Characterizing the presence of oilseed rape feral populations on field margins using machine learning

Many cultivated species, such as oilseed rape, sunflower, wheat or sorghum can escape from crops, and colonize field margins as feral populations. The general processes leading to the escape and persistence of cultivated species on field margins are still poorly investigated. An exhaustive 4-year survey was conducted in the centre of France at a landscape level to study the origin of feral oilseed rape populations. We present here results obtained with machine learning methods, which are increasingly popular techniques for analysing large ecological datasets. As expected, the dynamics of feral populations relies on large seed immigration from fields and transport. However, the seed bank was shown to be the keystone of their persistence rather than local recruitment. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.