- Author: Grace Dean
For the past four years, Kim Ingram has been listening closely to the private forest landowners who participate in her Forest Stewardship Workshop series. During the workshops, landowners share their experiences clearing thickets of vegetation, replanting post-wildfire and tackling invasive species, and their concerns of who will take care of their forest when they're gone.
To alleviate their stress, Ingram–Forest Stewardship Education coordinator with University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources–turns to natural resource professionals from CAL FIRE, local Resource Conservation Districts, and the U.S Forest Service who can share knowledge and resources with participants. Recently, Ingram developed a story map that aims to provide landowners with a platform they can use to share their experiences and ways that they have been empowered to manage their land.
"It's not uncommon for small forest landowners to feel overwhelmed with their forest management responsibilities and uncertain over what steps to take first," said Ingram. "Through the Forest Stewardship Workshops and this story map project, we hope to show that there is an entire community of forest landowners in the same situation, learning from each other and moving forward towards their management goals."
The Forest Stewardship Story Map team used ArcGIS StoryMaps to design the project, with 15 participants providing interviews and visual content. StoryMaps provides a user-friendly interface where website visitors can either click on a county to view specific interviews or scroll to view the stories.
The forestry team plans to interview at least one landowner and natural resource professional in every forested county in California so private forest landowners have a local contact or can become inspired by a project in their area.
Theresa Ciafardoni, a forest landowner in Nevada County, said that the UC ANR Forest Stewardship Workshop helped her manage postfire restoration and long-term land use planning.
"It opened up so many options and possibilities," said Ciafardoni. "All the individuals who presented in the Forest Stewardship Workshop were open to phone calls for specific questions and provided invaluable technical assistance."
Involving landowners and forestry professionals with this project was an early decision made by Ingram, who believed it was important that the map held appeal beyond hosting stories. Now, the project functions as a networking tool for landowners seeking professional assistance, too.
Past Forest Stewardship Workshop presenters shared their contact information and the motivations behind their forest management work so that landowners could find assistance in their area. The professionals currently hosted on the map include Resource Conservation District managers, UC ANR forestry advisors and private contractors.
"The most motivated landowners are invested not only economically, but their heart is into it," said Ryan Tompkins, UC Cooperative Extension forestry advisor for Plumas, Sierra and Lassen counties. "The natural world is full of uncertainty, but they're committed to continuing education and learning about how to be a good land steward. This takes a certain level of humility recognizing that our tenure as a steward on the land is a very short period of a forest's lifetime."
Looking ahead, the team envisions the map as a working document that will eventually include interviews with indigenous tribal members who focus on traditional ecological knowledge projects, interviews and information from the UC ANR Postfire Forest Resilience Program, and a feature that will filter stories by topic (e.g. reforestation or prescribed burning).
"This isn't a project that could be completed by one person," explained Grace Dean, Forest Stewardship communications specialist. "The same way that Kim and other presenters explain forest management as a collaborative process holds true for this project."
The Forest Stewardship Workshop series gives participants the ability to start as beginners and build upon their knowledge and experiences. In the same vein, this story map provides the Forest Stewardship team a solid base of real stories to add on to over time. The hope is that it will grow into a multifaceted tool reaching new forest landowners, eventually enveloping their stories within the small forest landowner community.
To view the Forest Stewardship Story Map, visit: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/bd062108d9894da7920d7aef06fe2c2c.
- Author: Cheryl A. Wilen
- Posted by: Elaine Lander
Applying the wrong amount of pesticide can result in poor control if not enough is used; too much being applied can lead to waste and possibly illegal usage. If pest control is insufficient, the end result might be a second application that will be more expensive due to the cost of labor involved. If the pesticide is overused, the cost of the extra material is one consideration, but there might also be plant damage and a higher risk of pesticide moving off-site in runoff or leaching into groundwater.
In addition to reading the label carefully and making sure that pesticides are not washed off into storm drains, the applicator must be sure equipment is properly calibrated so that the proper amount of pesticide is applied. Poor calibration also can result in a lot of leftover pesticide in the sprayer. The less that is leftover, the less there is that must be disposed.
For liquid applications, one needs to know the area to be sprayed, how much pesticide product is needed to treat the area, and how much water to use so the solution will cover the treatment area. Because people walk at different speeds or otherwise may operate spray equipment differently, it is important that each individual applicator perform calibration steps, especially if the equipment is shared. Similarly, individual pieces of equipment may vary in performance, so it's important to calibrate each piece of equipment with the applicator, even if you have several of the same make and model.
Liquid applications are usually made using backpack sprayers (Figure 1) or hand cans with single nozzles and hand-operated pumps, vehicle-mounted tanks with gun-type nozzles and electric or gas pumps, or agricultural equipment with tank and boom supporting multiple nozzles.
Here we provide several methods you can use to calibrate equipment for specific broadcast spray situations. Follow the steps below to calibrate small sprayers for small treatment areas. Another method that can be used for larger sprayers and larger treatment areas is illustrated in Table 1. For estimating how much pesticide may be needed when spraying trees and shrubs, see the Ask the Expert! section on page 6 of the Green Bulletin.
Backpack & Hand Can Sprayers
- Measure out a representative area of 1,000 square feet (20 by 50 feet works well, or 5 by 200 feet is good if you are going to be spraying medians).
- Put clean water into the tank without any pesticide product.
- Walking at your normal pace and using your normal method of spraying, record the time it takes for you to spray the area you measured. It is best to do this two or three times to calculate an average time.
- Get a bucket or other container that has markings in ounces and spray water into it for the same amount of time required for you to spray 1,000 square feet. This amount is how much water you need to put in the tank for 1,000 square feet.
- Where will you be spraying? Measure the area to be treated. If you plan to make several small applications to a number of locations, you can combine the measured areas.
- How much pesticide product do you need? Many pesticide labels provide application rates as ounces per 1,000 square feet. If you have 2,000 square feet and the label says 5 ounces per 1,000 square feet, then you need 10 ounces of the pesticide product. If you have 500 square feet and the label says 5 ounces per 1,000 square feet, then you need 2.5 ounces.
- How much water do you need? In a previous step (above), you determined how much water is needed for you to cover 1,000 square feet. If you need to spray 2,000 square feet, you will need two times more water (2,000 divided by 1,000 equals 2); if you need to spray 500 square feet, you would need half as much water (500 divided by 1,000 equals 0.5).
Want to make your backpack sprayer calibration more accurate? Use the retrofit in Table 2 on page 7 of the Green Bulletin (provided by Danny Hirchag, Urban Forest Superintendent at UC Irvine) to improve calibration and ensure you are evenly applying the correct amount of pesticide product.
Let's Try an Example
- Output: You find it takes 130 seconds for you to treat 1,000 square feet with a specific sprayer. When you spray water with this sprayer into a bucket for that same amount of time, you find that you applied 22 ounces.
- Area: You need to treat three locations; one is 600 square feet, one is 900 square feet, and the third is 200 square feet. So you will be spraying a total of 1,700 square feet (600 plus 900 plus 200).
- Pesticide: The pesticide product label calls for a rate of 2 ounces per 1,000 square feet. Since you need to treat 1,700 square feet, you will need 1.7 times more pesticide (1,700 square feet divided by 1,000 square feet = 1.7). Multiply 1.7 by 2 ounces, and the result is 3.4 ounces.
- Consider pesticide product formulations: In this example, treatment of 1,000 square feet used 22 ounces of water but you are going to spray 1,700 square feet. Take 1,700 and divide it by 1,000, and the result is 1.7, so you need to add 1.7 times more water. For 1,700 square feet, we multiply 1.7 by 22 ounces of water, resulting in 37 ounces of water needed.
- If the pesticide product is a liquid formulation, then you will need to subtract the amount of liquid pesticide product added from the total amount of water needed. Therefore, to get 37 ounces of solution, you will need to subtract the 3.4 ounces of pesticide product added to determine the amount of water you must add (37 ounces total solution minus 3.4 ounces of pesticide equals 33.6 ounces of water).
- If the product is a dry formulation like a wettable powder, you will mix 37 ounces water and 3.4 ounces of dry pesticide product.
- In both cases, you would use the final solution to spray 1,700 square feet.
[Originally published in the Winter 2019 issue of the Green Bulletin, a newsletter that focuses on specific practices and information that landscape and structural pest management professionals. Subscribe to receive the newsletter electronically.]
/span>/h2>/h2>- Author: Dong-Hwan Choe
The 24th Annual UC Riverside Urban Pest Management Conference will be held at UCR Extension on March 25, 2015. This one-day conference, primarily targeting urban pest management professionals, has been one of the UC Riverside Urban Entomology program's most important outreach events for industry professionals and the public interested in these questions.
This year, speakers will address:
• Cockroach baiting
• Rodent biology and control
• Regulations update
• Common violations
• Truck inspection demonstration
• Drywood and subterranean termites
• WDO identification practical, museum pests
• Bed bugs and botanical repellents
• Mosquito biology and management
• Recent bed bug survey results
• And More!
For more program details and registration, please visit the 2015 Urban Pest Management Conference web page.
Continuing education units have been requested from the California Structural Pest Control Board and the California Department of Pesticide Regulation.
Don't miss this great educational event! Register today!
- Author: Elizabeth E Grafton-Cardwell
- Author: Cheryl A. Wilen
[From the December 2014 issue of the UC IPM Green Bulletin]
Because ACP can transmit the bacterium causing the most devastating disease of citrus in the world, huanglongbing (HLB) or citrus greening, it is imperative that this pest be managed as intensely as possible (Figure 2). To keep the psyllid from spreading further, ACP host plants (citrus and close relatives) in all or part of these counties are under quarantine and cannot be moved out of the quarantine area.
We cannot stress strongly enough that landscape professionals, including residential and maintenance gardeners, can play a major role in minimizing the spread of this pest or HLB. To build upon the information from 2012:
- Always purchase citrus trees from a reputable nursery that sells certified disease-free trees.
- Uncertified trees may provide the insects with a source of disease they can pass on to other trees!
- Be careful not to move any citrus trees out of the quarantine area to uninfested areas. If you purchase a citrus plant from a nursery that is within an ACP quarantine area, it will have a blue or yellow tag on it that requires the plant to stay within the quarantine area. Purchase plants close to where you plan to plant them!
- As you are planting or caring for citrus, carefully check the leaves and stems for psyllids. Visit the CDFA Plant Health and Pest Prevention Services web site for photos of the pest and the Citrus Pest and Disease Prevention Program web site. If you or your customer suspects you have seen the pest or disease, immediately call the CDFA Hotline 1-800-491-1899. When you report the psyllid, CDFA personnel will tell you if they will be treating the reported trees or if you are to manage the ACP population yourself.
- Consult the UC IPM Asian Citrus Psyllid Pest Note for information about how you can help in the effort to control psyllids.
- It is very important to know if you are in an ACP infested area and; if you are, to handle green waste carefully. If you are pruning citrus or other ACP hosts, double bag prunings before transporting them to avoid moving ACP to new areas.
- Landscape professionals should educate clients to dry out their clippings before placing them in green waste bins to avoid spreading ACP.
- If you think you have seen the disease, CDFA personnel will take leaf samples to confirm infection of the tree by a biochemical test; and if the infection is found, regulatory actions such as tree removal will take place.
Be vigilant and help to protect California's citrus trees!
Find out more information and see official quarantine rules at the CDFA web site.
/span>[From the December 2012 issue of the UC IPM Retail Nursery & Garden Center News]
After decades of relative obscurity, bed bugs (Figure 1) are exhibiting a global resurgence. In the United States, the Northeast and Midwest regions have been considered bed bug hot spots, with the highest reported incidence, but California has recently experienced a multitude of bed bug reports, with Sacramento experiencing the largest increase in requests for bed bug management services in the country in 2013. Causes for this resurgence may include increased global traffic and commerce, insecticide resistance, and a decrease in indoor residual pesticide applications.
Bed bug monitoring devices purchased online or from retail stores may be useful in detecting an infestation, but if bed bugs are found, it's best to contact a professional for treatment. Bed bug monitors aim to attract or intercept bed bugs during movement between dark hiding places (such as bed frame joints, box springs, behind walls, or in other cracks and crevices near resting and sleeping places) and places where hosts (such as people) rest. PMPs are already widely using these monitors.
Although quite diverse in terms of size, appearance, and price, monitors generally fall within one of two categories: active monitors or passive monitors. Active monitors employ an attractant—usually heat, carbon dioxide, host odors (kairomones), and/or pheromones—to lure bed bugs out of their harborage areas and into a pitfall or sticky trap within the monitor. These devices have the potential, especially in the absence of a host, to detect bed bugs that would normally remain hidden. Passive monitors may either exploit a bed bug's affinity for dark crevices (harborage traps) or simply rely on chance encounters with pitfall or sticky traps. Interceptor monitors are a hybrid between active and passive monitors in that they rely on the presence of a host (sleeping human) to attract hungry bugs and trap them en route to their meal.
Without efficacy data consumers won't know which products will best detect bed bugs. A team of UC researchers, led by UC Berkeley entomologist Vernard Lewis, recently conducted a series of bed bug monitor evaluations, considering active and passive devices available to consumers in stores or online. In these studies, known quantities of hungry adult bed bugs were released into an inescapable arena containing a monitor and several pieces of bedroom furniture and allowed to forage. After 24 hours, researchers recorded where each bed bug was found within the arena.
Although, statistically speaking, the tested monitors harbored no more bed bugs after 24 hours of foraging than did furniture within the arena, research did verify their value as detection devices since monitors are much easier to inspect than cracks and crevices in furniture. All tested monitors recovered at least 5% of the released bed bugs at all release densities.
A trend in the data suggests active monitors may be somewhat more reflective of bed bug density because they recovered a stable proportion of the released bugs regardless of the total number released, while passive monitors recovered a smaller proportion of the total as the total number released increased; however, the passive monitors still always captured bed bugs. Overall these data suggest passive monitors may be just as effective at detection as active monitors—at a fraction of the cost—and all monitors tested may be able to detect bed bugs at very low densities. These five monitors represent only a few of those available, and new devices, especially active monitors utilizing new technology, have come into the market since the culmination of this study.
Bed bug management will continue to be difficult and is best left to experienced PMPs. However, bed bug detection devices, such as the monitors evaluated, may serve as valuable tools for consumers to confirm infestations before calling a professional and may help prevent ineffective, unnecessary, and potentially dangerous do-it-yourself pesticide applications. For more about bed bug biology and management, see the Pest Note: Bed Bugs.
[Updated and modified slightly from the original article in the December 2012 issue of the UC IPM Retail Nursery & Garden Center News]
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