PARENT SESSION
Poster Session: Modeling Species Patterns

Modeling of climate of Armenia: evaluation of malariogenic potential and forecasting of insect population dynamics. ^*SERGEY, GASPARYAN , ASYA, TER-HOVHANNESYAN and ANCHELA, AZIZYAN , ¹ Institute of Zoology, 7, Sevak St., Yerevan , Armenia

ABSTRACT- Earlier we have developed a database on air temperatures all over the territory of Armenia treating long-term reports of country weather stations. The database was supported with an applied computer program written in Turbo Pascal and based on program packages Epi Info and Epi Map. It allows one to forecast the behavior (development rate, duration of the life cycle and distinct developmental phases, etc.) of insects, parasites, pathogenic organisms and infection transmitters. Using this program we have performed country territory zoning by the malariogenic potential and have identified the risk of initiation and expansion of malaria at various geographical locations in Armenia. This work presents the results of application of our program to another problem important for plant and environment protection. Its objective is to forecast the dynamics of harmful pests Laspeuresia pomonella L. and Lobesia botrana. The phenological data on these insects (terms of diapausing and hibernation, duration of life cycle and developmental stages, terms of insect development) were introduced into the program and behavior of pest populations was analyzed in three (plain, foothill and mountainous) climatic zones. Developed prognoses allow one to minimize insecticide application and prevent environment pollution. The program described may be useful to model distribution and pattern of temperature-dependent organisms at very various landscapes specific for complex relief of our mountainous country. This approach may be applied to other locations and to a variety of landscape ecology problems (quantitative aspects of climate change, species distribution, landscape protection and management, etc.).

KEY WORDS: climate, modeling, temperature-dependent organisms, population dynamics, forecast