JACK PINE BUDWORM DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM - A PROTOTYPE

The jack pine budworm (Choristoneura pinus Freeman) is a major forest pest that regularly defoliates large acreages of jack pine (Pinus banksianaLamb.) in the Lake States and central Canada. Jack pine budworm outbreaks occur periodically and can last for several years within an area. Defoliation caused by jack pine budworm is accompanied by reduced radial growth, killing of tree-tops, and tree mortality. It can also reduce regeneration of mature forests. To address this pest problem, we developed a prototype of the Jack Pine Budworm Decision Support System (JPBWDSS). Our goal was to develop a framework that allowed easy incorporation of tools, data, and knowledge into an integrated forest pest management system. JPBWDSS combines and analyzes spatial and tabular data. The result is then used in jack pine budworm risk rating and specific management rule-based reasoning to aid decision making and forest planning of jack pine stands. JPBWDSS has five subsystems: the JPBWDSS shell, a database management system, a geographic information system, a rule-base manager, and an external source data manager. Object-oriented programming and AI techniques were used to integrate these subsystems into a window environment with a mouse-driven interface.