Methods of Agroclimatology: Modeling Approaches for Pests and Diseases

Models represent very powerful tools to describe biophysical responses to environmental conditions. Particularly, the application of modeling for the description of pests and diseases in agriculture represents an important step toward the better understanding of pest epidemiology as well as an opportunity to support farmers in optimizing crop protection management. This chapter aims to give a full overview of agroclimatological models for pests and diseases affecting agricultural production. For pests and diseases, we describe analytical and simulation approaches to modeling including phenological, population and atmospheric transport models. The steps to develop reliable pest models are also discussed including IT infrastructure, model design, environmental inputs, parametrization, and validation. We also describe model products, delivery methods, and the expected benefits for the different categories of stakeholders. Finally, we give an overview of future developments in the field of pest modeling. In particular, this includes the role of precision agriculture including big-pest data and the coupling of pest and disease models with crop models to estimate pest impacts as a part of climate change studies.