Remote-sensing and mapping of weeds in crops

Airborne remote-sensing has been identified worldwide as a promising techni que for identifying and mapping weeds in crops, and potentially offers a so lution to the current logjam in precision weed management: namely, the abil ity to generate timely and accurate weed maps. One of the main advantages o f remote-sensing is that synoptic weed data can be acquired virtually insta ntaneously (within the field of view of the sensor), and a weed map generat ed within hours of data acquisition. However, because little information is available concerning the scale at which weeds should be managed within fie lds, the sensing and mapping technology has tended to dictate the resolutio n at which weeds must be mapped. This paper summarizes the work completed t o date to investigate the use of airborne remote-sensing for weed mapping i n crops, and discusses application of the technology in precision weed mana gement practices. (C) 2001 Silsoe Research Institute.