Site-specific weed management: Current and future directions

This chapter discusses the current state of site-specific weed management and suggests future directions based on an understanding of weed spatial distribution, weed biology, economics, and the role of technology. Weed seeds and seedlings are spatially aggregated across agricultural landscapes, despite the fact that fields are managed more-or-less uniformly. Land use (types of crops, management practices), landscape structure (spatial arrangement of landscape elements), and weed population dynamics are important factors that influence weed species distribution and ecological processes across agricultural landscapes. Clearly, the aggregate nature of weed seed and seedling distribution resulting from biological and agricultural factors has a profound impact on how weeds are managed. The ability to describe the spatial dimension of weed populations is a first step in allowing weed scientists to formulate hypotheses about such things as causes of spatial patterns, relationships between weed patterns and soil resource patterns, weed-crop competition and changes in weed populations over time.