Sudden Oak Death in the UK - Oct 2013

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From suddenoakdeath.org.

The United Kingdom (UK) Forestry Commission has updated its P. ramorum larch outbreak map (http://www.forestry.gov.uk/forestry/infd-86ajqa) to include Northern Ireland.  

The map at left identifies areas where there is or has been confirmed or presumed infection in larch trees. Laboratory analysis of samples returns conclusive results in only a minority of cases, so a presumption of infection is used where all the other indications point to the presence of P. ramorum infection.

The colored dots on the map indicate sites where P. ramorum has been confirmed or presumed, and statutory plant health notices (SPHNs) have been issued. Each colour represents the April-March year in which this occurred.

The Galloway Red Zone in southwest Scotland has also been added to the map.  The Red Zone is the region of Scotland where the rate and severity of disease spread is too intense for control through tree felling; consequently, this region will have requirements put in place regarding the movement of infected timber and bark.  Control by statutory plant health notices requiring sanitation felling will continue elsewhere in Scotland. For more information on the status of the situation in Scotland, go to http://www.forestry.gov.uk/forestry/infd-9bglrr.

 

New 2012-2013 SOD Confirmations Added to OakMapper!

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New 2013 SOD Blitz and 2012-13 UC Davis DataNew confirmed cases of Sudden Oak Death (SOD) (P. ramorum) have been added to OakMapper, a project that tracks the spread of Sudden Oak Death from data collected by citizens and organizations. All official SOD cases are collected and confirmed by the California Department of Food and Agriculture or the University of California. Community SOD cases are submitted by citizens via the OakMapper website and iPhone application. 442 new points collected between 2012-2013 have been added to OakMapper bringing the total number of confirmed SOD locations to 3246. The new data consists of laboratory confirmed cases collected by the annual SOD Blitz campaign of 2013 from the Forest Pathology and Mycology Lab run by Dr. Matteo Garbelotto and also laboratory confirmed cases collected by the UC Davis Rizzo Lab run by Dr. David Rizzo.

Click on the image left to view a close-up of the new confirmed SOD data (in green) from SOD Blitz and UC Davis. 

Explore the new data online here.

OakMapper.org

 

Workshop wrap up: Google Earth Higher Education Summit 2013

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For three days in late July 2013 Kevin Koy, Executive Director of the GIF and Maggi spent time at Google with 50+ other academics and staff to learn about Google Earth's mapping and outreach tools that leverage cloud computing. The meeting was called Google Earth for Higher Education Summit, and it was jam packed with great information and hands-on workshops. Former Kellylabber Karin Tuxen-Bettman was at the helm, with other very helpful staff (including David Thau - who gave the keynote at last year's ASPRS conference). Google Earth Outreach has been targeting non-profits and K-12 education, and are now increasingly working with higher education, hence the summit. We learned about a number of valuable tools for use in classrooms and workshops, a short summary is here.  

Google Mapping Tools - the familiar and the new

  • Google Earth Pro. You all know about this tool, increasing ability to plan, measure and visualize a site, and to make movies and maps and export data.
  • Google Maps Engine Lite. This is a free, lite mapping platform to import, style and embed data. Designed to work with small (100 row) spreadsheets.
  • Google Maps Engine Platform. The scaleable and secure mapping platform for geographic data hosting, data sharing and map making. streamlines the import of GIS data: you can import shapefiles and imagery. http://mapsengine.google.com.
  • Google Earth Engine. Data (40 years of global satellite imagery - Landsat, MODIS, etc.) + methods to analyze (Google's and yours, using python and javascript) + the Cloud make for a fast analytical platform to study a changing earth. http://earthengine.google.org/#intro
  • TimeLapse. A new tool showcasing 29 years of Landsat imagery, allows you to script a tour through a part of the earth to highlight change. Features Landsat 4, 5 7 at 30m, with clouds removed, colors normalized with MODIS. http://earthengine.google.org/
  • Field Mobile Data Collection. GME goes mobile, using Open Data Kit (ODK) - a way to capture structured data and locate it and analyze after home.
  • Google Maps APIs. The way to have more hands-on in map styling and publishing. developers.google.com/maps
  • Street View. They have a car in 32 countries, on 7 continents, and are moving into national parks and protected areas. SV is not just for roads anymore. They use trikes, boats, snowmobiles, trolleys; they go underwater and caves, backpacks.

Here are a couple of my first-cuts:

Hey OakMappers! Updated OakMapper available for iPhones and iPads

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The new OakMapper logo

We are excited to announce the new version (2.3) of the OakMapper iPhone/iPad App, available to download now for free at the iTunes App Store [link].

In this version of the OakMapper App, the original browse and search functionalities have been retooled to improve the user interface design and user interaction. A new user can sign up for a new OakMapper account directly using the App. Users who has logged into their account can manage their profile, change their password, and submit a SOD point. The submission process has been re-engineered to achieve a better and more intuitive submission workflow. Users can also take a picture of a suspected SOD infected tree and upload it right from their iOS devices.

To explore all the new features of the OakMapper iPhone/iPad App, please install OakMapper from the iTunes App Store [link] now. Please feel free to share this App with your friends. If you like the OakMapper app, please rate the app and leave your comments in the App store. If you should have any questions, please email us at oakmapper@gmail.com.

Enjoy!

OakMapper
Shufei Lei, Web/Mobile App Developer
Maggi Kelly, Principal Investigator
www.oakmapper.org

New 2012 SOD Confirmations Added to OakMapper!

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New SOD Blitz 2012 Data

New confirmed cases of Sudden Oak Death (SOD) (P. ramorum) have been added to OakMapper, a project that tracks the spread of Sudden Oak Death from data collected by citizens and organizations. All official SOD cases are collected and confirmed by the California Department of Food and Agriculture or the University of California. Community SOD cases are submitted by citizens via the OakMapper website and iPhone application. 613 new points collected in 2012 have been added to OakMapper bringing the total number of confirmed SOD locations to 2804. The new data consists of laboratory confirmed cases collected by the annual SOD Blitz campaign of 2012 from the Forest Pathology and Mycology Lab run by Dr. Matteo Garbelotto. 

Click on the image in the upper left to view a close-up of the new confirmed SOD data (in green) from the SOD Blitz 2012. 

Explore the new data online here.

OakMapper.org

New 2011 SOD Confirmations Added to OakMapper!

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New SOD Blitz 2011 Data

New confirmed cases of Sudden Oak Death (SOD) (P. ramorum) have been added to OakMapper, a project that tracks the spread of Sudden Oak Death from data collected by citizens and organizations. All official SOD cases are collected and confirmed by the California Department of Food and Agriculture or the University of California. Community SOD cases are submitted by citizens via the OakMapper website and iPhone application. 621 new points collected in 2011 have been added to OakMapper bringing the total number of confirmed SOD locations to 2191. The new data consists of laboratory confirmed cases collected by the annual SOD Blitz campaign of 2011 from the Forest Pathology and Mycology Lab run by Dr. Matteo Garbelotto. 

Click on the image below to view a close-up of the new confirmed SOD data (in green) from the SOD Blitz 2011. 

Explore the new data online here.

OakMapper.org

SOD: still spreading in the bay area

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A nice article in SF Chron on Matteo's citizen science approach to mapping new SOD spread.

The article states: The deadly pathogen known as sudden oak death is spreading throughout the Bay Area, infecting more trees in more places than have ever been seen before, according to scientists tracking the disease. The Forest Pathology and Mycology Laboratory at UC Berkeley used 10,000 tree and plant samples collected by 500 citizens between April and June this year to document a dramatic increase in the infection rate from Napa to the Carmel Valley and virtually everywhere in between.

New SOD Confirmations Added to OakMapper!

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New confirmed cases of Sudden Oak Death (SOD) (P. ramorum) have been added to OakMapper, a project that tracks the spread of Sudden Oak Death from data collected by citizens and organizations. All official SOD cases are collected and confirmed by the California Department of Food and Agriculture or the University of California. Community SOD cases are submitted by citizens via the OakMapper website and iPhone application. 415 new points collected between 2008 and 2011 have been added to OakMapper bringing the total number of confirmed SOD locations to 1570. The new data consists of laboratory confirmed cases collected by the annual SOD Blitz campaigns of 2008-2010 from the Forest Pathology and Mycology Lab run by Dr. Matteo Garbelotto and also data collected by the California Department of Food and Agriculture between 2008 and 2011.

Click on the images below to view close-ups of the new confirmed SOD data (in green) from the SOD Blitz and California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA).

New SOD Blitz 08-10 Data

New CDFA 08-11 Data

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Explore the new data online here

OakMapper.org

OakMapper in the news!

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OakMapper is featured in a new ANR news report from Pam Kan Rice. Check it out here. From the article:

Smartphone users can report sudden oak death

California’s majestic oak trees have been felled by the hundreds of thousands by a disease first reported in 1995 and dubbed “sudden oak death.”  To get a broader perspective on the disease, UC Berkeley scientists have developed a smartphone app for hikers and other nature lovers to report trees they find that have succumbed to sudden oak death.

While out in a park or forest, iPhone users can use the new OakMapper mobile application to report sightings of trees killed by Phytophthora ramorum, the plant pathogen that causes sudden oak death. Onsite, they can note the symptoms they see, such as seeping, bark discoloration, crown discoloration, dead leaves, shoot die-back, fungus, beetle frass and beetle bore holes. The OakMapper app, created by scientists in the UC Berkeley Geospatial Innovation Facility, uses the phone's built-in GPS to identify the participant’s location when the data is submitted.

OakMapper has gone mobile!

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Not be mistaken with OatsMapper.com (mapping Hall and Oats reunion concerts), the OakMapper has gone mobile!

If you have an iPhone with OS 3.0, you can now download and install the mobile version of OakMapper on iTune's App Store for free. The mobile version of OakMapper allows you to do the same thing as the web version: view submitted Sudden Oak Death cases and report a SOD occurrence. However, the OakMapper makes those two actions much easier by taking advantage of the GPS unit onboard the iPhone. The GPS coordinates provided by the iPhone will allow you to quickly report an SOD case and will allow you to find out all the submitted SODs within a 20 miles radius around you. We hope that the ease of reporting SOD cases using the OakMapper iPhone application will encourage more submissions from the general public who own an iPhone. 

Indigenous mapping network at UC Berkeley

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Our friends from DataBasin are on campus on Monday. Kai Henifin is a Cultural Ecologist/GIS Analyst with the non-profit organization Conservation Biology Institute, the developers of DataBasin. Kai will be speaking about "Incorporating Indigenous Knowledge to Improve Conservation through Data Sharing" as part of the Berkeley Indigenous Mapping Network. For more info on the event.

We have some interesting cross-overs with CBI and DataBasin: we added our SOD data to DataBasin recently (see image at left); and CBI have a nice modeling project looking at fisher in the southern Sierra that Reg and Rick are using in their SNAMP work.

Sudden Oak Death Science Symposium Highlights

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I thought I'd post some highlights from the SOD Science Symposium, currently running in Scotts Valley, CA.

Dave Rizzo presented new disease information since the first isolations (9 years ago this week!) in 2000 to today. Some highlights include:

  • Across California, there has been filling in of existing areas of the disease, but new areas of confirmation of note:
    • furthest north in CA is 45 miles north of Redway, CA; confirmed from stream baiting, and is associated with a nursery. No terrestrial confirmations. In Mendocino, another river baiting example north of Fort Bragg; no terrestrial confirmations.
  • There are some exciting management projects ongoing, from preventative treatment to large-scale management.

Alan Kanaskie talked about the Oregon situation. Highlights include:

  • Tanoak is critical for SOD in Oregon;
  • Monitoring in OR depends on aerial surveys, field surveys and stream baiting. With these methods, they are confident that ramorum only exists in the known quarantine area. However, they are getting rare PCR confirmations out of steam baiting in new watersheds, but they have not been able to replicate with culture, nor have they found any newly infected trees in those watersheds.
  • They are confident their management approach is working to slow the spread, and compares a map of Humboldt and Curry counties; in Humboldt, things look worse than in Curry.

Sandra Denman from Forest Research in UK gave an update on Pr in Europe: still mainly a nursery problem, but some interesting facts include:

  • Coutries reporting Pr in Europe in 2000 were few, and only 4 countries had outdoor outbreaks; in 2008: 19 countries report Pr in nurseries, and "burgeoning" reports of outdoor outbreaks across western and southern europe.
  • In the UK, Pr has been found in 600 nurseries in UK. In outdoor outbreaks, rhodies are the main problem, and outside outbreaks on trees are associated with these ornamentals.
  • First use of "kerfuffel" in a science presentation that I have heard.
  • P. kernoviae is also important in UK; and last year Pk was found in the Republic of Ireland for the first time.

Clive Brasier, from UK Forestry Commission, talked about P species and increased invasions due to international trade, and weak international biosecurity. Before 2000, about 20% of P sp were threats to forests; since 2000 (with 50+ new P species named), about 60% are threats to trees and forests. He guesses there might be 100-500 unnamed P. species out there that could be invasive in forests. They are now hypothesizing that Pr came from Japan and/or Taiwan.

For more on Sudden Oak Death, check out the OakMapper site, and other oakmapper posts on this blog.