

UC Delivers: Sudden Oak Death Outreach Survey
The Issue

Sudden Oak Death Field Tour
What Has ANR Done?
In April 2005, UCCE staff in Marin County and COMTF implemented a statewide online survey to assess the effectiveness of previous SOD education and to guide future outreach efforts in California. The primary audience for SOD education in California is forestry, landscape, and tree professional companies and individuals, resource agencies, local and state government, educational institutions, and regulatory departments. The survey generated a total of 302 responses from a variety of geographic regions and professional affiliations.The Payoff
Increased Knowledge of P. ramorum
A majority of respondents (66 percent) wanted more outreach efforts, particularly site-specific outreach, in their areas. In response, COMTF scheduled more workshops and outreach in specific communities, such as Inverness (Marin County) and Guerneville (Sonoma County). It also moved training workshops to new sites in an effort to reach local audiences where the pathogen is most prominent in a given season. In 2007, for example, workshops will be held for the first time at Pt. Reyes National Seashore and in Woodside, Calif. And, because of survey responses and suggestions, COMFT redesigned and updated its Web site http://www.suddenoakdeath.org to better highlight the information most people were interested in finding on the site.In other results from the survey:
• 90 percent of respondents from 14 infested counties indicated a moderate to high level of concern.
• 91 percent of respondents have easy access to information that answers most or all of their questions.
• 72 percent of respondents choose the COMTF Web site as their first information resource.
• Of the 65 percent of respondents who have attended COMTF training sessions, most consider them either very (64 percent) or moderately (38 percent) useful.
Contact
Supporting Unit:
Marin CountyJanice Alexander, Marin County UCCE Sudden Oak Death Outreach Coordinator,
(415) 499-4204, jalexander@ucdavis.edu