The impact and control of major southern forest diseases
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A variety of forest health issues, concerns, and events have rapidly changed southern forests and plantations in the past two decades. These factors have strongly impacted the ways we manage forest pests in the Southern United States. This trend will no doubt continue to shape forest pest management in the future. The major issues and events of concern include changing forest conditions, urbanization, multiresource issues, increased harvesting, forest fragmentation, expanding human populations, pesticide bans, expansions of native and nonnative pests into new regions, emergence of new damaging insect-disease complexes, and reduced resources to manage these problems. The effects of some of these factors on forest health priorities and specific pest-suppression practices are discussed in relation to some major hardwood and conifer diseases in southern forests. The ways in which these pests are influencing southern forest management priorities and practices and the progress that past and present pest-suppression research has made toward solving some of these pest-suppression problems also are discussed.