Vermont Forest Indicators Dashboard

Damage by Invasive Pests

Score for 2017:
--/5
Long-Term Trend:
Scores are 
An invasive pest is an insect or disease that has been introduced from another country and causes extensive damage where it is introduced. Examples include emerald ash borer and Dutch elm disease, among many others. Most of our most problematic invasive pests originate from Europe and Asia because those locations have many tree species that are closely related to those found in Vermont. When an invasive pest is introduced to an area, native trees can succumb to serious damage because they have not evolved to develop chemical and physical defenses against them. To quantify the damage caused by invasive insects and diseases, we use Insect and Disease Surveys (IDS), which are annual aerial surveys of forests conducted by the State of Vermont and the USDA Forest Service to map forest disturbance, including damage caused by insects and diseases1. Here, we summed the total area mapped by pests that we could determine as invasive to Vermont. The current year is scored as the difference between the minimum and maximum (+10%) values in the record. Annual scores were computed as the deviation from the data target, scaled from 0-1.
1 USDA Forest Service. Forest Health Protection. https://www.fs.fed.us/foresthealth/applied-sciences/mapping-reporting/gis-spatial-analysis/detection-surveys.shtml
FEMC Archive Resources
Dataset: Vermont Pest Origin Status