SARATOGA SPRINGS — A faculty-student summer research team at Skidmore has been using GIS (geographic information systems), satellite imagery and data collection to study the impact of the spongy moth — formerly known as the gypsy moth — in the Saratoga region.
Charlie Bettigole, director of Skidmore’s GIS Center for Interdisciplinary Research and summer research assistants Avery Blake and Morgan Foster, both rising seniors at Skidmore, have been focusing their research this summer on trees in local woods and in the Lake George Watershed.
“The insect is a little bit mysterious; it booms and busts. It can appear out of nowhere and then disappear the following year,” Professor Bettigole said. “So, we’re hoping to gain a little bit more of an understanding because of how intense this outbreak is in our backyard.”
Among the questions the summer research team is endeavoring to answer: Why do moths prefer some types of trees, forest and landscapes over others? And in the areas hit hardest by the spongy moth year after year, what kind of tree mortality rate impacts overall landscape health?
“A big thing we have come across time and time again is that more diverse forest landscapes are a lot more resilient to defoliation,” said Morgan Foster, a political science major at Skidmore. Research has shown that multiple years of defoliation (loss of leaves), paired with other environmental stressors, can lead to widespread forest decline.
With that in mind, the summer research team has set out to use GIS and remote sensing to gain a better understanding of how outbreaks have shifted over time, in an attempt to create a predictive model of what such an event could look like next year.
