| This study examines the Southern Pine Beetle (SPB) hazard rating systems used in East Texas. The purpose of this study is to examine the correlation between the Mason (1981) system of SPB hazard rating and the 75 meter resolution 2006 National Insect and Disease Risk Map, compiled by the USDA Forest Service, State and Private Forestry Area, and Forest Health Protection Unit. The Mason system is a proven accurate hazard rating system (78% predictive accuracy), but requires labor intensive inventory data. The 2006 National Insect and Disease Risk Map is produced through a repeatable, transparent process through which interactive spatial and temporal risk assessments can be conducted at various scales to aid in the allocation of resources for forest health management (Krist 2006). This analysis examined the correlation between the two methods at the forest stand level, which is the level at which forest management decisions are made.;The results indicated a lack of significant correlation between the hazard predicted probability of the Mason (1981) system and the 2006 National Insect and Disease Risk Map. The paired t-test, when the SPSS 16.0 Graduate Student Version was run on all recoded stands, returned a Sig. (2-tailed) value of .054. The paired t-test returned a Sig. (2-tailed) value of .001 when ran on all stands' critical values. It was determined that future inclusion of the available 30 meter resolution data produced by the 2006 National Insect and Disease Risk Map may significantly improve the results. |
