ARS | Publication request: Areawide Insect Management Plans for Corn Rootworm Using GIS

Submitted to: Meeting Abstract
Publication Type: Abstract
Publication Acceptance Date: January 9, 2009
Publication Date: March 24, 2009
Publisher's URL: http://www.ipmcenters.org/ipmsymposium09/
Citation: French, B.W. 2009. Areawide Insect Management Plans for Corn Rootworm Using GIS. 6th International Integrated Pest Management Symposium, Portland OR, March 24-26, 2009.

Technical Abstract: Corn rootworms (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae) are serious pests of maize in the United States and Europe. Historically, chemical pesticides and crop rotation have been used to control these pests, creating economic and environmental concerns. A five year corn rootworm areawide management program was established in five states to manage corn rootworm populations on a multi-field or landscape scale to help alleviate these concerns. The goal was to more fully understand the spatial relationships between these pests with some physical aspects of the landscape. Geographical information systems (GIS) and spatial analytical techniques were used to examine relationships between corn rootworm metapopulation dynamics, soil texture, and elevation. Procedures used to describe the relationships included an interpolation technique, spatial autocorrelation analysis, and contingency analysis. Corn rootworm metapopulation distributions were aggregated and related to soil texture and elevation. The information derived from the spatial analyses indicates how GIS can be used in areawide pest management to provide inputs for spatially explicit models that predict future pest populations and devise more well-informed pest management decisions. These techniques could easily be extended to study the spatial dynamics between other pest populations in agricultural landscapes.