Impact Network Analysis

"Impact Network Analysis: A Framework for Optimizing Climate Change Adaptation"

Tuesday, March 4, 2014 | 12:30-1:30 p.m. 
Whitewater Room, Idaho Commons

Presenter: Department of Plant Pathology, Kansas State University




Abstract
Optimizing adaptation strategies requires a system-level understanding of how climate change adaptation activities support agricultural outcomes. An “impact network analysis” (INA) can be implemented to evaluate the integrated effects of research results and new technologies, communication networks, decision networks, and ecological/transport networks. For example, an INA can be used to evaluate the likely outcomes of different strategies for management of a disease or pest under climate change. The driving factors of epidemic networks may vary widely from one system to another, whether movement is by human transport, vectors, wind, rain, or other means. However, if the general structure of an epidemic network is known, it can be used to identify key locations for sampling and mitigation, as well as being incorporated in a broader INA. Examples of the application of an INA to stored grain networks and smallholder farm seed systems will be discussed.

Biography
Karen Garrett is a Professor in the Department of Plant Pathology at Kansas State University. Garrett studies the ecology of plant disease and other plant stressors, ecological genomics, and biodiversity resource science in projects supported by the US NSF, USAID, USDA, DOE, PBCRC, and CGIAR, in Australia, Bolivia, China, Ecuador, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Panama, Peru, the Philippines, Tanzania, the US, and Zambia. These projects include studies of the effects of environmental trends and variation on plant disease and pests in agricultural and natural systems, strategies for durable disease and pest resistance in crop plants, epidemiological modeling in complex host assemblages, and strategies for sustainable disease and pest management for resource-poor farmers.

For more information about research in her lab, see: http://www.ksu.edu/pdecology