Terrestrial Information Systems Research

Terrestrial Information Systems is a part of Hydrospheric and Biospheric Sciences located at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Is The Africanized Honey Bee Moving Northward?

National Map: Correct 93-96%; AUCs >0.92

Working with the USGS Ft. Collins, NASA/GSFC explored four different species distribution models in an Ensemble Technique to make a 1 km habitat suitability map for persistent populations of the Africanized Honey Bee (AHB). Results using MODIS phenology and HoneyBeeNet data indicate that both Temperature and nectar availability limit the AHB. MODIS data made the models more accurate.

A 10/10 non-persistent ‘find’ of AHB in Albany, GA provides the basis for a “What If” exercise. Albany is well north of the present AHB territory, and the colony arrived there through inadvertent human transport. It had not overwintered.

However, if AHB colonies could persist in the area, then the projected suitable habitat extends much farther north, perhaps into North Carolina and southern Virginia. All projections shown here may overestimate the northern extent to some degree due to unavoidable biases in the presence data.

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