The City of Kenai’s spruce bark beetle slash disposal site will reopen Friday at 10 a.m. for the summer.

The site, located at Mile 13 of the Kenai Spur Highway near the soccer fields, will be open Thursdays through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. through Oct. 2, or until the site is full. Tree stumps and trash will not be accepted at the site, which will not be available for commercial operators.

This summer will be the second consecutive year that the city has made the site available for slash disposal. The Kenai City Council in 2022 accepted $150,000 worth of grants from the State of Alaska Division of Forestry to open and run the site for three years. The site in 2022 saw more than 110 visits, reflecting roughly 16 acres of hazardous trees treated.

Observed spruce bark beetle activity significantly decreased last year compared to 2021, according to alaskasprucebarkbeetle.org. That website was created and is maintained by the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the Alaska Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Forest Service.

Aerial detection surveys conducted in 2022, that resource says, recorded about 48,800 acres of damage. That’s as compared to about 193,500 acres detected in 2021. Nearly all of the active tree mortality was seen in Southcentral Alaska, where more than 1.86 million cumulative acres have been affected by beetles.

Spruce bark beetles kill trees by boring through bark and feeding in a tree’s phloem, according to the National Park Service.

Phloem is the innermost layer of the bark and transports compounds produced through photosynthesis to other parts of the tree. By disrupting that process, beetles are able to starve the tree and cause it to die. That death is accelerated by a fungus brought by the beetles that prevents the movement of water through the tree.

A common indicator of beetle presence is boring dust, similar to sawdust, which collects at the base of the infected tree and in bark crevices. The dust is pushed out of holes in the bark where beetles enter and clear tunnels under the bark. Pitch tubes, or red globs on the surface of the tree bark, are seen where the tree has tried to push the beetles out.

Reach reporter Ashlyn O’Hara at ashlyn.ohara@peninsulaclarion.com.