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Scott A. Isard
Professor of Aerobiology |
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205-206 Buckhout
Laboratory
University Park, Pa 16802-4507
Phone: 814-865-6290
E-mail: sai10@psu.edu |
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| Areas of Interests: |
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Aerobiology, movement
and dispersal of organisms, meteorology, field measurement |
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| Education
| Program Interests | Publications |
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| Education: |
B.A., University
of Wisconsin
M.A., University of Pennsylvania
M.S., Education, University of Pennsylvania
Ph.D., Indiana University |
| Personal
Statement and Program Interests: |
The major
thrust of my research over the past dozen years has been aerobiology.
I have been co-author/PI on numerous aerobiology publications
and grants focused on a wide variety of biological and meteorological
systems. My research has involved plant pathogen and insect
pest systems as well as the aerial movement of plant pathogens
by insect vectors. My involvement in aerobiology at the University
of Illinois, before I joined PSU in August 2004, can be divided
into two distinct phases. In the first phase, I worked closely
with a group of faculty in the Agriculture College to bring
together University and State Survey scientists to address aerobiology
research problems and to make aerobiology an integral part of
IPM programs at the national level. During the second phase
that began about eight years ago, I have coordinated the aerobiology
research group at Illinois, broadening its base by involving
scientists from elsewhere in the University research community.
In addition, I have expanded my activities in aerobiology beyond
agriculture through involvement in the Biometeorology and Aerobiology
Science and Technology Advisory Committee (STAC) within the
American Meteorological Society and by forging a strong linkage
between the North American aerobiology research community and
the International Aerobiology Association centered in Europe.
Perhaps my most fundamental contribution involved altering the
prevailing paradigm in aerobiology research. Prior to the early
1990s, aerobiologists in agriculture and other disciplines focused
on individual biological systems, studying the biological and
meteorological factors that govern the aerial movement of individual
taxa. Through sustained interdisciplinary collaboration, I came
to realize that focusing on the medium in which the movement
occurred rather than individual aerobiology systems could lead
to understanding the principles of aerial movement of biota.
I led the effort to construct a set of general hypotheses concerning
the motivation and processes of aerial transport that applied
to the movement of all aerobiota from allergens to birds. The
codification of these generic aerobiological hypotheses became
the focus of a workshop to which we invited North American and
European scientists and outreach specialists from agriculture,
biology, engineering, environmental science, geography, medicine,
meteorology, physics, and systems science. As a result of the
workshop, the Alliance for Aerobiology Research (AFAR) was founded,
and I was thrust into a leadership role at the national level
within aerobiology.
I currently play a very active role in the Pan-American Aerobiology
Association (PAAA), American Meteorological Society (AMS), International
Aerobiology Association (IAA), and USDA Committee on Movement
and Dispersal of Biota (NCR-148). Some of my more visible leadership
roles over the past few years include: (1) Associate Editor
for Aerobiologia (Kluwer, IAA flagship journal) and Co-Editor-in-Chief
of Physical Aerobiology (an electronic journal), (2) IAA Executive
Committee, Organizer of the IAA Advanced Aerobiology 2000 field
course, and member of the Organizing Committee for the 2002
IAA Congress, (3) PAAA Executive Committee, Membership Secretary,
and President, (4) Chairperson of the AMS Biometeorology and
Aerobiology STAC, Co-Program Director for the Fourteenth AMS
Conference on Biometeorology and Aerobiology and the Seventh
International Biometeorology Congress and (5) State Representative
to and Chair of NCR-148.
I have recently published a book entitled Flow of Life in the
Atmosphere: An Airscape Perspective on Understanding Invasive
Organisms (2001). It is co-authored with Dr. S.H. Gage (Michigan
State University). In the book, we relay the importance of anticipating
consequences of the aerial flow of biota as we begin to develop
new strategies to ensure food safety and biosecurity as well
as to better understand and manage our natural environment.
We provide those who are interested in the concepts and actions
associated with ecosystem manipulation a window through which
to view the aerial movement of biota and the airscapes they
encounter. In the first third of the manuscript, we provide
a "systems thinking" approach to understanding the
movement of organisms in the atmosphere and the management of
ecosystems impacted by these aerobiota. In the second portion
of the book, atmospheric motion systems that commonly impact
the movement of biota are described with respect to spatial
and temporal scales of motion and the underlying landscape.
In the final section, we provide three detailed examples of
how programs to measure and study atmospheric movements of organisms
among habitats might be designed.
There are currently important initiatives within the Department
of Homeland Security, the USDA, NIH, and the Environmental Protection
Agency to launch research programs focused in part on aerobiology
in response to the threat of biological terrorism. To take advantage
of this opportunity, I am spearheading an interdisciplinary,
multi-institutional program to develop the predictive capacity
to characterize the long-range movement of organisms from one
geographic place to another in North America. This multi-institutional,
transdisciplinary research project is building an Integrated
Aerobiology Modeling System (IAMS) that combines biological,
meteorological and human components to forecast movement of
a variety of biota over a wide range of geographic scales. It
involves: 1) field and satellite measurements of populations,
vegetation productivity and phenology, and weather, 2) radar
measurements of aerobiota and concurrent atmospheric motion
systems, and 3) the development and implementation of a large-scale
interactive forecast model of atmospheric bioflow. Besides our
current focus on food safety and biosecurity, we plan to apply
the IAMS framework to issues of resistance management and sustainable
agriculture, to gauge impacts of anthropogenic change on ecosystem
dynamics, and to investigate the impacts of climate change on
society.
USDA APHIS is funding the initial stage of our effort to develop
the predictive capacity to characterize the long-range aerial
movement of organisms. The project has created a weather-based
assessment of soybean rust threat to North America that serves
as a basis for the 2004 USDA ERS review article on "The
Potential Economic and Policy Implications of Soybean Rust Establishment
in the United States." We anticipate that APHIS will continue
funding the IAMS project and allow us to integrate it with their
invasive species databases. I am also lead PI on a complementary
grant funded by the USDA CSREES NRI Animal and Plant Security
Grant Program to conduct a multi-year intensive field measurement
program in Paraguay to investigate spore transport processes
that are currently poorly understood and to incorporate the
resulting knowledge into the system to forecast soybean rust
movement. |
| Publications: |
| 1. Mabry,
T.R., and Levine, E. 2004. The influence of atmospheric conditions
on high elevation flight of western corn rootworm (Coleotera:
Chrysomelidae). Environmental Entomology
2. Isard, S. A., C.E. Main, T. Keever, R. Magarey, S. Redlin,
and J.M. Russo, 2004. Weather-based assessment of soybean
rust threat to North America. http://www.aphis.usda.gov/ppq/ep/soybean_rust/weather07_31_2004.pd
3. Levine, E., Spencer, J.L., Onstad, D., and Gray, M.E.
2002. Adaptation of the western corn rootworm, Diabrotica
vergifera virgifera Le Conte (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae),
to crop rotation: Evolution of a new strain in response to
a cultural control practice. American Entomologist 48: 94-107.
4. Isard, S.A. and Gage, S.H. 2001. Flow of Life in the Atmosphere:
An Airscape Approach to Understanding Invasive Organisms.
Michigan State University Press. 240 pp.
5. Isard, S.A., Kristovich, D.A.R., Gage, S.H., Jones, C.J.
and Laird, N.F. 2001. Atmospheric motions systems that influence
the redistribution and accumulation of insects on the beaches
of the Great Lakes in North America. Aerobiologia 17: 275-291.
6. Mandioli, P., Isard, S.A., and Main, C.E. (eds.). 2000.
Field Measurements in Aerobiology. ISAO-CNR, Bologna, Italy.
250 pp.
7. Gage, S.H., Isard, S.A. and Colunga-G, M. 1999. Biological
scales of motion for dispersal of biota. Agricultural and
Forest Meteorology 97: 249-261.
8. Westbrook, J.K. and Isard, S.A. 1999. Atmospheric scales
of motion for dispersal of biota. Agricultural and Forest
Meteorology 97: 263-274.
9. Isard, S.A. and Irwin, M.E. 1993. A strategy for studying
the long-distance aerial movement of insects. Journal of Agricultural
Entomology 10: 283-297.
10. Isard, S.A. (ed.), 1993. Alliance for Aerobiology Research
Workshop Report, Alliance for Aerobiology Research Workshop
Writing Committee, Champaign, IL.
11. Isard, S.A., Irwin, M.E., and Hollinger, S.E. 1991. The
vertical distribution of aphids in the planetary boundary
layer. Environmental Entomology 19: 1473-1484.
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