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ARS Home » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #122768
Title: REMOTE SENSING OF WEED CANOPIES

Author
item Radhakrishnan, Jayakumar
item LIANG, SHUNLIN - UNIV. OF MARYLAND
item Teasdale, John
item SHUEY, CHAD - UNIV. OF MARYLAND

Submitted to: Book Chapter
Publication Type: Book / Chapter
Publication Acceptance Date: 12/11/2001
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary: Site-specific weed management involves controlling weeds where they are present in a field rather than treating the whole field uniformly. For this to be achieved, timely and accurate maps of weeds in crop fields need to be developed. Present day field mapping techniques are costly and time consuming. Remote sensing of weeds is still in the early stage and offers an opportunity to map weeds quickly in time for weed management decisions to be made. A number of factors including spatial, temporal and spectral resolutions must be accounted for to accurately map weed populations using remote sensing technology. This book chapter is a review of remote sensing research related to weed canopies. In this book chapter the characteristics of weeds, the importance of remote sensing of weed canopies from a precision weed management perspective and some results of remote sensing research of weed canopies at the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center are presented. Future remote sensing capabilities and research issues are presented that will benefit scientists, agencies and producers responsible for weed management.

Technical Abstract: Unlike crop plants that are bred for uniform germination and stands, weeds offer a challenge to achieving precision mapping due to their tremendous variability in space and time. Conventional weed mapping techniques are neither practical nor economical. Remote sensing of weed canopies offers a promising technique for detection and delineation of weeds in croplands especially for precision weed management. This chapter on remote sensing of weed canopies provides a general introduction to losses due to weeds in agriculture, nature of weed distributions and their significance to site- specific weed management. The importance of remote sensing of weed canopies to precision weed management is presented. A review of existing remote sensing capabilities and research on the discrimination and identification of weed species is presented. Some results of the remote sensing research with selected weed canopies at the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, Maryland is provided and discussed. Final future remote sensing capabilities and research issues that need to be addressed for remote sensing of weed canopies are identified.