Preface

This publication is intended to help resource management professionals and landowners understand and manage sudden oak death (SOD) in California forests. The publication is divided into three parts.

Part 1 discusses the epidemiology of SOD in California. This includes information on biology of the pathogen Phytophthora ramorum, host-pathogen interactions, disease spread, and environmental conditions that affect disease. An understanding of these relationships is needed to choose the most appropriate strategies for managing SOD at a given location.

Part 2 describes how to develop a plan to manage SOD within a stand. We discuss how you can identify and prioritize areas that may be suitable for SOD management activities. Options for managing SOD are presented by stage in the disease epidemic:

• Before the SOD pathogen has reached a susceptible forest;
• During the local epidemic, while disease is active in an area and many hosts are still at risk of becoming diseased;
• After SOD has killed so many host trees that forest restoration needs to be considered.

Depending on the size of the landscape, you may need to manage different stages of the epidemic in different parts of your forest.

Part 3 provides detailed descriptions of the management techniques that are discussed in Part 2.

Our goal in developing this publication was to synthesize what is currently known about SOD into a framework to inform disease management. Readers that are interested in a detailed review of the published research on SOD may consult the excellent literature summary compiled by John T. Kliejunas, USFS (Kliejunas 2010), which is available online at http://www.fs.fed.us/psw/publications/documents/psw_gtr234/. In addition, the California Oak Mortality Task Force (http://www.suddenoakdeath.org) website contains a comprehensive catalogue of SOD related publications and information.