Ernie Hain

The primary purpose of this agreement is to support the development of PestACT by linking economic and spread models in a single platform to facilitate stakeholder communication about the potential impact of a pest during a new incursion. This will be achieved by working with project cooperators and CPHST scientists to holistically model new pest incursion scenarios in the U.S. PestACT can help regulatory officials determine the optimal response strategy by simulating a live pest incursion scenario. Once the conditions of the outbreak are understood, managers can use PestACT to model the spread of the pest across the real landscape and determine how hosts will be impacted over time. Presidential order HSPD-9 requires States and the Federal government to cooperate in dealing with risks from biological agents, including plant pests.

The primary purpose of this agreement is to support the development of Medfly Risk Model (MRM) by refining and linking existing pathway, climatic, and pest population models to determine the spatiotemporal risk of Medfly in the U.S. Many models have been developed by APHIS scientists and cooperators to mitigate the impacts of invasive pests. These models cover a range of processes along the safeguarding continuum. Beginning off-shore, climatic models have been developed to predict the global distribution of pests and seasons when their populations are of greatest concern. Pathway models then link the off-shore distribution of pests to high risk exporting countries and commodities to determine likely ����������������hot spots��������������� where contaminated material is imported to the U.S. Climate suitability models are again used, this time to determine whether or not particular regions of the U.S. are suitable for the pest and the pest������������������s expected virulence in suitable areas. Next, pest population models are used to determine the likely time an outbreak will occur and, given particular mitigations, the time to extirpation and the length of quarantine. Spread models can also be linked with population models to determine the expansion of the pest across a landscape and the likely extent of impacts. Finally, given the range of spread, population dynamics, and potential impacts on domestic commodities, economic models can be used to calculate the costs and losses and determine appropriate types and levels of mitigation.