Towards Enhancing Integrated Pest Management Based on Volunteered Geographic Information

Integrated pest management (IPM) involves integrating multiple pest control methods based on site information obtained through inspection, monitoring, and reports. IPM has been deployed to achieve the judicious use of pesticides and has become one of the most important methods of securing agricultural productivity. Despite the efforts made to strengthen IPM during the past decades, overuse as well as indiscriminate use of pesticides is still common. This problem is particularly serious in underserved farming communities which suffer from ineffectiveness with respect to pest management information collection and dissemination. The recent development of volunteered geographic information (VGI) offers an opportunity to the general public to create and receive ubiquitous, cost-effective, and timely geospatial information. Therefore, this study proposes to enhance IPM through establishing a VGI-based IPM. As a starting point of this line of research, this study explored how such geospatial information can contribute to IPM enhancement. Based on this, a conceptual framework of VGI interaction was built to guide the establishment of VGI-based IPM. To implement VGI-based IPM, a mobile phone platform was developed. In addition, a case study was conducted in the town of Shuibian in Jiangxi province of China to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. In the case study, by analyzing infestation incidents of an overwintering outbreak of striped rice stem borers voluntarily reported by farmers through mobile phones, spatiotemporal infestation patterns of the borers throughout the study area were revealed and disseminated to the farmers. These patterns include the dates and degree-days the pest infestations intensified, and the orientation or spatial structural variations of the clustering of the infestations. This case study showcased the unique merit of VGI in enhancing IPM, namely the acquisition of previously unrecorded spatial data in a cost-effective and real-time manner for discovering and disseminating previously unknown pest management knowledge.