An Aerial Observer's Guide to Recognizing and Reporting Southern Pine Beetle Spots

Southern Pine Beetle Handbook

United States Department of Agriculture, Combined Forest Pest Research and Development Program, Southern Pine Beetle Handbook, Agriculture Handbook No. 560 - Issued April 1980

Recognizing SPB Spots

Figure 2. - New SPB spot with mainly yellow crowns.		When new spots first become visible, they may have only fight-green or yellow-crowned trees (fig. 2) and not display other stages of foliage fade. This is particularly true in late spring and early summer. But by midsummer the typical expanding SPB spot has dead or dying pines in various stages of discoloration (fig. 1). The different foliage colors trace the beetle's spread through the forest. After 8-12 weeks, beetle-killed trees at the spot's origin drop their needles. Next to these bare trees are red-crowned ones, most of them no longer containing beetles. Then come yellow-crowned pines that have been more recently killed. Newly attacked trees on the margin of the spot will have green crowns, and from the air you will not be able to distinguish these from unattacked trees.

[ Contents ] [ Previous ] [ Next ] [ Home ]

Developed by the University of Georgia Bugwood Network in cooperation with USDA Forest Service - Forest Health Protection, USDA APHIS PPQ, Georgia Forestry Commission, Texas Forest Service
and the Pests and Diseases Image Library - Australia

Last updated on Wednesday, August 09, 2006 at 10:24 AM
www.barkbeetles.org version 2.0