Members of the UPMC Team: Sara Moore, Robin Tabuchi and Vernard Lewis.
Introduction
The UC Berkeley Urban Pest Management Center (UPMC) was created to bring together a broad spectrum of stakeholders in the State that include entomologists, pest control professionals, architects, engineers, builders, and those interested in effective pest management schemes that are compatible with the urban environment. The Center concentrates existing information and develops new information to more fully understand the natural biology, detection, and management of our urban insect pest species.The Center's strengths include knowledge of standard pest management practices as well as advanced detection, management, and prevention schemes for many of the major economic pests that occur in our urban ecosystem. Since many insect species have dual roles in nature, pestiferous and beneficial, Center activities will strive for a balance in research, investigative, and outreach activities. The Center outreach component also serves the general public and K-12 schools via web-based insect identification aids and general biology and management information retrieval.
Click here for a printable pdf with information about the UPMC.
Mission Statement
To concentrate existing and to develop new information on urban insect pests and to facilitate solutions to the problems they may cause to be made available to a broad spectrum of stakeholders that include entomologists, pest control professionals, architects, engineers, builders and those interested in effective pest management schemes that are compatible with the urban environment.
Center Capabilities
The Center is located at the University of California Richmond Field Station (RFS) in Richmond, CA. The Center occupies a suite of offices (700ft²), three laboratories (1500ft²), and several large rooms available for conferences and training workshops. A field testing facility, the Villa Termiti (400ft²), is available for product testing, including detection devices and control methods. The Center also has extensive back-up support in an urban pest reprint collection, computerized data collection and retrieval systems, online access to libraries, and state-of-the-art detection equipment. A collection of common urban pest species and insects native to the State are also maintained onsite.
Testing the x-ray device in the Villa Termiti
Using the Villa Termiti roof in a drywood termite research project.
