Abstract

Characterising pest suppressive landscapes
Track: Agriculture
Authors: Andrew Hulthen

One of the problems with large scale ecological surveys is that it's sometimes difficult to visualise spatial and temporal trends in the data. GIS is an excellent tool to show these trends in a spatially explicit way. The main focus of this study was to understand how population dynamics of pest insects are affected by landscape composition by identifying source habitats of pests and natural enemies, and assessing their movement between these habitats. In this study, land use was characterised in a range of agricultural landscapes and land use metrics generated at several different scales. These land use metrics and highly detailed ecological survey data were then used to visualise and animate insect movement in these landscapes and allowed us to explore which landscape configurations are less prone to insect pest attacks. This approach works towards reducing reliance on broad spectrum insecticides and promoting sustainable management of natural resources.