Likelihood of Occurrence of Bark Beetle Attacks on Conifer Forests in Honduras Under Normal and Climate Change Scenarios

Document Type

Article

Journal/Book Title/Conference

Geocarto International

Volume

27

Issue

7

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Publication Date

1-20-2012

First Page

581

Last Page

592

Abstract

Conifer forests cover approximately 27% of Honduras (∼3 million ha), and have been traditionally affected by bark beetle (Dendroctonus frontalis) outbreaks. These outbreaks impact ecosystem health and predispose more attacks. We developed a logistic model to assess the forests’ susceptibility to a beetle attack. Models were fitted using climatic, topographic and remote sensing variables. We show a method to generate pseudo-absences based on a multi-temporal wetness index. Our optimized threshold to convert the continuum of probabilities into 0 and 1 value was 0.65. Our overall accuracy was 68.7%. We also developed models that integrate climate change scenarios. Our predictions signal an increase in the overall susceptibility for an attack when including climate change scenarios. To the best of our knowledge this is the first effort to develop a spatially explicit model of the probability of beetle outbreaks in a Central American country.

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