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Predicting Mountain Pine Beetle Development With The Extended Von Foerster Model, Jeffrey Tullis Leek

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

The mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins) represents a significant threat to ponderosa pine and lodgepole pine stands in the western United States, and has the potential to threaten commercially valuable jack pine in both the United States and Canada. The success of the mountain pine beetle is based on synchronization of developmental events to time cold-hardened life stages for extreme winter temperatures and to facilitate mass attack and overwhelm the defenses of the host. This paper presents a solution methodology for an extended McKendrick - von Foerster model for the development of the mountain pine beetle in varying …