A habitat is the place, the site, the locality and particular type of local environment occupied by weeds. As an Agronomist I think of habitats mostly as crop production fields, like a field of corn early in the growing season. In this course we will study weeds in crop fields as well as other habitats.
Take a tour of these other weed patches; Virtual Corn-Soybean Field, Virtual Urban Weed Patch, and the Virtual Pasture:
Spatial diversity of habitats:
Another essential part of understanding habitats is the scale that habitats can exist
at. For example, to a farmer trying to manage a field, there are very big differences
between habitats at the microsite scale and the field scale. This example is the essence
of site-specific crop and field management. Are weed seedlings in the spring uniform over
a field habitat or do they exist in patches? Why?
Habitats exist at many spatial scales:
->Global
--->Continental
------>Region or State
--------->Landscape
------------>Farm
--------------->Field
------------------>Site
-------------------->Microsite
To gain an appreciation of physical scale of habitats: Take the Habitat Spatial
Diversity Tour
Specific Habitats and Weedy Adaptation. Students have provided information about specific weedy habitats in the discussion portion of this course. The assignment was to describe a habitat in which weeds thrived, and to indicate how human activity had lead to weed evolution to deal with that human disturbance. Below are some selected habitat discussions from students:
