About us

Weed control is a costly and time-consuming issue for land managers across Australia. The detection of weed populations is always the first step towards achieving efficacious control.

Remote weed detection

The educational guidelines provided on this website stem from the learnings of the recent project, The Weed Managers Guide to Remote Detection: Understanding the opportunities and limitations of multi-resolution and multi-modal technologies for remote detection of weeds in heterogenous landscapes, supported by the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry.

This four year project (2021-2024) used three ‘model’ weed systems to test the limitations of high-resolution colour (RGB), multispectral (MS) and hyperspectral (HS) cameras across various airborne platforms (drones and satellites), applying artificial intelligence tools to detect weeds in complex ecological landscapes.

Study activities occurred in three different landscapes across NSW where each of the model species are typically found:

  1. Kosciusko National Park and the Monaro – hawkweeds (the herb system)
  2. Snowy Monaro region – African lovegrass (the grass system)
  3. North, Central and South Coasts of NSW – bitou bush (the shrub system)

The project was supported by the Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry as part of the Established Pest Animals and Weeds Management Pipeline Program.
It brought together researchers and weed experts from a range of university, government and industry stakeholders, who remain committed to the advancement of remote sensing technologies for weed detection.