London ( CNN ) -- Britain 's celebrated landscape is set to be changed forever as an incurable disease threatens the existence of one of its most familiar trees . But a group of environmentalists have come up with a high-tech solution to try to tackle the crisis in the countryside . The detection of ash dieback disease , believed to have most likely been transmitted via fungal spores carried on the wind from continental Europe , has prompted environmental authorities to warn it will not be possible to eradicate the disease from Britain 's `` green and pleasant land . '' Experts fear vast numbers of Britain 's 80 million ash trees , the country 's fourth most abundant tree specimen , will be lost from its parks and forests . In a sign of how seriously the British government is taking the presence of the disease , Chalara fraxinea , it has held meetings of the government 's crisis committee COBRA -- more commonly convened for national security emergencies -- in response . There is no cure or vaccination for ash dieback , although some specimens are exhibiting some resistance to the disease . When ash dieback hit Denmark , 90 % of its ash trees were affected . Efforts to respond to the disease are focused on tracking and containing its spread , resulting in the destruction of more than 100,000 infected trees to date . To that end , a group of environmentalists has devised its own solution to help the public help authorities track the spread of the disease . `` AshTag '' is an app which allows members of the public to report likely sightings of the disease to authorities , along with precise location coordinates , using their smartphones . Members of the public can photograph the tree in question and log the report with the service , and the details will be sent to the Forestry Commission to investigate . Sightings will be plotted on a map , using different colored pins denoting whether the specimen is unchecked , uncertain or likely . `` We made it in a weekend -- a lot of late nights , a lot of coffee , '' said Toby Hammond of the University of East Anglia 's Adapt Group , which is behind the initiative . `` It 's a huge task to map this disease -- if you were to do it thoroughly , you 'd have to look at every ash tree in the UK , '' he said . A much more effective approach , he says , is to use `` crowd sourcing ... by getting involved all the people who are out walking their dogs or may have an ash tree in their garden that they are concerned about . '' The response has been strong . The app has been downloaded almost 10,000 times in a week , resulting in more than 500 possible sightings being uploaded . People without smartphones can still use the service using their computers . Infected ash trees develop lesions on their bark , and dieback and browning of their leaves , which can be harder to spot during autumn months . The app allows for smarter use of resources by allowing staff to filter out unlikely sightings and direct the attention of authorities to the most likely cases to investigate . Sadly , it has not been able to provide any relief for people like Robert Crowder , whose family business , Crowders Nurseries , has run since 1798 , and who estimates the company 's losses to ash dieback to be worth about $ 320,000 . His nursery was recently ordered to burn 50,000 ash saplings -- a loss Crowder believes could have been avoided had the government acted sooner to try to prevent the spread of the disease when it appeared in Western Europe . `` We had seen evidence of the disease in nurseries in Denmark , Germany and Holland and we told the government in 2009 and they chose to do nothing about it , '' he said . `` We have now had a financial loss as a result of their indecision . '' Britain 's ecosystems have suffered from serious tree diseases in the past , with as many as 30 million elms lost to Dutch elm disease in the 1970s . Jim C. Smith , an urban forestry adviser for the Forestry Commission , said ash dieback was `` at least as serious '' as Dutch elm , `` but we do n't know how it will actually spread in the country . '' It is hoped that Ashtag can play a role in preventing the spread of ash dieback -- and potentially any of the nearly 20 tree diseases in the UK -- to those proportions .
Ash dieback , an incurable tree disease , has been detected in the UK . It threatens Britain 's 80 million ash trees , the fourth most abundant tree in the country . The disease is caused by a fungus called Phytophthora ramorum and it can be spread to other species of oak as well. More than 100,000 trees have been destroyed in efforts to contain its spread .