Control and Management

Research is being conducted to develop, evaluate, and improve regulatory and management tools to protect and conserve ash trees from EAB in our urban and natural forests.  For urban forests, researchers found that periodic injections of systemic insecticides can successfully protect ash trees from decline and mortality as EAB invades a community.  In natural forests, biological control is being used to suppress high EAB populations, thereby helping to conserve some surviving and regenerating ash for future generations. Researchers are also evaluating these surviving or “lingering” ash for EAB resistance, studying resistance mechanisms, and ultimately developing ash trees resistant to EAB through hybridization of North American and Asian ash species. To control and reduce the spread of EAB by humans, researchers developed regulatory treatments of ash firewood and high-value logs such as debarking or heat treatment.

Selected Research Studies

• Ash trees resistant to EAB
  • Ash seed collection in natural areas
  • Development of In Vitro Protocols for Ash Species
  • Identification, selection and testing of "lingering ash" in emerald ash borer long term monitoring plots in Michigan and Ohio
  • Development of novel ash hybrids
  • Overcoming obstacles to interspecies hybridization of ash
• Biological Control of EAB
  • Biological control of the emerald ash borer
  • Cold Hardiness of Emerald Ash Borer and its Biological Control Agents
• Chemical Control of EAB
  • Bark applied chemicals to control EAB
  • Evaluation of systemic insecticides to control emerald ash borer
• Control of EAB in ash materials
  • Debarking high-value logs
  • Regulatory treatment of firewood
  • Colonization of ash stumps
  • Survival in firewood
  • Evaluation of chipping and heat treatment to control emerald ash borer
  • Black ash submergence