Predicting Spotted Knapweed Growth

by Hannah Smith

Submitted : Fall 2016

The concept of growing degree days (GDD), commonly used by farmers and gardeners, were applied to invasive plant management. It was predicted that a formula could be generated that would calculate future GDD for spotted knapweed, a highly invasive plant in northwest America. This would be useful in predicting the time of flowering, which would allow Resource Managers to determine an appropriate herbicide spraying time. The calculation for GDD involves taking the integral of warmth minus a base temperature (minimum temperature required for growth). However, obtaining the formula through integration was not successful. Instead, a formula was derived from temperatures collected in 2015. Future research should be done to determine how the GDD values correlate to each stage of spotted knapweed growth.

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