California Oak Mortality Task Force Monitoring Committee

Meeting

CAMFER Conference Room: 111 Mulford Hall, UC Berkeley.

January 19, 2001, 11am – 3pm

 

Meeting Notes.

 

1.     Welcome

Attendees: Brice McPherson (UC Berkeley), Tim Tidwell (Lab pathologist - CDFA), Matt Ken (MPOSD), Bruce Bazdik (GGNRA), Lisa Levien (USFS), Chris Fischer (CDF), Jeremy Lockwood (CDF), Ross Meentemeyer (SSU-Geog), Jake Schweitzer (CAMFER), Bill Fontaine (arborist, UCB), Richard Trout (UCB arborist), Garey Slaughter (UC Davis), Chris Bramham (Marin Co.).

 

2.  General Questions:

What about pre-visual stress? Can the spectrometer be used as diagnostic tool for UC Berkeley Oak survey (Trout)

          Probably not yet.  Results from field still being analyzed (Kelly)

Ross Meentemeyer: The speed of confirmations will most likely be faster than the speed of mapping. What can be done?

Garey Slaughter: 27 locations identified as the new Phytophthora. 110 samples, 62 positive, which means that > 50 - 70% positive in areas we know it exists. Even then, it is difficult to isolate the new phytoph.

Tim Tidwell: very hard to isolate this phytophthora.

Garey Slaughter: there are a list of phytophthora that get into oaks, and produce essentially the same symptoms – P. cinimomi, which has a wide host range.

Brice McPherson: if you go into a stand that has a significant # of dead and bleeding trees, aren’t they probably not cinimomi?

Does the sampling yield information about other Phytophthoras?

Garey Slaughter: samples tested on Phytophthora selective medium, so other phytophthora can be isolated.

Tim Tidwell: Time is of the essence. Plate it out at the spot, in the field would be ideal.

 

3.     Old Business

a.      Status of Monitoring Efforts – M. Kelly, Overview

                                                  i.      Regional Scale Efforts

1.      Aerial Surveys

a.      These were in the earlier. Still useful now?

2.      Roadside / Field Surveys

a.      Are we going to still use this? Ross Meentemeyer has had some success in telescoping, that might be useful soon.

3.      Remote Sensing – L. Levien, C. Fischer, J. Lockwood

a.      Change detection method: Landsat TM imagery 1996 imagery and 2000 imagery.  Monterey –> Humboldt Co. Using a  technique that has been used across the entire state for change detection. Successful for change at a large scale and for conifer health monitoring. We are in the process of determining causal information. For this project, the imagery has been acquired. The preprocessing begun. Change detection will begin soon. Validation and accuracy will begin after. ADAR imagery is in hand (from Maggi Kelly). There is a proposal through the Forest Health Monitoring Program. This will include high- resolution imagery analysis as well as the change detection. We have been successful in detecting changes in vegetation cover from 2 time periods. Correlate changes in spectral information with field data. Establish a baseline conditions for change.

                                                                                                                          i.      Q: what types of vegetation maps are out there, with what kind of floristic detail? RM.

                                                                                                                         ii.      A: CalVeg and WHR – cover type, density, etc. All are accuracy assessed.

·         Lot of help on validated in the field. We can assist with that.

Aerial photographs.

     Garey Slaughter: Aerial photos would be useful.

                                                 ii.      Landscape Scale Efforts

1.      ADAR imagery – M. Kelly, R. Meentemeyer.

a.      Showed imagery, and discussed future applications. Ross will head up Sonoma Co. effort.

2.      Open Space / Parks Plot work. We need to work out a protocol for this. There seems to be 2 methods we are interested in: a detection report, that is useful in determining p/a of dead trees and getting #’s (for tree removal grants), and a survey of mortality, which is statistically significant.

a.      1. Detection report.  Detection of Mortality: note of trees over 4” / 10 cm dbh. Date, location (preserve name, or descriptor), species, symptoms (seeping p/a, hypox p/a, beetles p/a, canopy condition, green / brown). Tagging the trees? Other nearby trees affected?

                                                                                                                          i.      Chris Bramham – must survey roads, borders, how many trees may fall? This is to match proposal. Size boxes (0-1, 1-2, 2+), single stem, multiple stem?

                                                                                                                         ii.      At all parks, open space districts, etc. any effort of this kind needs to be championed by a leader, and commitment from the agencies. Do we agree that there should be a nested scheme for sampling.

                                                                                                                       iii.      M Kelly will work on getting a draft of this out.

b.      2. Survey of mortality.

                                                                                                                          i.      Nested scheme. 1/5 acre, circular. Dbh. 30 m circle. Stratified randomized across the landscape. (stratified by basin). 1 ha, if this gets to be real big, they won’t do it.  

                                                                                                                         ii.      What is the question we are answering with the plots:

1.      Four reasons for establishing plots

a.      Establishing infection

b.      Change in the condition in infection across the study area

c.      Presence or absence

d.      Ecological consequences of this SOD.

                                                                                                                       iii.      Maggi and Ross will work on getting a draft of this out.

Note: the Park Rangers conference for California might be a good place to present this.  PRAC. Dave’s going. Contact: Doug Brice.

                                               iii.      Local Scale Efforts

1.      Plot work – B. McPherson

2.      OakMapper website – M. Kelly

a.      Boundary lines, overposting problem. – not a problem with interactive site.

b.      Too long to load.  – we’ll work on it.

3.      FIA – M. Kelly

a.      Overview. Possibly we could use something like this in our plot design.

                                              iv.      Other Sources?

b.      Status of Confirmation Efforts – G. Slaughter

                                                  i.      50% confirmation rate.

                                                 ii.      Seasonal success rate in confirmations. Have you taken samples in winter? Yes. Successful isolations in winter time. Other phytoph are seasonal in success rate. Same day in, a week to figure out if it is a phytophthora.

                                               iii.      In-Service Workshop – M. Kelly

c.      Status of Funding – M. Kelly

                                                  i.      FIA

                                                 ii.      FEMA?

                                               iii.      CDF and Pitch Canker

                                              iv.      NASA

                                                v.      Rich people in Marin

d.      Interaction with other COMTF committees– M. Kelly

                                                  i.      Biomass subcommittee requests information from us when we know it.

                                                 ii.      Fire Committee.

1.      There needs to be interagency work on fire protection.

2.      In SOD areas, there is often little coordination between the multiple agencies involved in the area. One thing that we could provide was a jurisdictional map of all agencies land on which SOD fell, and encourage cooperation. Perhaps the fire department could become the overseeing agency, but the other actors must be involved to insure multi-use management. I’ll pass this on to Bill Ruskin.

                                               iii.      Education Committee.

1.      we need hard copy symptom guide for use in the field. I think Nicole has this. Will check.

4.     New Business

                                                  i.      Rhododendron survey.

1.      Infection centers of rhododendron. Agriculture and landscaping industry. Tim Tidwell will keep me posted on new infection centers, and any information re. Rhodys.

 

Products to work on:

Draft Detection report. Maggi Kelly. By next monitoring meeting.

Survey Protocol. Maggi Kelly, Ross Meentemeyer. By next monitoring Meeting.