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Modeling the invasive emerald ash borer risk of spread using a spatially explicit cellular model

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Abstract

The emerald ash borer (EAB, Agrilus planipennis) is decimating native ashes (Fraxinus sp.) throughout midwestern North America, killing millions of trees over the years. With plenty of ash available throughout the continent, the spread of this destructive insect is likely to continue. We estimate that the insect has been moving along a “front” at about 20 km/year since about 1998, but more alarming is its long-range dispersal into new locations facilitated by human activities. We describe a spatially explicit cell-based model used to calculate risk of spread in Ohio, by combining the insect’s flight and short-range dispersal (“insect flight”) with human-facilitated, long-range dispersal (“insect ride”). This hybrid model requires estimates of EAB abundance, ash abundance, major roads and traffic density, campground size and usage, distance from the core infested zone, wood products industry size and type of wood usage, and human population density. With the “insect flight” model, probability of movement is dependent on EAB abundance in the source cells, the quantity of ash in the target cells, and the distances between them. With the “insect-ride” model, we modify the value related to ash abundance based on factors related to potential human-assisted movements of EAB-infested ash wood or just hitchhiking insects. We attempt to show the advantage of our model compared to statistical approaches and to justify its practical value to field managers working with imperfect knowledge. We stress the importance of the road network in distributing insects to new geographically dispersed sites in Ohio, where 84% were within 1 km of a major highway.

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Acknowledgments

Thanks to Lindsey Vest of the Ohio Department of Agriculture for providing data on EAB infestation locations. We are grateful to Elizabeth LaPoint from the FIA GIS Support Center for overlaying the Ohio FIA plots with the Ohio GAP data to estimate ash BA. We thank the Ohio Center for Mapping, especially Lawrence Spencer, for creating and providing the Ohio GAP data. We thank Mary Brown, FHWA Office of Highway Policy Information, for providing traffic data. Thanks to Dan Kashian, Denys Yemshanov, John Pedlar and Rueben Keller for the friendly reviews and the two anonymous reviewers, and John Stanovich for the statistical review. We thank Lucy Burde for editing the manuscript. This work was funded in part by the PREISM Program of the USDA (awarded to JMB & LRI). This is publication No. 200X-XXX from the University of Toledo Lake Erie Center.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. USDA Forest Service, Northern Research Station, 359 Main Road, Delaware, OH, 43015, USA

    Anantha M. Prasad, Louis R. Iverson, Matthew P. Peters & Stephen N. Matthews

  2. Department of Environmental Sciences & Lake Erie Center, University of Toledo, 6200 Bayshore Rd., Oregon, OH, 43618, USA

    Jonathan M. Bossenbroek

  3. School of Environment and Natural Resources, Ohio State University, 367 Kottman Hall, 2021 Coffey Road, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA

    T. Davis Sydnor

  4. Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California-Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA, 95616, USA

    Mark W. Schwartz

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  1. Anantha M. Prasad
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Correspondence to Anantha M. Prasad.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Supplementary Fig. 1

Ash per unit area of forest within the eastern United States, according to FIA (JPG 183 kb)

Supplementary Fig. 2

Proportional species dominance by state according to FIA data (JPG 219 kb)

Supplementary Fig. 3

Percent forest, by 20 × 20 km cell, within the eastern United States (JPG 186 kb)

Supplementary Fig. 4

Ash available (basal area) in the eastern United States (JPG 185 kb)

Supplementary Fig. 5

Ash available (basal area) in Ohio (JPG 187 kb)

Supplementary Fig. 6

EAB risk according to RandomForest model (JPG 463 kb)

Supplementary Fig. 7

Risk of EAB spread by flight (JPG 136 kb)

Supplementary Fig. 8

Risk of EAB spread by riding with humans (JPG 184 kb)

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Prasad, A.M., Iverson, L.R., Peters, M.P. et al. Modeling the invasive emerald ash borer risk of spread using a spatially explicit cellular model. Landscape Ecol 25, 353–369 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-009-9434-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-009-9434-9

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