DELAWARE, Ohio — There are 308 million ash trees in the forests of Pennsylvania, and one gleaming invasive insect poses a threat to all of them.

On the Allegheny National Forest in northwest Pennsylvania, researchers from the USDA Forest Service’s Northern Research Station and foresters are working together to monitor the health of ash trees with the goal of one day reducing the effects of emerald ash borer.

The EAB is a destructive beetle from Asia that has killed hundreds of millions of ash trees across much of the eastern United States and Canada and is now invading the Allegheny National Forest. Past and ongoing studies at the Allegheny National Forest have included understanding landscape patterns of ash health, optimizing genetic conservation strategies, and installation and initial data collection for an insecticide treatment experiment.

A new grant of nearly $16,000 from the USDA Forest Service’s State and Private Forestry branch is allowing for an expanded ash monitoring effort as well as an expanded team. This month, Washington and Jefferson College joined the monitoring effort and will help establish how the spread of EAB is affecting the health of ash trees on the Allegheny National Forest.

Data collected on the National Forest will help scientists better understand the effects of EAB across different landscapes. Field data will be used to inform Satellite Detection Surveys of EAB, performed by the USDA Forest Service’s Forest Health Assessment and Applied Sciences Team, as well as to update EAB models in the National Insect and Disease Risk Map. These data will also be compared to tree health data collected in ash treatment areas where insecticides are being used to protect more than 500 individual ash trees from EAB on the Allegheny National Forest. These treated ash trees occur in clusters of 20 trees across most of the national forest and are being protected for longer term genetic and seed conservation purposes.