Citrus Canker—The Threat to Florida Agriculture

This map represents a few of the many tasks performed by the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services Citrus Canker Eradication Program's Geographic Information office, which is responsible for the creation and maintenance of the program's data and information products. One of the most common tasks for the office is the creation of operations maps. The program has a large Operations Section that handles the fieldwork for the program. To perform its fieldwork, Operations requires highly detailed maps for its different responsibilities, two of which are to identify and control areas of infection and exposure and define areas of increased surveying in commercial regions.

The Operations Section also delimits areas of quarantine for both commercial and residential areas. It consults with the Geographic Information office on the best placement of the boundary extents that follow the program's business rules and are easily identified by natural or man-made features. The Geographic Information office produces maps of these quarantine areas throughout the process, from initial drafts to final publication for the public on the Web and other media. When a quarantine has been approved, the office adds it to a growing archive of current and expired quarantines the program has enacted.

The Geographic Information office also performs analysis for the program's Plans Section and for the administration of the program. There are two representations of analysis displayed on the map. One shows an analysis used to determine properties within an exposure that require tree removal. The other shows a process and tabular result of distance calculations of exposure from an infected tree to other trees.

The current cooperative eradication program in Florida began when infection by an Asian strain (A strain) of citrus canker was discovered in Florida in 1995 in a residential area near Miami International Airport. As a result of additional detections, the program expanded, and by 1998, it included most of Miami-Dade County. Beginning with a find in a Hendry County grove in 1999, infestations caused by the citrus canker strain previously found in Miami began to be detected in south Florida commercial groves. Regulatory action has been taken, and control measures are currently under way in all areas of the state where the disease has been detected.