Dissertation Title: Analytical approaches for plant pest management across the biosecurity continuum

Advisor: Dr. Helena Mitasova, Associate Director of Geovisualization, Center for Geospatial Analytics; Professor, Department of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

Abstract: Non-native plant pests and pathogens threaten biodiversity, ecosystem function, food security and economic livelihoods. Minimizing damage from biological invasions involves dynamic, multiscale strategies agile enough to respond to rapidly changing conditions while balancing economic and environmental trade-offs. This dissertation develops geospatial analytics for plant pest management across the biosecurity continuum. I present a spatio-temporal stochastic network model for forecasting global spread of non-native plant pests, an open-source consignment inspection simulator to test phytosanitary sampling protocols, and an approach for remote crop stress monitoring using 3D canopy geometry and spectral reflectance derived from low-cost unmanned aerial systems. This research advances multiscale, interdisciplinary approaches that contribute to reducing global migration of non-native species, improving biosecurity efforts at ports of entry, and detecting field-scale crop stress.