Dissertation Title: Mapping forest host species distributions and understanding their effects on forecasts of disease spread

Co-Advisors: Dr. Ross Meentemeyer, Director of the Center for Geospatial Analytics and Goodnight Distinguished Professor of Geospatial Analytics; Dr. Josh Gray, Faculty Fellow and Assistant Professor in the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources

Abstract: Emerging infectious diseases of trees are a type of biotic invasion that pose a dire threat to the world’s forest ecosystems. In temperate forest environments, tree diseases exacerbate the severity and frequency of other, naturally occurring disturbances. This leads to cascading and complex disturbance interactions that reduce biodiversity, alter carbon flux and potentially change ecosystem state. The severity of these impacts is expected to worsen under future scenarios of climate change. Land managers, however, currently lack tools capable of  forecasting the impacts of infectious diseases to enact management actions that could slow or stop spread. In this dissertation, the research objectives were driven by the desire to improve our understanding of mapping forest tree species across geographically broad landscapes, and examine how their use in ecological modeling can better inform land managers.