Department Awarded Contract with USDA

 

 

Colorado State University personnel ( Howard Schwartz, Mark McMillan) were recently awarded a special USDA Integrated Pest Management (IPM) sub-contract with colleagues at the University of Georgia (Keith Douce, Joe LaForest) to support IPM efforts and enhance resources in the High Plains and southeastern regions of the U.S. These existing resources collectively provide educational materials and tools that are widely used by educators and producers to implement IPM in agricultural production systems in their regions and beyond. Information and images included in these systems also directly support crop biosafety and biosecurity through enhancement of diagnostics and pest identification tools.
   

This project will incorporate digital images and information from the 15-year old Colorado State University AgImage Database (10,000 agricultural pest and production images from the High Plains and western regions) at http://www.ext.colostate.edu/staffres/agimage.html into the Bugwood (Forestry) Image Database System with more than 70,000 images of 10,000 subjects available at no charge at the University of Georgia at http://www.forestryimages.org/. Forestry Images has been under development for a number of years, and is the result of the efforts of nearly 1,300 photographers and extension personnel. In the mid-1990's Forestry Images recognized a need for quality photographs of forest insects and disease organisms to use in information technology applications in the southeastern region. The overall objective of Forestry Images was to provide an accessible and easily used archive of high quality images related to forest health and silviculture, with particular emphasis on educational applications. These interests have now expanded into other plant species, pests and regions of the United States and world. The diversity and utility of the Forestry Images (Bugwood) resource are highlighted by the volume of web site hits that have increased 7-fold from 16 million hits in 2002 to more than 121 million hits during 2007.

 

Colorado State University will act as a permanent remote image and information entry node to better address the needs of the High Plains region; and help acquire additional images from extension and research colleagues for use in the data base. The project will also integrate images and information contained in the Bugwood Image Database System with pest management resources available through the High Plains IPM Guide at http://www.highplainsipm.org/ and Great Plains Diagnostic Network at http://www.gpdn.org/DesktopDefault.aspx.

 

College of Agricultural Sciences 121 Shepardson, (Campus Delivery 1101) Colorado State University Fort Collins, CO 80523-1101 Phone: 970-491-6274, Fax: 970-491-4895 Our url: www.agsci.colostate.edu Comments: CAS_webmaster@mail.colostate.edu Apply to CSU | Disclaimer | Equal Opportunity | Privacy Updated May 2, 2008