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  1. A landscape-scale remote sensing/GIS tool to assess eastern hemlock vulnerability to hemlock woolly adelgid-induced decline

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    Author(s): Jennifer Pontius; Richard Hallett; Mary Martin; Lucie Plourde
    Date: 2010
    Source: In: Pye, John M.; Rauscher, H. Michael; Sands, Yasmeen; Lee, Danny C.; Beatty, Jerome S., tech. eds. Advances in threat assessment and their application to forest and rangeland management. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-802. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest and Southern Research Stations: 657-671
    Publication Series: General Technical Report (GTR)
    Station: Pacific Northwest Research Station
    PDF: Download Publication  (597.0 KB)
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    Description

    The hemlock woolly adelgid (Adelges tsugae Annand) (HWA) is an invasive insect pest that is causing widespread mortality of eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis (L.) Carr.). However, some stands remain living more than a decade after infestation. The ability to target management efforts in locations where hemlock is most likely to tolerate prolonged HWA infestation is critical to successful integrated pestmanagement programs. Here, we build a landscape-scale hemlock risk model for the Catskills region of New York based on coverage like slope and aspect derived from a traditional Digital Elevation Model (DEM). We also show that additional data layers derived from hyperspectral sensors such as NASA’s Airborne Visible InfraRed Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS) can provide critical information for geographic information system (GIS) modeling. The initial landscape-only model was able to predict the rate of overall decline following HWA infestation for 21 plots across the Northeast with R22 = 0.79, p = 0.0009. An AVIRIS-derived hemlock abundance coverage was then used to define the hemlock resource and its relative vulnerability to rapid decline. These results indicate that the inclusion of both landscape and chemical variables is critical to predicting hemlock vulnerability to HWA, and that landscape-scale modeling in a GIS platform is possible with the addition of hyperspectral remote sensing coverages. Whereas the resulting risk map covers only the Catskills region of New York, the relationships established here should be applicable to HWA infestation across the range of eastern hemlock, providing a basis for forest land management agencies to make informed management decisions.

    Publication Notes

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    Citation

    Pontius, Jennifer; Hallett, Richard; Martin, Mary; Plourde, Lucie. 2010. A landscape-scale remote sensing/GIS tool to assess eastern hemlock vulnerability to hemlock woolly adelgid-induced decline. In: Pye, John M.; Rauscher, H. Michael; Sands, Yasmeen; Lee, Danny C.; Beatty, Jerome S., tech. eds. Advances in threat assessment and their application to forest and rangeland management. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-802. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest and Southern Research Stations: 657-671.

    Keywords

    AVIRIS, Adelges tsugae, forest health, invasive insect pest, susceptibility.

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