You are here:
Assessing off-taraget impacts of herbicide drift on plants
Citation:
Olszyk, D. Assessing off-taraget impacts of herbicide drift on plants. Presented at Environmental and Molecular Toxicology Department, Oregon State University, October 17, 2012.
Impact/Purpose:
Plants and plant communities provide vital economic services including production of food and fiber crops for direct human consumption, and to provide ecosystem services including wildlife habitat and cycling of nutrients and energy. These services can be impacted if herbicides drift from target fields to adjacent agricultural and non-agricultural lands. The EPA conducts ecological risk assessments to determine the scope of these potential effects. This seminar will describe research by EPA scientists at ORD/NHEERL/WED who have carried out molecular, whole-plant, and plant community research to improve the tools available to evaluate these effects. It will help to inform the Oregon State University community of the scientific nature of WED's findings, and illustrate the importance of ORD research to address agency problems.
Description:
Plants and plant communities provide vital economic services including production of food and fiber crops for direct human consumption and ecosystem services including wildlife habitat and cycling of nutrients and energy. These services can be impacted if herbicides drift from target fields to adjacent agricultural and non-agriculture lands. The EPA conducts ecological risk assessments to determine the scope of these potential effects. Our research group in Corvallis has carried out molecular, whole-plant, and plant community research to improve the tools available to evaluate these effects. This seminar will briefly describe the procedures used for single species studies, and our research to modify those procedures to consider reproductive responses, responses of native plants and responses to multiple herbicides. It will then focus on experiments to evaluate responses of constructed plant communities to herbicides in the field, to better address ecological issues related to potential herbicide drift.