Special Issue "Conceptual and technical innovations to better manage invasions of alien pests and pathogens in forests"

This special issue will comprise a selection of scholarly papers deriving from the research carried out within the Horizon 2020 project HOMED "Holistic management of emerging forest pests and diseases" (https://homed-project.eu). The articles concern various aspects of the ecology and management of invasive forest insect and fungal pathogen species in Europe. The special issue includes (but is not limited to) the following topics:

1. Stakeholder awareness of alien forest pests and diseases
2. Mechanistic models for predicting the risk of establishment and spread of invasive forest species at the continental scale
3. The relevance of the sentinel planting approach to identify potentially invasive species in forests
4. Coupling DNA-based in situ detection methods and next-generation sequencing pipeline to trace the origin of forest invading pests and pathogens
5. Deployment of multilure traps in port areas for early detection of alien forest insect arrivals
6. Use of the aerobiological monitoring network (allergenic pollen traps) to detect pathogenic fungal spores and monitor disease spread on a continental scale
7. Detection by drone of infestations by emerging or alien species at the tree level
8. Analysis of satellite data by artificial intelligence to delimit invaded areas
9. Associational resistance of mixed species forest to alien insect pests