MONTICELLO — While an emerging fungal disease continues to chip away at the forestry industry in the southern United States, remote sensing researcher Hamdi Zurqani is developing artificial intelligence models to seek answers from the skies.
“My job is to identify different stages of mortality,” said Zurqani, assistant professor for the College of Forestry, Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Arkansas at Monticello. Using aerial imagery obtained from drones, Zurqani said he is developing tools that give landowners and other stakeholders the information they need to manage this growing threat to the forestry industry.
By applying geospatial artificial intelligence techniques, Zurqani said he can assess how many trees have been affected by the disease. “How many trees have already died? How many trees may be in the early stage that are going to get worse? How many trees are still green?” he said.
Since summer 2022, foresters and researchers have been fielding calls about pine decline in Arkansas. Pine decline is a convergence of environmental and genetic issues that cause tree health problems in pine forests. Results from diagnostic tests in July 2023 confirmed that a fungal disease called brown spot needle blight is at least partially to blame.
“It's kind of nipping away at pine forests,” said Michael Blazier, director of the Arkansas Forest Resources Center and dean of the College of Forestry, Agriculture and Natural Resources. “Although there are pockets of dying trees within affected forests, a bigger issue could be slower growth of infected forests.”
Blazier said that when trees lose their foliage, as often happens with the needle blight disease, they have less energy to invest in growing their trunk diameter. Less trunk growth means less wood production and delayed harvest.
Understanding the how and why of brown spot needle blight remains the primary focus for researchers in Arkansas and the wider region, Blazier said. That’s where Zurqani’s work comes in.
“If we were able to identify the early stages of the disease, we can somehow get a clue about what’s going to happen in the future,” Zurqani said.
In Arkansas, Blazier said the fight against pine decline has been highly collaborative. The Forestry Division of the Arkansas Department of Agriculture and the Arkansas Forestry Association have been working closely with the Arkansas Forest Resources Center, which conducts research and extension activities through the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station and the Cooperative Extension Service, the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture’s research and outreach arms.
“We have a tight working relationship between all of those agencies,” Blazier said. “There’s been excellent communication between the university, extension service, forestry association and the state’s forestry division.”
Regional challenge
In August 2023, Blazier attended a meeting at Auburn University to discuss the needle blight phenomenon with researchers and industry stakeholders from across the southern U.S.
According to information from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service, brown spot needle blight has been confirmed in nine states, including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. Severe damage, however, has so far been limited to Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi.