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National Science Foundation Awards $3M Grant for Tree Data Cyberinfrastructure

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A collaborative project involving the University of Kentucky and US Forest Service to establish a network sharing comprehensive tree health and genetic data between scientists and the public is moving forward.

The National Science Foundation is granting $3 million to four universities working with the USFS’s Southern Research Station for development of a user-friendly interface called Tripal.

The program enables scientists and the public to easily access information about trees, tree genetics, sequences of tree genomes and other information housed in specialized tree breeding and research community databases. 

Along with UK, Washington State University (the project's lead university) and University of Tennessee developed the cyberinfrastructure for the Tripal program to provide flexible access to database information.  The University of Connecticut has also been working on developing databases for forest and fruit trees. 

One condition of the grant is to promote education and outreach programs towards conservation and data-tracking goals.

Dr. Albert Abbott with UK’s Department of Forestry says involving the public is a key part of the project.  

“We want to bring them in as part of the monitoring of their environment," said Abbott. "It could be urban forests or natural forests, but we want them to participate in giving us the kind of data that we need to build programs that are going to sustain our forests.”

Abbott says diseases and invasive species are the biggest dangers to forests and says the network will allow faster reporting and sharing of data to track problems before they become pervasive. Involving the public to monitor and report on local disease or alien species spread is key to the future of environmental policy, but Abbott says that’s only possible with a science-literate public.

“We want to make informed decisions, we need their voice, we need to know what do they believe we should do, what do they think? And in order to do that, we need to be sure that everybody is educated and on the same page about technology, or what it takes to breed a tree for example.”

Every public environmental policy also includes a cost consideration. 

"We're doing a lot of economics research to show to the public, for example: the ash borer gets into Kentucky, what strategies do we have? How do we handle it?" said Abbott. "We can cut all the ash trees down and move on, but that has an economic value, a value that we can estimate. Or we can chemically-treat some of these key ash trees in certain areas because of their importance... that also has an economic model." 

The cyberinfrastructure interface may also soon be compatible with certain mobile apps like Tree Taggr, which allows users to geo-tag tree species on social media.

Credit treetaggr.info

"It's an app that we're exploring," said Abbott. "You can get a snapshot of the tree, its rough location GPS-wise, and that can be fed directly to one of these databases to collect data on the presence of diseases in these different areas. For example, one of the things we're interested in in this ash borersituation is are there any trees out there that are resistant? We do find that some trees or some plants are resistant, but you have to find them."

Abbott says UK's Department of Forestry and the Forest Health Center are planning some workshops later this year and next to educate and task state forestry groups with data-tracking conservation efforts.

Abbott says the project is only the first step in long-term conservation efforts which may take decades to show fruit.

Rob Canning is a native of Murray, KY, a 2015 TV Production grad of Murray State. At MSU, he served as team captain of the Murray State Rowing Club. Rob's goal is to become a screenwriter, film director or producer and looks to the likes of Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie for inspiration. He appreciates good music, mainly favoring British rock n' roll, and approves of anything with Jack White's name on it. When not studying, rowing or writing, Rob enjoys spending his free time with a book or guitar.
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