Climate-Suitability Models for Plant Pests and Diseases (Lot 2)

This call funds development of correlative and process-based models that estimate how favourable climate conditions are for plant pests and diseases to establish, plus testing of species distribution models built on those outputs. Process-based models here are simplified mechanistic models that do not simulate pest population numbers directly, but instead use climate thresholds or continuous response functions for temperature, moisture and other conditions to judge how suitable an environment is for processes like development, overwintering survival or phenological timing. Their outputs combine several suitability components into an overall picture of where a pest or pathogen could establish or stay active. This lot also covers building and testing Species Distribution Models driven by these process-based outputs or by indices derived from the pest's own physiology.