WebGIS for Monitoring “Sudden Oak Death” in coastal California

Abstract

Tanoak ( Lithocarpus densiflorus), coast live oak ( Quercus agrifolia), black oak ( Q. kelloggii), and some shreve oak ( Q. parvula var. shreve) trees in coastal California are affected by a new disease called “Sudden Oak Death.” These tree communities are extremely important for habitat provision, recreation, and aesthetics. Research of and community interest in this new disease is very high. We have developed a monitoring strategy that is both informative and interactive, while also having an effective educational component. This paper introduces the monitoring strategy developed by the monitoring committee of the California Oak Mortality Task Force. The overall monitoring strategy is multi-scale, multi-source, flexible, and geographically organized. It uses an Internet-based GIS (“webGIS”) software, and has collected information about trees suspected of having Sudden Oak Death from a wide community of users. This paper describes in detail how the webGIS application was developed, implemented, and used, and discusses some of the common application problems associated with the project, as well as the larger societal issues of Internet access, quality control, and privacy.