Remote Sensing of Weed Canopies

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-specfic 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. Finally, future remote sensing capabilities and research issues that need to be addressed for remote sensing of weed canopies are identified.