Sustainable Management and Application of Weed and Pest Control in Precision Forestry
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Forestry".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (1 June 2019) | Viewed by 172
Special Issue Editors
Interests: forest supply chains; biomass supply chains; transportation; logistics; circular economy
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The incremental progression of invasive exotic self-propagating species in forests occurs through an accumulation of actions that, by themselves, may appear minor, ancillary, or unintended, but rapidly become difficult to control, labour-intensive, and costly to manage. These actions impact socio-economic and ecological sustainability, and inevitably, value-chain optimization. These could be prevented through early detection and rapid response control practices, which enable rapid action to more effectively manage the risk of invasive species spreading and establishing. Given that early weed and pest intervention practices generally have been developed for agriculture, forestry practitioners are increasingly looking to adopt alternative, new technologies and solutions better suited to the early detection, prevention and eradication of forest invasions in efforts to increase forest health and sustainable productivity. With the advent of remote sensing technologies, and emergent alternative chemistry aimed at increasing efficacy while reducing the impact of undesired chemical residues in the environment, the integrated weed and pest management toolbox has been expanded to include a combination of new technologies and solutions, with the potential to revolutionise the development of more rapid response strategies and more effective integrated weed and pest management platforms for precision forestry. More effective control can additionally lead to decreased presence of undesirable chemical residues in the environment, and reduced off-target effects on desired species. Regulatory changes that impact current chemical use practices, certification requirements, and media hype around divided scientific opinion on the impact of controversial chemical applications, health and environmental concerns, economic considerations, and herbicide and pesticide-resistant biotypes, require innovations to resolve that have the potential to expand the repertoire of the adaptive management options available to forest practitioners. The goal of this Special Issue is to advance our understanding of new innovations that can be applied in order to enable more effective and sustainable integrated weed and pest management practices in precision forestry.
Prof. Mark Brown
Dr. Anne-Marie Smit
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- Forest sustainability
- Precision forestry
- Sustainability assessment
- Integrated weed and/or pest management
- Invasive species
- Early weed and/or pest detection options
- Remote sensing technology
- Alternative chemicals
- Herbicides
- Pesticides
- Assessment tools
- Innovations
