What is "phytogeomorphology"

Phytogeomorphology is the study of how terrain features affect plant growth. It was the subject of a treatise by Howard and Mitchell in 1985, who were considering the growth and varietal temporal and spatial variability found in forests, but recognized that their work also had application to farming, and the relatively new science (at that time) of precision agriculture. The premise of Howard and Mitchell is that landforms, or features of the land's 3D topography significantly affect how and where plants (or trees in their case) grow. Since that time, our ability to map and classify landform shapes and features has increased greatly. The advent of GPS has made it possible to map almost any variable one might wish to measure. Thus, a very increased awareness of the spatial variability of the environment that plants gown in has arisen. The development of technology like airborne LiDAR has enabled the detailed measurement of landform features to better than sub-meter, and when combined with RTK-GPS (accuracies to 1mm) enables the creation of very accurate maps of where these features are. Comparison of these landform maps with mapping of variables related to crop or plant growth show a strong correlation (see below for examples and references for precision agriculture).