Predicting the future. As a new exotic, invasive pathogen it would be incredibly useful if we could know what Phytophthora ramorum's impact and distribution will be in 10 years, 50 years, and beyond. Where will the pathogen become established? Where could the pathogen become established if it was introduced and in what geographic areas and climates would it cause unacceptable damage?

To answer these critical questions, several Phytophthora ramorum risk models have been developed for the USA, Canada, and California. The USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has compiled a summary of these models that concludes there is a consistent national pattern of high risk in the coastal North-West and the central Appalachian Mountains, and low risk through the Great Plains. The models differ in predicting the extent of risk in the North East, coastal California, parts of the South East and the Northern Mid West. The overview paper recommends comparing the output from several models rather than basing a decision on one single model.

Researcher's modeling P. ramorum met on November 1, 2005 at the USDA Forest Service, Southern Research Station in Asheville, NC. Eight national-scale P. ramorum risk models were presented and compared as well as several models predicting risk of P. ramorum for California. The presentations and associated publications describing each models are posted below.

P. ramorum risk model summary National Risk Models Model Name Presentation Published Paper Climate and Host Mapping of Phytopthora Ramorum (NAPPFAST) Fowler and Magarey, 2005 USDA APHIS   Risk Mapping for Forest Pests Gottshalk and Liebhold, 2005 USDA Forest Service   Predicting National Susceptibility Patterns for Sudden Oak Death Hoffman, Hargrove, Hessburg, and Salter, 2005 USDA Forest Service   Modeling Risk for SOD Nationwide (Kelly et al., 2005) USDA Forest Service   (Paper) A Refined Approach for Examining Phytopthora ramorum Risk in the Eastern U. S. Koch, 2005 N. Carolina State University   Hotzone GIS Analysis for Targeting Surveys for Phytopthora ramorum Magarey, Fowler, and Colunga, 2005 USDA APHIS A Simple Generic Infection Model for Foliar Fungal Plant Pathogens (Magarey et al., 2004) N. Carolina State University Climatic Domain Maps for Sudden Oak Death McKenny, Campbell, Hopkin, and Lawrence, 2005 Canadian Forest Service   National Risk Model for Phytopthora ramorum Smith, 2005 USDA Forest Service   A CLIMEX Model for the potential establishment of P. ramorum in the Eastern US Venette, 2005 USDA Forest Service   Potential Climatic suitability for establishment of P. ramorum within the contiguous United States Venette & Cohen, 2006 USDA Forest Service   (Paper) California Risk Models Support Vector Machines for Predicting Distribution of Sudden Oak Death in California (Guo et al., 2004) UC Berkeley   (Paper) Spatial Modeling of P. ramorum in California Meentemeyer, 2005 University of N. Carolina Mapping the Risk of Establishment and Spread of Sudden Oak Death in California (Meetemeyer et al., 2004) Sonoma State University, UC Davis, California Polytechnic State University (back to top)