Home > LIBRARY > JOURNALS > CURRENT_JOURNALS > CODEE > Vol. 17 (2023-2024)
Publication Date
1-4-2024
Keywords
mountain pine beetle, chemotaxis, reaction-diffusion transport, nonlinear dynamical systems, numerical simulation
Disciplines
Mathematics | Physical Sciences and Mathematics | Science and Mathematics Education
Abstract
This article presents existing mathematical models associated with mountain pine beetle populations in lodgepole pine forests, whose reproductive cycle requires the destruction of colonized host trees, decreasing timber availability/quality, and providing fuel sources for wildfires. With the existence of a positive-feedback loop with environmental warming, the need for intervention and management is clear. However, the legislative responses to the focusing events from our 2000-2010 North American epidemics are characterized as under-leveraged. While the reasons for this are multifaceted, increasing the capacity of STEM-informed individuals to take part in quantitative modeling of the underlying ecosystem generates awareness and provides pathways connecting the ``how'' of public land management to the ``what'' and ``why'' of policy creation. To this end, we survey existing mathematical models for the mountain pine beetle, ranging from a simple planar model to a chemotactic model involving pheromone/kairomone signaling between beetles and host trees. The latter can be localized to a host tree characterized by a nonlinear system of ordinary differential equations whose solution is reasonable to approximate numerically.
Recommended Citation
Strong, Scott A. and Maes-Johnson, Maya
(2024)
"Nonlinear Dynamics of Mountain Pine Beetle Populations: Discussion of Forestry Policy, a Survey of Existing Mathematical Models, and Code Base Demonstration,"
CODEE Journal:
Vol. 17, Article 8.
Available at:
https://scholarship.claremont.edu/codee/vol17/iss1/8
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.