http://cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/authors/read/22264 Publications by R.D. Magarey en-ca 2012-04-16 10:26:54 MST 2012-04-16 10:26:54 MST webmaster@nofc.cfs.nrcan.gc.ca http://cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/publications?id=33481 Recreational travel is a recognized vector for the spread of invasive species in North America. However, there has been little quantitative analysis of the risks posed by such travel and the associated transport of firewood. In this study, we analyzed the risk of forest insect spread with Þrewood and estimated related dispersal parameters for application in geographically explicit invasion models. Our primary data source was the U.S. National Recreation Reservation Service database, which records camper reservations at 2,500 locations nationwide. For 7 million individual reservations made between 2004 and 2009 (including visits from Canada), we calculated the distance between visitor home address and campground location.We constructed an empirical dispersal kernel (i.e., the probability distribution of the travel distances) from these “origin-destination” data, and then fitted the data with various theoretical distributions. We found the data to be strongly leptokurtic (fat-tailed) and fairly well fit by the unbounded Johnson and lognormal distributions. Most campers(53%) traveled 100 km, but 10% traveled 500 km (and as far as 5,500 km). Additionally, we examined the impact of geographic region, speciÞc destinations (major national parks), and specific origin locations (major cities) on the shape of the dispersal kernel, and found that mixture distributions (i.e., theoretical distribution functions composed of multiple univariate distributions) may fit better in some circumstances. Although only a limited amount of all transported firewood is likely to be infested by forest insects, this still represents a considerable increase in dispersal potential beyond the insects' natural spread capabilities. Mon, 16 Apr 2012 http://cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/publications?id=33481 http://cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/publications?id=32230 In the United States, pest risk maps are used by the Cooperative Agricultural Pest Survey for spatial and temporal targeting of exotic plant pest detection programs. Methods are described to create standardized host distribution, climate and pathway risk maps for the top nationally ranked exotic pest targets. Two examples are provided to illustrate the risk mapping process: late wilt of corn (Harpophora maydis) and the giant African land snail (Achatina fulica). Host risk maps were made from county-level crop census and USDA Forest Inventory and Analysis data, respectively. Climate risk maps were made using the North Carolina State University–USDA APHIS Plant Pest Forecasting System (NAPPFAST), which uses a web-based graphical user interface to link climatic and geographic databases with interactive templates for biological modelling. Pathway risk maps were made using freight flow allocation data sets to move commodities from 7 world regions to 3162 US urban areas. A new aggregation technique based on the Pareto dominance principle was used to integrate maps of host abundance, climate and pathway risks into a single decision support product. The maps are publicly available online (http://www.nappfast.org). Key recommendations to improve the risk maps and their delivery systems are discussed. Thu, 24 Mar 2011 http://cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/publications?id=32230 http://cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/publications?id=31851 Wed, 06 Oct 2010 http://cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/publications?id=31851 http://cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/publications?id=31662 Wed, 05 May 2010 http://cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/publications?id=31662