- (Public Value) UCANR: Protecting California's natural resources
- Author: Beatriz Nobua-Behrmann
SoCal Edison staff, bolstered with UCCE training, identify Goldspotted Oak Borer infestations and trigger swift response, demonstrating enhanced workforce capacity to combat invasive species and protect California's forests.
The Issue
Invasive tree pests pose a significant threat to California's urban and natural forests. Among them, the goldspotted oak borer (GSOB) has inflicted severe damage on the state's oak populations, resulting in substantial tree mortality and altering forest ecosystems. This invasive beetle primarily targets coast live oaks, California black oaks, and canyon live oaks. The decline of these iconic trees disrupts natural habitats and negatively impacts local economies that rely on healthy forests for recreation, tourism, and timber resources. As new infestations continue to rise in Los Angeles and Orange Counties, timely identification and management are crucial for safeguarding oak forests and their associated wildlife. There is an urgent need to both partner with those regularly inspecting trees and provide opportunities to enhance workforce competency in pest management.
How UC Delivers
To address this pressing issue, a collaborative team from University of California Cooperative Extension (UCCE) partnered with SoCal Edison (SCE) to organize a comprehensive four-hour training session in July 2024. This session brought together 57 participants, including staff and contractors from SCE, at the company's offices in Irwindale. Instructors included UCCE Advisors Beatriz Nobua-Behrmann and Chris Shogren, along with Joelene Tramm, the Natural Resources Director for the La Jolla Band of Indians and a master's student in Entomology at UC Riverside. Randall Oliver (UC Integrated Pest Management) and Julie Clark (UCCE Ventura County) provided logistical support to make this happen.
The training equipped participants with essential skills for identifying GSOB infestations, implementing effective management strategies, and preventing the pest's spread by properly disposing of infested plant material. It featured real-world examples of successful management practices and the latest research findings. In addition to GSOB, the agenda included training on identifying other critical tree pests and diseases. Participants engaged in interactive discussions, fostering a community of practice focused on protecting California's forests.
The Impact
The impact of this training was immediate and measurable. Within two months of the session, SCE staff reported two new suspected GSOB infestations in previously unknown locations. Armed with the knowledge gained from UCCE, they promptly initiated best management practices. Once our UCCE team was informed of these suspected infestations, we coordinated a collaborative response involving agencies such as CalFIRE, the Inland Empire Resource Conservation District, LA County Fire, and the US Forest Service. This swift action not only confirmed the new infestations but also established a solid foundation for strategic interventions.
Feedback from the training highlighted its effectiveness: 60% of attendees completed a post-training survey, with all respondents unanimously expressing increased confidence in identifying and managing tree pests and a commitment to applying their newly found knowledge. By empowering SCE staff and contractors with essential training, UC ANR has strengthened California's workforce competency and enhanced the state's capacity to combat invasive species and protect its natural resources.
Looking ahead, the collaboration between UCCE and SCE is set to continue, with plans for ongoing training sessions and resources to support pest detection efforts across Southern California. The success of this initiative underscores the importance of partnerships in addressing environmental challenges, providing a model for future interventions.
“Through UCCE training and SCE collaboration, we have been able to collectively expand inspection horizons throughout SCE utility corridors that has helped discover new distribution patterns”- Chul Paik, SCE Senior Specialist
In conclusion, through targeted training and collaborative action, UCCE is making significant strides in safeguarding California's natural resources while enhancing workforce competency in invasive species management. This proactive approach not only benefits the immediate environment but also fortifies the resilience of California's forests for generations to come.
- Author: Kimberly C Ingram
Social Media Summary
Protecting California's forests and building climate-resilient communities and ecosystems requires forest landowners, managers, and natural resource professionals to actively engage in stewardship. UC ANR's Forest Stewardship Education Initiative provides practical forest management information and hands-on skills to small forest landowners throughout California's forested communities. Since 2020, 100 landowners who attended a 9-week Forest Stewardship Workshop series, have had an initial site visit with a Registered Professional Forester or engaged other natural resource professionals to walk their land, discuss their objectives, and identify activities that will help them reach their goals to improve forest management. Together, these landowners manage over 10,000 acres in California.
The Issue
The operational environment for managing forestland in California is challenging, especially for the ~75,000 forest landowners owning 10 or more acres. Current infrastructure and resources tend to more positively support large or industrial forest landowners. Survey data of Forest Stewardship participants identify cost, time, and lack of a qualified workforce as the biggest barriers to implementing forest management activities. Providing forest landowners with the tools they need to develop a management plan, engage a resource professional, and apply for cost-share funding, will help eliminate barriers to implementing their management goals, and address threats to California's forests, such as increasing wildfires and droughts due to climate change.
How UC Delivers
Since 2020, 485 participants have completed 24 Forest Stewardship Workshops across the state. The workshops are offered through a hybrid learning style involving online learning assignments, nine weeks of evening zoom meetings, and one in-person field day to view various silvicultural methods and build hands-on forestry skills including inventory, mapping, and plant identification. Additionally, we focus participants on drafting sections of the California Cooperative Forest Management Plan (CCFMP), which can make them eligible for state and federal cost-share programs. Just over half of registered participants (53%) had received information or advice about managing their land in the five years before taking the workshop. Weekly workshop sessions are led by local resource professionals and UC experts. Connecting landowners with these professionals and their neighboring landowners, empowers them to act.
After completing the workshop, landowners are eligible for a free initial site visit, paid for by the program, with a Registered Professional Forester (RPF), Certified Range Manager (CRM), or California Certified Burn Boss. By covering the initial site visit cost (an $800 value), we remove a barrier and incentivize landowners to continue moving towards active forest management. Goals of the site visit include:
- having landowners engage a natural resource professional on their land and walk the property;
- discussing landowner's management goals and objectives;
- providing preliminary advice around those stated goals and objectives; and
- engaging in conversations that could lead to a working relationship, including the development and implementation of a formal management plan and application for cost-share funding.
“Those forestry workshops have been huge for me. You know I didn't know what I didn't know, and to be able to get an understanding about the issues I should be thinking about, some of the topics that are current and how to approach managing this forest, it's a big responsibility.”
“I really appreciate the knowledge, time, and approachability of all of the experts that participated in the presentations. Thank you for bringing this group together and offering this resource.”
The Impact
Since 2020, 100 participants managing over 10,000 forested acres have had site visits through the program or engaged directly with their local Resource Conservation Districts or Natural Resource Conservation Service office. In interviews with forty of these participants, we learned that 45% are in the process of developing or have completed development of a management plan, 38% have established an on-going working relationship with their resource professional, and 21 applied for and received funding through a cost-share or grant program. Participants also reported increasing collaborations with their local Prescribed Burn Associations, Fire Safe Councils, and neighbors.
Across the range of management activities that forest landowners can take, attitudes and perceptions increased positively (pre-workshop to post-workshop) for prescribed fire (42% to 66%), fuels reduction (65% to 98%), tree thinning (40% to 88%), and timber harvest (15% to 41%).
Pre-post workshop survey data from 2020 to 2023 also shows a change in attitudes around the importance of developing a management plan (29% pre-workshop vs. 92% post-workshop); and communicating or consulting with CAL FIRE (7% pre-workshop vs. 64% post-workshop) or other natural resource agencies (30% pre-workshop vs. 82% post-workshop).
Empowering forest landowners through an increase in knowledge and skills, connecting them to natural resource professionals in their communities and providing incentives to become more active stewards of their forests, leads to improvements in forest management, increased forest resilience, and an overall improvement in climate-resilient communities and ecosystems.
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- Author: Niamh Quinn
A UCCE advisor's short, effective communications on rodent management techniques helped San Diego County nurseries prevent crop losses and excess labor costs and pesticide use.
The Issue
Rodents are known to cause extensive damage to different agricultural crops worldwide. In San Diego County, nursery and cut flower products account for the commodity with the highest reported dollar value and the highest dollar value per acre. In 2020, nursery and cut flower products had a total reported value of $1,274,784,274 and accounted for 70% of San Diego's agricultural commodities. Rodents have been reported to not only directly damage nursery crops by chewing directly on ornamental trees, seeds, seedlings, and bulbs, but they also cause extensive damage to drip irrigation systems.
How UC Delivers
UCCE Advisor Niamh Quinn's focus is on human-to-wildlife conflict, and rodents are what she knows best. When two members of the nursery and cut flower community in San Diego County reached out to her about rodent management issues, she was able to deliver practical, science-based solutions. One grower was experiencing issues where mice were damaging significant amounts of bulbs used to grow blooming plants. Another grower had an issue where mice were chewing irrigation lines used to provide water to cut flowers. Additionally, if you are not using the right pesticide, or the appropriate application method, pesticide use can be highly inflated. Thus, it is critical to offer science-based advice on pesticide use and alternative methods.
The Impact
UCCE's technical assistance provided to the growers prevented significant crop loss. One grower estimated that the information on rodent management prevented $50,000 a year in crop loss, while the other estimated that their crop yield increased by 5% due to improved crop uniformity and height because rodents were no longer damaging drip.
Both growers reported significant cost reductions in labor. One grower has saved over $20,000 in labor costs due to a significant reduction in the amount of pesticide applied. The 90% reduction in pesticide applied not only saved the grower money on the labor needed to apply the product, but approximately $30,000 reduction in cost because less pesticide needed to be purchased. The other grower saved approximately $3,100 on the labor needed to repair drip irrigation that was being damaged by rodents.
These outcomes demonstrate how UCCE Advisors' extension programs contribute to increased agriculture and efficiency and profitability as part of UC ANR's commitment to promoting economic prosperity in California and also demonstrate a commitment to increased ecological sustainability of agriculture. Mike Mellano, CEO of Mellano & Company in San Diego says, “In today's fast paced and ever-changing world, it is very difficult, if not impossible for farmers/growers to stay on the cutting edge of every aspect. It is great to know that we have Cooperative Extension to educate us and help keep us innovative and sustainable. It seems that every day we have a new challenge, and being able to call or email an advisor to get the latest and greatest is the key to our ability to continue to stay in business and provide jobs and opportunities for our teams!"
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- Author: Beatriz Nobua-Behrmann
UC ANR program trains volunteers to accurately identify and report infested trees, protecting forests and encouraging civic engagement through participatory science.
The Issue
Invasive pests are one of the main threats to our urban and natural forests. Tiny beetles, like the invasive shothole borers (ISHB), attack trees and cause their decline and death. Even though ISHB can have devastating effects to urban and natural forests throughout Southern California, many trees can still be saved with proper management, allowing infested areas to recover over time. Detecting infestations early is key for successful management of this pest and to prevent spread to new areas.
Participatory science can be a useful tool to identify ISHB-infested trees and help monitor high-risk areas throughout the state. However, accurately identifying the presence of ISHB is challenging because the beetles spend most of their lives within the tree, hence we must rely on signs and symptoms to determine if the tree is infested (to learn more, visit www.ISHB.org)
How UC Delivers
Given these challenges, we wanted to know if participatory science can still be a good tool to monitor for ISHB. We created a training program to teach volunteers how to identify ISHB-infested trees and evaluated how different training modalities can make volunteer's observations more accurate.
UCCE Urban Forestry Advisor, Beatriz Nobua-Behrmann, teamed up with the California Naturalist program to develop a reporting tool in iNaturalist and a six-hour training that included an online course, two workshops, and after-training office hours for follow-up questions. They ran two trainings: one fully online in October 2020, and one that included an in-person component in October 2021. A total of 34 participants were trained, including volunteers from the California Naturalist and the Master Gardeners programs, and other community members.
Each participant reported up to five ISHB-infested trees. Each report included descriptive data of the individual tree, level of infestation, geolocation, and pictures of the signs and symptoms observed. To evaluate the accuracy, first UC experts assessed each report and determined if the tree was probably infested or not based on the submitted pictures. Then, UC experts located and re-assessed the same trees in the field. The data collected by the volunteers was compared side-to-side with the data collected by the experts to evaluate the accuracy of volunteer-collected data.
The Impact
Participants of this program learned how to identify and report ISHB-infested trees and the importance of early detection to successfully manage invasive pests. Despite the challenges of correctly identifying infested trees, participants applied what they learned by submitting more than 122 reports of suspected infestations. After experts re-assessed the reported trees, we learned that volunteers collected overall high-quality data, but training modality seemed to make a substantial difference in the accuracy of the IDs. Volunteers who received in-person training were significantly more accurate (96% correct ISHB IDs) than the ones who received online training only (85% correct IDs).
Many program participants are now participating in the Master Gardeners Emerging Tree Pests Program and are sharing this information with the public, helping to create awareness in their community, demonstrating how UC ANR's civic engagement helps to protect California's natural resources.
All the incorrect IDs confirmed in the field were also previously flagged as possibly incorrect during the first evaluation of the reports from the pictures. This means that future quality control can safely rely on experts evaluating the pictures in the reports without having to re-evaluate the tree in person. Thanks to this study, we now know that community-based data can reliably contribute to the local and state-wide efforts to monitor the presence of ISHB, especially if in-person components are included in the trainings. Future steps of this program include delivering more trainings and using the data collected by the volunteers to inform the current ISHB distribution map available to the public. Having accurate information on the current distribution of ISHB throughout the state is an important decision-making tool for the agencies working on managing this pest, who need to determine where the infestation focuses are and how far away they are from other high-risk areas.
/h3>/h3>/h3>/h3>- Author: Surendra K. Dara
Adapted IPM Model from former UC ANR faculty is offered in multiple languages leading to potential profit increases of $1.79 million.
The Issue
Numerous endemic and invasive pests threaten all kinds of crops, and the application of synthetic pesticides is the most common control option in many cases around the world. Frequent application of pesticides leads to pest resistance, secondary pest outbreaks, increased risk of environmental and human health, and negatively impact sustainable crop production efforts both in the short-term and long-term. Integrated pest management (IPM) is a concept of pest management in an ecologically sustainable manner. IPM has been promoted for decades, and many farms apply IPM practices to some extent. However, there are certain deficiencies in the understanding of IPM, its components, finding non-chemical management options, and exploiting cultural practices to improve crop health and yields. The traditional IPM model faces challenges because of its limitations for practical applications. There is a need to improve the understanding of growers, pest control advisors, and crop advisors in developing comprehensive crop care strategies using IPM principles, as well as revise the traditional IPM model to fit the modern production trends and consumer preferences.
How UC Delivers
Former UC ANR Cooperative Extension Advisor Dr. Surendra Dara conducted extensive research developing IPM solutions and promoting biological control options for small fruits and vegetables in California and provided advice for managing pests in nurseries, ornamental crops, urban landscapes as well. The ultimate goal is to improve IPM knowledge and implementation locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally. Based on his decades of research and extension experience in the US and other countries around the world, Dr. Dara developed the new IPM paradigm in 2019 that incorporated social and economic aspects of crop production in addition to various pest management options and other influencing factors. He had been invited by multiple groups to speak about IPM strategies in multiple crops and the new IPM model. Multiple symposia were organized at professional conferences, farmers, crop care professionals, and agricultural input industries updated their crop production and protection strategies based on the new IPM model. The model has been translated into multiple languages with international collaboration.
An anonymous online survey conducted between December 2021 and May 2022 received responses from California and elsewhere. Forty-five respondents from allover California, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Washington, and Wisconsin states in the US, and from Argentina, Australia, Ethiopia, Honduras, India, Kenya, Mexico, Mozambique, Nigeria, Pakistan, Portugal, Tanzania, and Uganda participated in the survey.
The Impact
Survey results showed that 95.6% found the information from Dr. Dara's IPM program was useful, and 93.3% people would use that information or have used it to improve their farming operations. The IPM information has been or would be used on 33,703 acres with a realized or expected savings or additional returns of $1.79 million. The respondents also indicated that they have or would share the information to 132,739 people. Survey respondents included farmers, pest control or crop advisors, private researchers, agricultural industry partners, and university faculty or researchers. Since it was published in the Journal of Integrated Pest Management in late April 2019, the new IPM model has been read or downloaded more than 48,000 times so far. Dr. Dara's research and extension demonstrates an ongoing commitment to UC ANR's public value of protecting natural resources in California and beyond.
Testimonials
“I have been growing strawberries for more than 20 years and worked with several farm advisors. Surendra is undoubtedly the best. He is the most productive and passionate about helping the farm industry.” Santa Maria Strawberry Grower
“IPM model is a very important tool that we can all promote to better implementation of efficient and sustianable solutions. thanks” Global Biocontrol Salesperson
“I am impressed with Dr. Dara's range and depth of trials, demonstrations, and experiments in the area of regenerative agriculture. The information he has put out is novel, useful and helpful. Sorry to see him go to Oregon.” Pest Control Advisor in USA
“Dr. Dara research is helping growers and crop consultants navigate sustainible and environmentally safe, effective and profitable options for pest managment in high value specialty crops.” Private Researcher, Hawaii, California, and Arizona
“Dr. Dara has a wealth of information that he distributes effectively using multiple different platforms. He is a good writer and communicator who is capable in presenting to audiences at various levels from growers to research scientists” Pest Control Advisor in the Western US
“Dr Dara is providing critical research and outreach for sustainable farming in the west and is also a linch pin in research and education on invasive pests.” Trade magazine editor
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