National insect and disease risk Map (NIDRM)

The primary goal of the 2006 National Insect and Disease Risk Map (NIDRM) is to provide policy makers, USDA officials, and federal and state land managers with a periodic strategic assessment for risk of tree mortality due to major insects and diseases. For this report, the threshold for mapping risk is: "the expectation that, without remediation, 25 percent or more of the standing live basal area  (BA) of trees greater than 1 inch in diameter will die over the next 15 years (starting in 2005) due to insects and diseases."

A secondary project objective is to model BA losses which are attributed to individual mortality agents as well as to derive a grid of total BA losses by accumulating the BA losses assigned to all agents.  For this calculation, all BA losses are accumulated and need not meet the 25% threshold required by the project.