I'm not sure why I'm going against your request not to respond since my many spruce (Norway, Colorado, Black Hills, etc) face all directions and don't seem to have problems. So you're free to ignore me too. Maybe the following from the North Dakota State Univ. system has some views you can use. Maybe not. Two types of sun injury, winter and summer, are found in North Dakota (and to editorialize, probably in Iowa, too). Winter sunscald (winter burn) is caused by a combination of high and low temperatures during the late winter or early spring. Temperatures on exposed surfaces of the shrubs or trees increase sufficiently to allow respiration in normally dormant cells. As the cells become active, water is given off. Because the soil is still frozen and roots are inactive, moisture in the active cells cannot be replaced. The result is drying of the tissue. The incidence of injury is usually much higher following a late snowfall, especially if followed by sunny weather and warm winds. Injuries localized on sun-exposed surfaces are classed as "winter sun scald" (winter burn); this distinguishes the injury from "sunscorch" which is due to the drying effect of high summer temperatures. Winter injury is probably a much more common cause of leaf drying and limb cankers than summer injury in the northern regions. Stages in severity of damage caused by sunscald are: first the killing of needletips, followed by the death of the entire needle. Moderate types of winter sunscald are confined to small upper branches on the southwest face of the plant. When sunscald occurs frequently, follow practices in home plantings which prevent excessive overheating of the sun-exposed surfaces. Board, lath or burlap screens may be made to shade exposed surfaces. Remove all dead branches only after growth starts in the spring. Many branches with winter burned needles will put out new shoots.

After reading through all these messages I don't see that the OP ever got an answer to the question. I can't help you with information about nitrogen in pine needles, but I thought I would try to reengage the readers toward the original question. Still I have other thoughts on what you asked and what has been said. If you are getting temps anywhere above the outside air temperature, your pile has at least some "greens." At 145 degrees F your pile had plenty of greens. All the USDA requires to kill the pathogens is 120 if I'm not mistaken. Regarding green and brown leaves: the color of the leaves has nothing to do with whether they are "green" or "brown." Materials that are considered "green" are those with a relatively high amount of protein. Protein is made from amino acids which carry nitrogen in them. Thus high protein (but dry and brown) wheat and coffee grounds are much more "green" than most green tree leaves. Most grass plants carry their protein in the grass blades until the grass goes to seed. Then the protein is stored in the seed. On the other hand, "brown" plants simply are those that have minimal protein in them. Their physiology is dominated by carbohydrates (sugar and cellulose). Any material which is a seed, nut, bean, or is otherwise considered to be high in protein is a green. Most animal dung is considered to be green because it has plenty of protein left in it. Much of that protein is from the bacteria inhabiting it. Soil microbes do not eat (or decompose) nitrogen and carbon. They decompose protein and carbohydrates. This is very important to understand if you are trying to manage your pile. As soon as you drift away from the biology of the compost and try to make it a chemical process, it is very easy to become disoriented regarding how all this works. biological approach ==> protein and carbohydrates chemical approach ==> nitrogen and carbon Kimmsr said early in this thread that nitrogen was one of the more volatile nutrients in compost. This is because when you have too much protein, the protein decomposition process can result in ammonium materials. When they get wet the become ammonia which you can smell either as recognizable ammonia or as the sour or worse smells of rotting meat. In that sense, nitrogen is volatile, but you can control that off gassing by covering the pile with plenty of low protein materials like leaves (but not grass). These materials seem to absorb the odors and hold them in the pile. Note also that the chemical fertilizer suggested by spiced_ham above does not contain protein and thus is not a direct food for the compost microbes. It is usually a salt and probably responsible for more microbe deaths than for benefit. Spiced_ham went on to say, "You will end up with more finished compost in the long run because the pile will not have to respire off as much carbon to get to the final 10-15:1 C:N ratio of stable humus the way it would if you were adding high nitrogen vegetable matter." I think I would disagree with that but I don't really understand it. Compost piles do not normally respire carbon. Microbes digest it along with protein, vitamins, and minerals. If the pile is not managed you might get a "methane" smell which indicates gassing off of carbohydrates, but that would be abnormal rather than normal as he indicates. The lack of any gassy smells indicates you are not losing carbohydrates. If you are trying to tune up your pile and you have too much carbohydrate, the solution is to add protein, not salty chemicals. Personally I'm not that concerned with the ratios of materials in my pile. It starts with 20 or 30 bags of other peoples' tree leaves tossed on the open ground. Then we start burying banana peels, pumpkins, and kitchen scraps. It might be ready next year or not. It certainly never heats up with the minimal amounts of protein it gets, but it always decomposes.

Well, I don't know much about diseases of blue spruce, but when I see a branch that seems to be dying on any tree I look to the place where the branch joins the trunk and see if there is some kind of canker or some other sign of diesase that may be getting into the trunk of the tree. If not, I cut the branch off before that can happen and dispose of it so the infection can't spread. I also examine adjacent branches for additional points of infection. I do this specifically with cytospora canker on Norway spruce, and white pine blister rust on white pine. If it looks like the infection has gotten into the trunk of the tree, then you should do what you can to identify the disease--take a sample to the ag extension office or forest service, and then see what can be done. If what you have is a general patch of foliage where there is needle loss, then you have to find out the cause and perhaps some spray can help. But I am talking about my expereince with these kinds of problems in general. Here where I am in Winchester, VA I have not had to learn about diseases of blue spruce because I have not observed any. --Spruce

Netties, I think you nailed it. Thank you so much for the information. We will have our tree guy out next spring to treat it. Leaves, Unfortunately (or fortunately) the landscaper of our development in the early 1950s didn't have that good advice, and our small forest of blue spruce is beating the dire prediction for a 30-year lifespan by more than 20 years so far. It is good information to have, for the inevitable day when we have to replace them.