Since its discovery in the mid 1990s, the pathogen that causes Sudden Oak Death (SOD) has been the focus of an intensive research effort designed to understand its biology and to develop management strategies that prevent or reduce the spread of this disease.

Described as Phytophthora ramorum in 2000, this emerging and probably exotic pathogen causes a lethal canker disease in several oak (Quercus) species and tanoak (Lithocarpus densiflorus). The disease has reached epidemic levels in many coastal forests of California and southwestern Oregon. In addition to causing mortality in oak and tanoak species, P. ramorum causes non-lethal leaf and twig infections on over 25 plant species, and these taxa are thought to play important roles in the spread and persistence of the disease (especially bay laurel, Umbellularia californica).

Our Sudden Oak Death Research Projects::

• Humans and other vertebrates as dispersal agents
   

• Effect of potential connectivity in infectious disease models
   
• Effects of landscape heterogeneity on the emerging forest disease sudden oak death
   
• Susceptibility to P. ramorum in a key infectious host
   
• Influence of land-cover change on the spread of an invasive forest pathogen
   
• Early-detection of emerging forest disease using dispersal estimation and ecological niche modeling
   
• Mapping the risk of establishment and spread of sudden oak death in California
   

Learn what you can do to prevent the spread of Sudden Oak Death.

To learn more about SOD visit California Oak Mortality Task Force.