By McGill University
April 10, 2022
A new study by researchers from McGill University, the USDA Forest Service Southern Research Station, and North Carolina State University approximates that over the next 30 years, 1.4 million street trees will be eliminated by invasive pests, costing over $900 million USD to change. The findings are published in the British Ecological Societys Journal of Applied Ecology.
McGill PhD graduate Emma J. Hudgins, the research studys lead author, created the very first nationwide spatial projection of street tree mortality from invasive insects, developing models to extrapolate to roughly 30,000 metropolitan areas throughout the United States. Now a post-doctoral fellow at Carleton University, Hudgins presents that 90 percent of the 1.4 million tree deaths anticipated in the research study are forecasted to be brought on by the emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis), which is expected to kill essentially all ash trees in more than 6,000 city locations. The researchers forecast that the effect of invasive bugs will not be equally spread throughout the country, with less than a quarter of United States neighborhoods set to experience 95 percent of all street tree death arising from intrusive insects.
The team says that their findings can assist urban tree managers to understand which tree species, in which areas, will be at the biggest danger from intrusive pests. “These results can hopefully offer a cautionary tale versus planting a single species of tree throughout whole cities, as has been done with ash trees in North America.
Recommendation: “Hotspots of pest-induced US metropolitan tree death, 2020– 2050” by Emma J. Hudgins, Frank H. Koch, Mark J. Ambrose, Brian Leung, 13 March 2022, Journal of Applied Ecology.DOI: 10.1111/ 1365-2664.14141.