ASPIK
Fuel wood from short rotation coppices (SRC) is a renewable source of energy. In addition, the extensive farming makes these plantations ecologically superior compared to competing land usages like corn or canola. On the other hand, the use of clones and the small number of available poplar varieties makes them vulnerable for the spread and adaption of biotic pests, especially herbivore insects. The big red poplar leaf beetle (Chrysomela populi) is currently one of the most threatening insect species in poplar short rotation coppice. Since this land usage only recently emerged in Germany and is mostly managed on a small scale, no universal approaches are available for pest monitoring or treatment.
To overcome these limitations, the model ASPIK was developed within the AgroForNet project. It is a novelty tool to help farmers and agricultural consultants to manage their plantations. The German recursive acronym for ‘ASPIK simuliert Pappelblattkäfer in KUP’, which translates to ‘ASPIK simulates poplar leaf beetles in SRC’ explains the purpose of the model: it forecasts the temporal abundance of the beetles development stages during the growing season. As for many insect species, this development is driven mainly by temperature sums.
To make the results available for farmers and agricultural consultants, we teamed up with ISIP, a society for online counselling in plant production, and made the ASPIK forecast available for Germany. Click here to get to the online tool at ISIP (http:\\aspik.isip.de)
SPATIAL EXPLICIT APPROACH
The model run at the website is actually just a simplification on behalf of simulation speed. The complete model version further contains the host plant and their arrangement in a spatial explicit design in which the beetle adults are able to move. Beetles and poplars interact in terms of feeding preferences, mortality, and development speed. Hence ASPIK becomes a tool to test the effects of plantation design and compare management scenarios.
PRESENTATION
- The model and the interface were presented on the International Poplar Symposium 2014 in Vancouver, Canada. (Session VI - Management & Application)