandy, meagre soil - maize production - requires much time and labour during several periods of the year and completely different equipment, as well as sufficient water. And this last is starting to be rationed as water demand becomes greater and rainfall less.

two years of intense activity in the forest

• By December 2010, 28 million m³ of ripped and shredded trees (chablis) have been exploited.
• About 7.5 million m³ have being stored in the 47 stocking aires (open space free of trees). The storage aires have a capacity of 7.8 million m³ and so will be saturated by the beginning of Spring.
• 1.5 million tonnes has gone abroad, principally to Germany, on ships making 450 round trips from Bayonne and Bordeaux.
• From the stations of Tartas and Labouheyre, 35 trains a week have removed a further 1 million tonnes.
• It is estimated that there have been over a million round trips by lorries, both foreign and French. These have been helped by a State subsidy of 133.5 million €. In two years, 30 million m³ of wood has been removed.
• A further 5 million € subsidy has enabled the freeing of some 31,000 km of forest tracks.
• The loggers start before dawn and work long into the night, lit by searchlights mounted on their tractors and logging machines.
• Heavy and continuous heavy goods traffic has been criss-crossing the often narrow and previously little used roads of Les Landes for two years. The country roads now have often deep and many potholes, smashed surfaces and broken down edges. The Prefect of Les Landes (the chief administrator) has said that the roads will be repaired, but this work will not start until the heavy logging has ended. Locals must look forward to maybe even another year of ‘hairy’ driving.

revised costs

• Cleaning the land and replanting: 415 million € compensation and financing has been allocated over 5 years.
  64,000 ha is currently being cleared for 92.9 M€,
  with 45,000 ha already cleared for 46 M€.
  Add the cost of stocking the wood to make a total of 130 M€ spent so far.
• The price of much of the wood, smashed by Klaus, has dropped from 35€ a tonne to 2€ a tonne.
  [A tonne is very approximately one mature (50 year old) pine - confirmation to follow. Usually, trees are thinned until about 200 mature pines grow per hectare. An individual forester may own 30 ha.]
• Only 8% of the forest is owned by local communes, thus having much less negotiating clout than the much more abundant private proprietors. The National Forestry Office has negotiated on their behalf that wood from the communal forests will receive the following prices:
  15€/tonne for furniture quality wood,
  5€/tonne for crate quality wood, and
  1€/tonne for pulping or biomass.
  It is reckoned that the forestry communes will only receive a fifth of the value of their pines destroyed by the storm. For these communes, the sale of wood is often a third of their annual revenue.

three years since the whirlwind

The devastation is now reckoned to be at least as bad as that wrecked by the successive and murderous forest fires from 1945 to 1950, which was when over 300,000 hectares were consumed. It was after these fires that the vast network of fire breaks, and associated water points, was created. The wide fire breaks not only make it more difficult fo fires to spread through the forest massif, but also provides efficient access for firemen and their vehicles into the heart of the largest industrial forest in Europe.

After the Aquitaine forest cut down by the ferocious Cyclone Klaus, the forest was then been ravaged by ips sexdentatus bark-boring beetles, who destroyed between 7 and 8 million cubic metres of wood, and then by processionary caterpillars.

To help control the beetle attacks, 120,000€ has been released for treating the piles of wood so often seen at the side of foretsry roads. For the twitching types, it has been noted that the wood piles are also infected by the pine hylesine (Tomicus sp.). This beetle is smaller than the ips, being only 4 to 5 mm long.

In 2012, more funds have been released to subsidise the clearing and replanting smaller forestry plantations, mainly for those those of less than 5 hectares. What was once a proud cathedral forest of pines, then smashed into matchsticks by Klaus, is being cleared to become bare sandy soil. Now there are nascent plantations to be seen, promising the future forest.

nine years on

In the Landes forest of Gascony, it has been an apocalypse. Over one million hectares, 593,000 hectares were damaged, of which 223,000 by more than 40%, representing 40 million cubic metres of timber felled.

In the last nine years, Les Landes foresters have received 525 million euros of aid - 480 from the State and 45 from European funds. This has been used to clean and rebuild the plantations. Now, 85% of the plantations devastated have been cleaned of the broken trees and their roots, and 56% has been reforested.

devastation photo essay

Here follows a short photo essay on the natural disaster (la catastrophe naturelle) that is Cyclone Klaus.

First, soon before and after photos:

Above: Taken from near the same point, late January 2009

Left: A Landais hut sheltered by 30 to 40-year-old pines,
reddened by the rising sun, 2007

end notes

1. Sexdentatus means having six teeth. The ips sexdentatus has six spines on each side of the downward slope [declivity] of its hard outer wings [elytra], that look rather like teeth. Here are many photo illustrations of ips sexdentatus.
   
   orange arrows indicate the six teeth or spines
   The beetle measures from 5.5 to 8.2 mm.
   
   
2. Multiscale spatial variation of the bark beetle Ips sexdentatus damage in a pine plantation forest (Landes de Gascogne, Southwestern France), J.-P. Rossi et al., Forest Ecology and Management 257 (2009) 1551–1557. As 7-page .pdf, as html (note that this .pdf file can ‘misbehave’ as it is called down).
   
   

3. diapause

   A period of spontaneously suspended growth, or development, in certain insects when responding to regularly adverse climatic conditions.
   
   

4. Sap is like the blood of a tree, transporting nutrients to parts of the tree that needs them. There are two main types of sap: Xylem sap consists primarily of water, along with hormones, minerals, and nutrients. Phloem sap consists primarily of water, in addition to sugar, hormones, and mineral elements dissolved within it. In a pine tree the sap is also called resin, which was widely harvested in Les Landes before synthetic products superceded natural products such as turpentine.
   
   Xylem sap moves from roots to the leaves of the tree - upwards. Phloem sap moves bidirectionally, that is both from leaves to roots, and from roots to leaves.

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