Addressing the risk from pests present in wood and wood products destined for international trade is an essential step towards minimizing the movement, introduction and establishment of invasive species. One method of managing the pest risk associated with wood commodities is the use of a systems approach which incorporates multiple independent measures applied along a production pathway. However, quantifying the reduction of risk can be difficult because the approach requires raw material infested with the pest of interest at a sufficient density to be able to quantify changes in pest abundance. We tested a systems approach for the production of sawn wood using emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis Fairmaire) -infested ash (Fraxinus) by quantifying the change in pest density during the milling process and the precise effect of heat treatment on insects in situ. Greater than 90% of emerald ash borer were removed at the first step of the milling process (debarking) and >99% were removed before the production of green sawn wood. No insects survived kilning or heat treatment. All life stages of emerald ash borer were killed at 56 °C and above. Heat, however, had no sub-lethal effect on emerald ash borer performance. These results show that the application of a systems approach to mitigate emerald ash borer in heat-treated, sawn wood is effective. Moreover, the model-system approach developed in this study can be a template for investigating the effect of systems approaches for other phloem-feeding insects.

Data are the counts of emerald ash borer emerging from ash (Fraxius) wood that has been heat-treated or processed in a sawmill to create ash lumber. Emerald ash borer that were heat treated and that emerged as adult insects were maintained under laboratory conditions to record lifespan, fertility and fecundity.

All data are provided in .Rdata files and can be opened in the R Statistical computing language. Analysis code is either provided as .Rmd files or .R scripts and is commented. .Rmd files and .R files can be opened in any R editor, but are best viewed in RStudio. .Rdata files can be opened in any instance of R. Files are provided in 2 compressed files containing all files to replicate the analysis found in the paper.