Kishan Sambaraju

Forest disease epidemiology and climate

Kishan is a Research Scientist at the Laurentian Forestry Centre, Canadian Forest Service, in Quebec City. He studies spatial epidemiology of forest diseases at different scales and correlates the impacts of various cross-scale factors on disease development and spatial spread. Currently, one of his primary interests is the relatively understudied aspect of climate influences on geographic distributions of forest diseases. Understanding climatic influences on damaging forest diseases informs mitigation tactics and helps in decision making with regard to potential impacts of climate change on our forest resources. Kishan develops data-driven models that offer insights into the linkage between climate and disease occurrences and that help us identify factors contributing to changes in their distributions. His current work involves developing bioclimatic envelope models and maps for serious exotic forest pathogens under present and future climate change scenarios.