Roadside Vegetation Management in California

The State of California’s Department of Transportation (Caltrans) is California’s equivalent to the Department of Main Roads in Queensland or the Roads and Traffic Authority in NSW.

The Project Representatives met with five of the Caltrans team and they were very open in sharing their challenges as well as their successes. It was a terrific opportunity and we learnt a heap from the day, as well as made some great contacts who have offered to collaborate with us.

The purpose of the visit was for Project Representatives to review the on-ground success of the Caltrans Roadside Management Toolbox, a web based decision making tool developed to improve the safety and maintainability of transportation infrastructure.

The Roadside Management Toolbox provides design techniques and treatments that improve traveller and worker safety, protect the highway infrastructure and improve transportation system reliability by reducing the need for recurrent vegetation maintenance activities.

The California Department of Transportation manages approximately 15,000 miles of highway and 230,000 acres of right-of-way throughout California. The management, maintenance and control of vegetation on the roadsides have become increasingly difficult as the miles of roadway and acres of roadside have increased while maintenance resources have been reduced.

Historic methods of vegetation control (manual, mechanical and chemical) have been sharply curtailed due to local development, increased traffic volumes, public concerns and other economic and environmental issues.

Following a 1992 Environmental Impact Report on Caltrans vegetation control practices, the Department adopted a formal Integrated Vegetation Management (IVM) program for its roadsides. A major component of this program is permanent vegetation control techniques that reduce the need for ongoing vegetation management.

Since the adoption of IVM, District and Headquarters functional areas have completed research and field trials of a wide variety of permanent vegetation control approaches. The toolbox includes treatments composed of materials familiar to traditional highway construction contractors (such as asphalt and concrete, concrete and road base) as well as less conventional materials or products (such as polyurea coatings, rubber mats, and fibre weed control mats).

Caltrans have undergone massive cuts to their road maintenance budget which has resulted in numerous challenges in managing the roadside environment. The end result is a lot of bare ground ‘moonscapes’ contrasting some high maintenance interchange landscape areas that are maintained with a constant supply of unsustainable potable water.

However, their commitment to innovation with regard to permanent vegetation management approaches, the use of high tech systems to manage water usage in their landscaped areas, and a commitment to using more environmentally friendly herbicides with low active ingredient content is to be applauded.

For Australia, the big taken home message was Caltrans commitment to fund research into better ways of managing roadside vegetation and the hard work being done to ensure that vegetation management considerations are an integral part of the planning and design phases of road and roadside construction.

We would be keen to hear what permanent vegetation control techniques you have put into place. What has worked and hasn’t worked? What are the difficulties of implementing such techniques…is it the upfront cost, are we just not considering these techniques at the design phase? We welcome your comments, questions and feedback.

You will find a selection of images from the Caltrans visit on the IVMP website in the image gallery

University of California - Weeds Day 2008

UC Davis has a prominent & well established weed research team within their plant sciences department who put together the annual Weed Day on campus.

The Department of Plant Sciences has been created by consolidating the four commodity-based departments of Agronomy and Range Science, Pomology, Vegetable Crops and Environmental Horticulture. This pooling of manpower and resources has fostered better focus on the teaching, research and outreach missions of one of the leading academic programs in agricultural and environmental sciences in the United States.

Under the umbrella of Plant Sciences, over 90 faculty members now collaborate on education and research in the emerging programmatic areas of plant and environmental sciences. Fundamental advances in genomics, genetics, plant physiology, evolutionary biology and environmental science are being translated into improvements in crop performance and production, post harvest quality, agricultural sustainability and ecosystem management.

IVMP Project Representatives attended campus for the Annual Weeds Day. There were one hundred and fifty attendees from all over the US, from researchers & government personnel, to practitioners and contractors.

This event was very much like one of our Weed Society forums in Australia. Attendees spent the morning looking at field sites trialling a range of herbicides, both organic and non-organic, from non-crop to in-crop and aquatic areas. A few photos from the day can be viewed in the IVMP image gallery.

The afternoon program consisted of twelve fifteen minute sessions where Researchers presented updates on the weed management projects currently being completed by the University.

Of particular interest was the presentation by Dr Joe Di Tomaso who introduced an online interactive weed identification database that had been developed at UC Davis. This database allowed users to work logically through a series of weed identification options that assisted the user towards accurately identifying the weed species they were researching.

Australia is yet to have a weed identification tool such as this developed and consideration should be given to developing a similar model for Australian weeds with added features such as control options for each weed species.

Project Representatives gathered research information including trial protocols, data and progress reports, along with meeting numerous contacts with industry personnel keen to collaborate with the IVMP Technical Team in the future.

As in Australia, the issue of attracting appropriate levels of funding for research into new uses for older technologies is a problem faced in the United States. There is resistance from chemical companies to reinvest in generic technologies or new technologies where cost outweighs the benefit are not favourable short term.

However, looking at our experience in the USA, if a long term view is taken, the benefit over time can reward those who invest in exploring new opportunities for the older technologies with an integrated vegetation management program.

We are keen to hear from anyone who may be working with or has worked with generic technologies to explore new registration opportunities for common weed problems in your region. We know of a number of promising opportunities that were passed up because the numbers did not stack up…..do you know of similar situations? We welcome your comments and feedback.

Integrated Vegetation Management in the United States

In July 2008, a research trip to the USA was completed by project representatives. The purpose of the visit the US was primarily to look at mown vegetation management in the US, specifically integrated vegetation management strategies from appropriate species selection, through to the use of PGRs and herbicides with growth regulatory effects.

The project representatives met with a broad spectrum of people involved in vegetation management in the US so as to better understand the successes and challenges faced by researchers, asset owners, asset managers, Vegetation Management service providers and product suppliers.

Over the next few postings I will give you an overview of this research trip and what was uncovered in the US. Further information on integrated vegetation management strategies in the USA can be found at our website www.ivmp.com.au.

IVMP blog content guidelines

The aim of the IVMP blog is to provide and discuss the most current information about integrated vegetation management issues, solutions and research.

Comments
All comments offered in the spirit of civil conversation are welcome!

Promotional content
Promoting a business, product, or service is permitted, but only if the promotional content is valuable to the about integrated vegetation management. Whether promotional content is valuable is entirely our discretion. As a content contributor you are asked to visibly disclose any commercial relationship you have with the promoted business, product or service. This includes, but is not limited to payment, reciprocal advertising agreements, conflicts of interest, or other non-consumer relationships.

Unacceptable content
Commercial spam, obscenity and other rude behavior are not tolerated and will be removed.

You may not use our blog for personal attacks, defamation, harassment, spam, offensive content, inappropriately aggressive behaviour, spam, or any illegal activities. Any material you post or works you create on the site (hereafter “Content”) may not be illegal, obscene, defamatory, threatening, infringing of intellectual property rights, invasive of privacy or otherwise injurious or objectionable. We reserve the right to delete any in appropriate content.

Content ownership
By posting or contributing Content you are granting IVMP a non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, and worldwide license to use your content and hidden electronic data, including, without limitation, the rights to copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, edit, translate and reformat your content, and/or to incorporate it into a collective work.

Account responsibility
You are responsible for all content posted and activity that occurs under your account (even when content is posted by others who have access to your account). Please guard your account password diligently!

Misrepresentation
You shall not misrepresent yourself or take on the identity of someone else while using this service. If you feel that someone has misrepresented your identity on the site, please email us (admin@ivmp.com.au) and we'll look into it straightaway!

Privacy
We respect your privacy; we will not sell or rent your email address to anyone.

Removal
We thrive in a spirit of open dialogue and oppose censorship; we reserve the right to request removal of a post if we see or get a report of something which seems to cross the line. If it is not removed, we reserve the right to remove it ourselves.

Off-topic comments
We value and encourage the sense of community and friendship frequently demonstrated in the off-topic comments. As we aim to provide highly focused and relevant discussion, we may remove off-topic comments or comment sub-threads after three replies.

24-hour review period
A post may be removed from the website upon the request of the author within the first twenty-four hours of posting. After twenty-four hours, posts will only be removed or edited at our sole discretion.

Content disclaimer
This disclaimer applies to all content in the blog. The information, advice and content provided is based on our personal and professional experience. This content is, by-and-large, opinion - although we do our best to limit false or misleading information.

We try to err on the side of posting "too much" rather than "too little" material, and thus, you may find content that is heavily opinionated or even dead wrong at times. It's our opinion that it's more valuable to be exposed to content and perspectives of all kinds and thus, we're generally liberal with the blog content we post.

If you have concerns, comments or problems with any of the material you find on the blog, please email admin@ivmp.com.au.

Introducing IVMP

IVMP stands for Integrated Vegetation Management Project and is a 3-year research project to identify the most appropriate practices for the vegetation management issues facing modern asset managers in Australia. The focus is mown vegetation.

Current vegetation management practices, while responsive to needs, are costly and unsustainable. Some of the key issues include

Mowing is costly, dangerous, time consuming, needs to be repeated frequently, and often leads to weed dispersal problems. Public and operator safety is of primary concern.

Resources and budgets are limited with continually rising costs, eg fuel, labour and equipment.

Heightened public expectations regarding presentation of public open spaces adds further pressures to management issues.

Environmental impact needs to be minimised

IVMP is a collaborative research project.Join the discussion. Help us define the focus of our research. Share your vegetation management issues. Share photos of your vegetation management challenges. Visit our website at www.ivmp.com.au