Bruce D. Maxwell

• PhD
• Managing Director at Montana State University

Integrated weed management is integral to organic farming, with increased crop seeding rates as one effective weed suppression tactic. Precision agriculture, which uses guidance and sensor technologies to direct site‐specific management, could allow for targeted weed management using variable seeding rates. On farm precision experimentation (OFPE)...

Effective conservation schemes are needed to advance the dual objectives of biodiversity conservation and agronomic production in agricultural landscapes. Understanding how plant and arthropod taxa respond to both local habitat patch characteristics and landscape complexity is crucial for planning effective agri‐environment schemes. This study inve...

First paragraph: Large Scale Agroecology Agroecology is a science, practice, and movement that is gaining momentum worldwide. It aims to provide local, stable, and diverse diets through diversified, resilient, and sustainable agricultural practices (Ewert et al. 2023). However, agroecology seeks to address food systems issues by replacing large-sca...

Low nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) is ubiquitous in agricultural systems, with mounting global scale consequences for both atmospheric aspects of climate and downstream ecosystems. Since NUE-related soil characteristics such as water holding capacity and organic matter are likely to vary at small scales (< 1 ha), understanding the influence of soil...

Few mechanisms turn field-specific ecological data into management recommendations for crop production with appropriate uncertainty. Precision agriculture is mainly deployed for machine efficiencies and soil-based zonal management, and the traditional paradigm of small plot research fails to unite agronomic research and effective management under f...

Pinus contorta is considered one of the most invasive tree species worldwide, generating significant impacts on biodiversity and ecosystems. In several Patagonian ecosystems in southern Chile, it has escaped from plantations established mainly in the 1970s, and is now invading both forests and treeless environments. In this study, we evaluated the...

In recent years, the use of remotely sensed and on-ground observations of crop fields, in conjunction with machine learning techniques, has led to highly accurate crop yield estimations. In this work, we propose to further improve the yield prediction task by using Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) given their unique ability to exploit the spati...

Precision agriculture and open-source data repositories provide a plethora of field-specific ecological data about agroecosystems, but few mechanisms have been developed to turn that information into management recommendations for crop production. The On-Farm Precision Experiments (OFPE) framework is an agroecological model-based methodology to imp...

Data-driven decision making in agriculture can be augmented by utilizing the data gathered from precision agriculture technologies to make the most informed decisions that consider spatiotemporal specificity. Decision support systems utilize underlying models of crop responses to generate management recommendations, yet there is uncertainty in the...

Low nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) is ubiquitous in agricultural systems, with mounting global scale consequences for both atmospheric aspects of climate and downstream ecosystems. Since NUE related soil characteristics such as water holding capacity and organic matter are likely to vary at small scales (<1 ha), understanding the influence of soil c...

Uncertainties in farming necessitate detailed knowledge of the production efficiencies to maintain sustainability. To accomplish ecologically based agriculture, with the goal of intensification by maximizing production and profit as well as minimizing environmental impact, we hypothesized that a site-specific knowledge base can be efficiently achie...

Nitrogen fertilizer response (N-response) curves are tools used to support farm management decisions. The conventional approach to model an N-response curve is to fit crop yield in response to a range of N fertilizer rates as a quadratic or exponential function. The purpose of the model is to identify the profit-maximizing N rate given the costs of...

Empirically driven adaptive management in large-scale commodity crop production has become possible with spatially controlled application and sub-field scale crop monitoring technology. Site-specific experimentation is fundamental to an agroecosystem adaptive management (AAM) framework that results in information for growers to make informed decisi...

Field-specific fertilizer rate optimization is known to be beneficial for improving farming profit, and profits can be further improved by dividing the field into smaller plots and applying site-specific rates across the field. Finding optimal rates for these plots is often based on data gathered from the plots, which are used to determine a yield...

Study region,Montana, U.S.A. Study focus Creating adaptation plans for projected imbalances in the western U.S. agricultural water demand-supply system are difficult given uncertainty in climate projections. It is critical to understand the uncertainties and vulnerabilities of the regional agricultural system and hydrologic impacts of climate chang...

Future climate projections of warming, drying, and increased weather variability indicate that conventional agricultural and production practices within the Northern Great Plains (NGP) will become less sustainable, both ecologically and economically. As a result, the livelihoods of people that rely on these lands will be adversely impacted. This is...

Restructuring farmer–researcher relationships and addressing complexity and uncertainty through joint exploration are at the heart of On-Farm Experimentation (OFE). OFE describes new approaches to agricultural research and innovation that are embedded in real-world farm management, and reflects new demands for decentralized and inclusive research t...

In response to global calls for sustainable food production, we identify two diverging paradigms to address the future of agriculture. We explore the possibility of uniting these two seemingly diverging paradigms of production-oriented and ecologically oriented agriculture in the form of precision agroecology. Merging precision agriculture technolo...

Intentionally allowing or promoting invasion by non‐native trees into areas characterized by treeless vegetation could contribute to climate‐change mitigation by increasing carbon (C) sequestration. In some areas of the world, incentives exist to retain invasive non‐native trees in natural systems as a mechanism for increasing ecosystem C storage a...

Urgency and deliberateness are often at odds when executing conservation projects, especially as the scale and complexity of objectives increases. The pace of environmental degradation supports immediate and measurable action. However, best practices for adaptive governance and building resilient social-ecological systems call for more deliberate e...

A satellite-driven hydro-economic model to support agricultural water resources management, Environmental Modelling and Software, https://doi. Abstract The management of water resources among competing uses presents a complex technical and policy challenge. Integrated hydro-economic models capable of simulating the hydrologic system in irrigated an...

The recently published article contained several errors in Table 3. The corrected table is provided here.

Invasive plant species are a significant global problem, with the potential to alter structure and function of ecosystems and cause economic damage to managed landscapes. An effective course of action to reduce the spread of invasive plant species is to identify potential habitat incorporating changing climate scenarios. In this study, we used a su...

We investigate a class of information criteria based on the informational complexity criterion (ICC), which penalizes model fit based on the degree of dependency among parameters. In addition to existing forms of ICC, we develop a new complexity measure that uses the coefficient of variation matrix, a measure of parameter estimability, and a novel...

The Data‐Intensive Farm Management (DIFM) project works with participating farmers, using precision technology to inexpensively design and run randomized agronomic field trials on whole commercial farm fields, to provide data‐based, site‐specific farm input management guidance, thus providing economic and environmental benefits. This article lays o...

We present an analysis of the sensitivity of three key crops (alfalfa, barley and winter wheat) produced in the northwestern United States to climatic and agricultural market anomalies using widely used standardized in- dices. Rather than investigating sensitivity of crop yields (production per unit area), we focus on agricultural production (yield...

Farmers need to collect, manage, communicate, and analyze many forms of data. This process presents a dynamic decision loop, ever‐improving performance and learning through seasons and years of the farming enterprise. Farmers indicate that completing these decision loops by themselves is practically impossible due to lack of time and knowledge. A f...

To best understand plant invasions and predict unexpected outcomes it is necessary to integrate information on disturbance, the local environment, and demography. Disturbance by fire has been shown to promote invasions worldwide, but precise interactions between fire, native and invading species remain unclear. Indeed, trade-offs exist between fire...

Drought is increasing in frequency and severity, exacerbating food and water security risks in an era of continued global warming and human population growth. Here, we analyzed a severe summer drought affecting the US Northern Plains region in 2017. We examined the spatial pattern and seasonal progression of vegetation productivity and water use in...

Invasive plant impacts vary widely across introduced ranges. We tested the hypothesis that differences in the eco‐evolutionary experience of native communities with the invader correspond with the impacts of invasive species on native vegetation, with impacts increasing with ecological novelty. We compared plant species richness and composition ben...

Multiple herbicide‐resistant (MHR) weed populations pose significant agronomic and economic threats and demand the development and implementation of ecologically based tactics for sustainable management. We investigated the influence of nitrogen fertiliser rate (56, 112, 168, or 224 kg N ha−1) and spring wheat seeding density (67.3 kg ha−1 or 101 k...

Large-scale agricultural systems are central to food production in North America, but their ubiquity could be threatened by vulnerability to economic and climatic stressors during the 21st century. Prior research has focused on understanding the influence of climatic changes on physiological processes in these systems and has increasingly recognize...

Accurate crop yield assessments using satellite remote sensing-based methods are of interest for regional monitoring and the design of policies that promote agricultural resiliency and food security. However, the application of current vegetation productivity algorithms derived from global satellite observations is generally too coarse to capture c...

Question How does type of disturbance alter plant community composition when an invasive species with high intrinsic population growth rate is present? The sagebrush steppe is a cold semi‐arid steppe dominated by the native shrub Artemisia tridentata Nutt., native bunchgrasses, and has been invaded by the non‐native winter annual Bromus tectorum L....

Crops or desired plant species co-occur with undesired species, and the co-occurring species thereby come to be classed as weeds. This human-imposed classification is based on the perception that there is an interaction that results in some negative effect of the weed on the crop or desired species. This chapter offers an evolutionary perspective o...

Weed resistance to herbicide occurs when herbicides are overused and can be mitigated by reducing their use. Consensus on herbicide resistance management strategies is problematic given strong industrial profit motive links in the weed science discipline.

Invasive plant species that have the potential to alter fire regimes have significant impacts on native ecosystems. Concern that pine invasions in the Southern Hemisphere will increase fire activity and severity and subsequently promote further pine invasion prompted us to examine the potential for feedbacks between Pinus contorta invasions and fir...

Modern weed science is at a crossroads. Born out of advances in chemistry, it has focused on minimizing weed competition with genetically uniform crops and heavy reliance on herbicides. Paradoxically, the success obtained with such an approach and the reluctance to conduct integrated and multidisciplinary research has resulted in unintended, but pr...

Invasive plant species that have the potential to alter fire regimes have significant impacts on native ecosystems. Concern that pine invasions in the Southern Hemisphere will increase fire activity and severity and subsequently promote further pine invasion prompted us to examine the potential for feedbacks between Pinus contorta invasions and fir...

Bromus tectorum can transform ecosystems causing negative impacts on the ecological and economic values of sagebrush steppe of the western USA. Although our knowledge of the drivers of the regional distribution of B. tectorum has improved, we have yet to determine the relative importance of climate and local factors causing B. tectorum abundance an...

Aim To determine whether one of the most invasive pine species introduced to the Southern Hemisphere, Pinus contorta , has changed plant species richness, composition, diversity, and litter depth where it has invaded into native open forest, shrub steppe and grassland communities and to assess whether changes were similar in its native and introduc...

In spatially heterogeneous weed infestations, variable dose technologies could be used to minimise herbicide use; high doses could be applied to reduce high-density patches and low doses to maintain weed populations in low-density portions of a field. To assess the potential short- and long-term effects of variable herbicide dose and site-specific...

Aim To determine biotic and abiotic controls on pine invasion globally within six ecoregions that include both introduced and native ranges. Locations: Río Negro province, Argentina; Aysén and Araucanía Regions, Chile; South Island (two ecoregions), New Zealand; Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, USA. Methods We quantified tree abundance and size acr...

Background/Question/Methods Pine (genus Pinus) invasions have become increasing prevalent across the Southern Hemisphere and have been shown to have significant impacts on native species and ecosystems, however their impacts on wildfire fuel loads is less certain. Various pine and other conifer species have also been shown to invade grasslands or...

Funding Information JNB would like to acknowledge the USDA Controlling Weedy and Invasive Plants program grant 2013-67013-21306, and USDA Hatch. DRT would like to acknowledge the Virginia Tech CALS Teaching Scholar program for support. RAH acknowledges the support of NSF RCN grant no. 0541673, the USDA, and the Colorado Experiment Station. PLS was...

New undergraduate degree programs that address food systems have appeared at a number of North American universities in the past decade. These programs seek to complement established food- and agriculture related courses of instruction with additional curricular elements that build students’ capacity to address complex food-systems issues (e.g., fo...

Two broad aims drive weed science research: improved management and improved understanding of weed biology and ecology. In recent years, agricultural weed research addressing these two aims has effectively split into separate subdisciplines despite repeated calls for greater integration. Although some excellent work is being done, agricultural weed...

Nonindigenous plant species (NIS) can affect individuals, communities, and ecosystems through numerous direct and indirect mechanisms. To synthesize the current understanding of how NIS cause impacts, we reviewed experimental research from the past decade. We found alteration of the microenvironment, such as incident light and air and soil temperat...

The goal of this research was to create an agricultural adaptive management framework that enables the probabilistic optimization of N fertilizer to achieve maximized net returns under multiple uncertainties. These uncertainties come in the form of bioclimatic variables that drive crop yield, and economic variables that determine profitability. Tak...

Plant invasions can have significant impacts on ecosystems by altering the abundance, distribution and flammability of fuels in ways that promote or inhibit fire activity. Pines (Pinus spp.) have been widely introduced across the Southern Hemisphere and some species have become highly invasive. Pines often invade shrub-steppe communities where fuel...

Biological invasion by non-native tree species can transform landscapes, and as a consequence, has received growing attention from researchers and managers alike. This problem is driven primarily by the naturalisation and invasion of tree species escaping from cultivation or forestry plantations. Furthermore, these invasions can be strongly influen...

The invasive annual grass Bromus tectorum (cheatgrass) forms a positive feedback with fire in some areas of western North America’s sagebrush biome by increasing fire frequency and size, which then increases B. tectorum abundance postfire and dramatically alters ecosystem structure and processes. However, this positive response to fire is not consi...

Biological invasion by non-native tree species can transform landscapes, and as a consequence, has received growing attention from researchers and managers alike. This problem is driven primarily by the naturalisation and invasion of tree species escaping from cultivation or forestry plantations. Furthermore, these invasions can be strongly influen...

Scientists, managers, and policy-makers need functional and effective metrics to improve our understanding and management of biological invasions. Such metrics would help to assess progress towards management goals, increase compatibility across administrative borders, and facilitate comparisons between invasions. Here we outline key characteristic...

Hypotheses for explaining plant invasions have focused on a variety of factors that may influence invasion success, including propagule pressure, interactions of the introduced species with the biotic, abiotic, or disturbance properties of the new ecosystem, or the genetic characteristics of the invader itself. Evaluating the relative importance of...

The purpose of this paper is to describe the development, instruction, and evaluation of the undergraduate pilot course, Introduction to Sustainable Food and Bioenergy Systems (SFBS), at Montana State University. Introduction to SFBS is an interdisciplinary, team-taught, experiential education course designed to introduce students to broad array of...

In mountainous areas, native and non-native plants will be exposed to climate change and increased disturbance in the future. Non-native plants may be more successful than natives in disturbed areas and thus be able to respond quicker to shifting climatic zones. In 2009, monitoring plots were established for populations of a non-native species (Lin...

Scientists, managers, and policy-makers need functional and effective metrics to improve our understanding and management of biological invasions. Such metrics would help to assess progress towards management goals, increase compatibility across administrative borders, and facilitate comparisons between invasions. Here we outline key characteristic...

The environment in which a plant grows (maternal environment) can affect seed viability, germination, and dormancy. We assessed the effects of maternal environment on wild oat seed viability, germination, dormancy, and pathogen infection by collecting and analyzing wild oat seed from above and below a barley canopy at three field sites in Montana....

The increased incidence of large fires around much of the world in recent decades raises questions about human and non-human drivers of fire and the likelihood of increased fire activity in the future. The purpose of this paper is to outline a conceptual framework for examining where human-set fires and feedbacks are likely to be most pronounced in...

Aim Use of local‐scale non‐native plant species ( NNS ) distribution models has the potential to decrease survey effort and improve population prioritization for management. We developed and evaluated data collection methods and minimum sampling requirements to inform local‐scale models of NNS distribution. We also evaluated overall model predictiv...

Commonly in environmental and ecological studies, species distribution data are recorded as presence or absence throughout a spatial domain of interest. Field based studies typically collect observations by sampling a subset of the spatial domain. We consider the effects of six different adaptive and two non‐adaptive sampling designs and choice of...

Fire is thought to profoundly change the ecology of the sagebrush steppe. The Idaho National Laboratory provides an ideal setting to compare the effects of fire and physical disturbance on plant diversity in high-native-cover sagebrush steppe. Seventy-eight 1-hectare transects were established along paved, green-striped, gravel, and two-track roads...

Controlling non-native plants in natural areas should, ideally, not only reduce target species' abundance, but also benefit broader management objectives such as conserving native species, improving wildlife habitat, and maintaining ecosystem function. In this context, the effectiveness and non-target impacts of control strategies, such as broadlea...

It has been claimed that Camelina sativa, a recently introduced crop in the northern Great Plains, is a highly competitive species. However, this issue has not been formally tested. Utilizing replacement series diagrams, we assessed the importance of growing conditions in the competitive ability of C. sativa. Results indicated that canola and Bromu...

Background/Question/Methods Modern agroecological systems need to be designed to produce food, fiber, feed and fuel in the most cost efficient and pollution free means possible. Optimizing efficiency over large acreages requires reducing per-unit-area costs and judicious use of petrochemical inputs, however current recommendations ignore the infl...

Background/Question/Methods There are few invasions of non-indigenous plant species (NIS) where a new species initial location is documented then its locations recorded in following years. We discovered archived maps and information on the distribution of Linaria dalmatica (nonindigenous plant species) in Yellowstone National Park in the early st...

Background/Question/Methods Navigating a Critical Juncture for Sustainable Weed Managemen Agricultural weed management has become entrenched in a single tactic, herbicide-resistant crops, and needs greater emphasis on integrated practices that are sustainable over the long term. In response to the outbreak of glyphosate-resistant weeds, which now...

Background/Question/Methods Pine invasions are becoming increasingly widespread and problematic in the Southern Hemisphere. Pines can reduce soil organic matter and microbial biomass, decrease native biodiversity, and alter fire and hydrological regimes. Pinus contorta (lodgepole pine), one of the most invasive species of pines, has been planted...

Background/Question/Methods Monitoring vegetation to identify trends at different time and space scales to determine management strategies or outcomes can be challenging. Many agencies are requiring monitoring plans for a wide set of objectives, but implementation of their vegetation monitoring is often not accomplishing their goals. Monitoring to...

Background/Question/Methods Movement of non-native plant species into mountainous areas is an increasingly discussed topic. Although these areas have traditionally been viewed as resistant to plant invasions, nearly 1,000 non-native plant species have been identified in mountainous areas world-wide. General theories of plant invasion in mountain...

Background/Question/Methods Successful management of invasive plant species may depend on focusing management on source populations. Therefore, efficient means to identify populations that are most likely to contribute to further invasion are critical. The success of plant populations varies spatially and temporally on the landscape as a result o...

Background/Question/Methods In semi-arid regions, soil water and nitrogen (N) are generally limiting factors for wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) production; hence, implementation of efficient N fertilization strategies is needed to optimize profitability and to maintain agro-ecosystem sustainability. Site-specific technologies (yield monitors, prote...

Perhaps the incidence and impact of glyphosate-resistant weed species are now great enough that real solutions to glyphosate resistance can be discussed without much backlash. It is clear to most weed scientists who are involved in herbicide research, and even those who are not, that the best way to reduce selection pressure for herbicide resistanc...

Early detection of an invading nonindigenous plant species (NIS) may be critical for efficient and effective management. Adaptive survey sampling methods may provide unbiased sampling for best estimates of distribution of rare and spatially clustered populations of plants in the early stages of invasion. However, there are few examples of these met...

Agricultural weed management has become entrenched in a single tactic—herbicide-resistant crops—and needs greater emphasis on integrated practices that are sustainable over the long term. In response to the outbreak of glyphosate-resistant weeds, the seed and agrichemical industries are developing crops that are genetically modified to have combine...

Summary1. Biofuel production has the potential of reducing CO2 emissions while decreasing global dependence on fossil fuels. However, concerns have been raised on the invasiveness of biofuel feedstocks. Estimating invasion potential remains a challenge because of inconsistencies and inherent limitations of using first-tier qualitative weed risk ass...

In their recent article, we feel that Wright et al. (1) misrepresented the potential for 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D)–resistant weeds in 2,4-D–resistant cropping systems and exaggerated the sustainability of their approach to addressing glyphosate-resistant weed problems in agriculture.