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Assessing The Damage Of Mountain Pine Beetle Infestation

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Introduction
The objective of this study is to utilize Local indicator of spatial association (LISA), in particular the bivariate local Moran 's I, as a procedure for evaluating the damage of mountain pine beetle infestation over vast lodgepole pine forest with GIS and coarse scale multi temporal Aerial overview survey (AOS) data. The authors point out beetle infestation results in commercial timber loss, increase fire risk, habitat loss. They also point out, a growing concern of spreading beyond its historical range. And traditional mitigation methods have been expensive and time consuming. Therefore this study sets out to help forest managers address beetle infestation epidemics in a cost effective and timelier manner using Moran’s I risk analysis model.
The study site was located in British Columbia, Canada. The site was selected base on its abundance of lodgepole pine; a favoured tree of the mountain pine beetle. The area covered approximately 30 million hectares of the province 95 million hectare land mass. The pine distribution data collected from the AOS which was 1 km resolution raster cells where each cell is represented by the estimated percentage of pine at the location from the years 2002 to 2006. The method was carried out in three parts (i.e. organising data, predicting risk classes, risk rating evaluation). Firstly, the authors prepared the data in ArcGIS where they overlaid AOS data onto basemaps then classified the data into risk severity categories (light,

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