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Discrimination of Pest Infestation at the Landscape Level
Citation:
Copenhaver, K. L., J. A. GLASER, AND J. Casas. Discrimination of Pest Infestation at the Landscape Level. Presented at 2009 ESA Annual Meeting, #1025, Indianapolis, IN, December 13 - 16, 2009.
Impact/Purpose:
To inform the public.
Description:
Surveillance of the United States agricultural landscape requires coverage over a large area. Over 86,000,000 acres of land were planted with maize in the United States in 2009. Over 78% of this was located in ten states in the Midwest. To monitor this large landscape for the development of resistance to the toxins presented by plant incorporated protectant (PIP) maize varieties by insect pests while covering an area sufficient to ensure a representative sample would be labor, time and cost prohibitive using ground survey methods alone. USEPA has teamed with NASA to develop methods using remote sensing to monitor for resistance development. Remote sensing allows for large areas to be monitored and sampled in greater detail than ground surveys and collects information regarding maize health status not possible from visual assessments from the ground. EPA and NASA have determined the most effective method to monitor for and discover the development of resistance is from the identification of incidents of insect infestation as a proxy. With such a large percentage of the maize landscape currently and projected to be in PIP varieties, any indication of insect infestation in the production maize environment would most likely indicate resistance. Remotely sensed imagery collected at various resolutions from satellite and airborne platforms has demonstrated that specific incidents of local infestation can be identified over large areas of maize production, and that ground crews can be deployed to these locations to further study the insect and maize populations to determine if resistance has developed. EPA and NASA are developing these methods using remote sensing and other geospatial layers into a decision support system which can be used in an operational environment to monitor the entire US agricultural landscape for insect infestation and potential development of resistance to PIP traits.
URLs/Downloads:
2009 ESA ANNUAL MEETING STEWARDSHIP SYMPOSIUM.DOCFINAL AGENDA.DOC
Conf Info - Click on Past Meetings
