Adam H. Sparks
Ph.D. Candidate,
KSU Department of Plant Pathology
asparks@ksu.edu ··
785.532.1341
Adam Sparks is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Plant Pathology at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas. who works in Dr. Garrett's Plant Disease Ecology Lab where he spends most of his days staring at two computer monitors and attempting to write R code and his dissertation, some days neither one is very productive.
His interests and expertise include epidemiology and the ecology of plant diseases; GIS applications in plant pathology; agricultural geography; agricultural extension outreach and teaching. His Ph.D. studies have focused on major plant pathogen groups, ecology and epidemiology, modeling, GIS, and remote sensing. His full CV is available for download as a pdf file, Adam Sparks's Curriculum Vitae.
His research involves using metamodels to predict plant disease at large temporal and spatial scales. Many plant disease forecasting models are created using fine-scale temporal resolution, hourly or less, weather data to predict disease severity or the need for control measures to be enacted. Large amounts of coarse temporal resolution data, e.g. daily or monthly weather summaries, exist in ready to use data sets. In certain situations rather than backcasting to create hourly weather data it may be desirable to create a quick estimation of disease severity using these coarser data sets.
System
Pathosystem: late
blight of potato caused by Phytophthora infestans
Initial Model Used for Development: SimCast
using hourly time-step data, written in R
Coarse Weather Resolution Models: Generalized
Additive Models (GAM), written in R based on SimCast outputs
which are capable of using daily, weekly or monthly resolution
weather data.
Research Objectives
- Create late blight prediction models capable of utilizing daily, weekly, or monthly resolution weather data.
- Compare models for different temporal resolutions.
- Evaluate the effects of possible climate change scenarios on late blight severity.
- Compare effects of the use of late blight resistant cultivars with susceptible cultivars.
- Make assessments of the effects of climate change on wild potato species.
- Assess the impact of climate change on late blight severity in areas of poverty and food-insecurity.
Web-based teaching modules for plant pathology applications in the R programming environment
These teaching modules are housed permanently on the APSNet Education Center website, Web-based teaching modules for plant pathology applications in the R programming environment