THRIVE Spring 2022: Protecting New Hampshire Forests

Jeff Garnas, UNH associate professor of forest ecology, is leading a team of researchers who are addressing the major threats to forests including invasive insects and pathogens and climate change -- all of which are reshaping our woodlands. In this video, Professor Garnas talks broadly about his work, with a particular focus on the recent discovery of the southern pine beetle by Caroline Kanaskie, a graduate student who works in his lab. 

The southern pine beetle was found in research traps in both Ossipee, N.H. and in southern Maine, near Waterboro. The tiny insect is only three millimeters long — smaller than a grain of rice — but it regularly destroys millions of acres of pine forest in the southern U.S. and Central America. It is one of the most damaging tree-dwelling insects in the Southeast and had never been seen this far north.