Spatial ecology and remote sensing for precision management
PI(s): Brewster, Carlyle C., Holden, Erin L
Investigators:
Abstract: In May 2003, USDA and NASA entered into a collaborative agreement to promote the development of precision agriculture (precision farming), a technology-based and information-intensive area of agriculture. Precision pest management falls within the scope of precision agriculture. However, few attempts have been made to apply precision farming technology to arthropod pest management because of the difficulty creating “bug map” of the spatial variability of pest populations within the field. An attempt was made using twospotted spider mite population infestations in peanut fields in Virginia to assess the feasibility of precision agriculture approaches for the management of arthropod pests in agricultural fields.
Description: Precision agriculture relies on technologies such as global positioning system (GPS), GIS, and remote sensing, to decrease the application of management inputs such as pesticides. The success of precision agriculture depends on our ability to visualize spatial variation in the farming landscape using maps of within-field variables such as soil nutrient levels, weeds, and pest populations. The development of arthropod population maps (bug maps), however, has been a challenge. We have taken advantage of the availability and current interest in sophisticated remote sensing tools to improve our ability to construct these needed bug maps for precision pest management. We focused our attention on using low altitude high-resolution imagery of crop fields (as an alternative to ground scouting), to detect and analyze patterns of crop stress related to the patterns of pest infestations. To this end, we developed and tested an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) equipped with remote sensing imaging cameras to capture high resolution images of crop fields. In our studies, we analyzed the spatiotemporal distributions of the twospotted spider mite and determined that precision pest management approaches could be used to manage this pest in peanut fields.
Commodities: Peanuts
Resources:
Disciplines: Ecology, Information Technology, Integrated Pest Management, Precision Farming
Audiences: Extension Agents, Producers, Researchers
