Alfalfa Weevil Help

Supported Browsers

This website has been tested with all 3 major browsers (IE, Chrome, Firefox) and works with all of them. If you are having troubles with IE, make sure that you are using the latest version, which is currently 11. If you are not using IE 11, you should upgrade immediately as Microsoft has recently found a serious security flaw which can allow an attacker to take over your computer. If you are running Windows XP and cannot upgrade your version of IE, you should download either Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox. Both are free.

If you are using IE 11 and are experiencing problems with the site, for example not being able to see the map on the home page make sure that you are not viewing the site in compatibility mode. To check on this, select the tools menu (the gear in the upper right of the window) and then select "Compatibility View settings". Make sure that montana.edu is not included in the list of sites to be viewed in compatibility mode. If it is, select it and click "Remove".

For the best browsing experience we recommend using Google Chrome.

Requesting an Account

Click on the "Request an Account" link at the top right of the page and fill out the form. An email will be sent to the Pestweb administrators notifying them of your request. When the request is approved you will be sent an email notifying you that you can now log in. Remember, you must go through the "Forgot Password" procedure to change your password before you can log in.

Creating Fields

From the "My Data" menu, choose the "My Fields" item. From this page, click on the "Create New Field" button. This will take you to a page which allows you to enter data about a field. The following information will be required:

Field Name. This can be any name you wish, it is best if it is something that you can remember easily. "Back 40" is better than "1". This field name must be unique.
Latitude and longitude. This is the latitude and longitude of the field. You can easily get this by installing a GPS status app on your iPhone or Android device. The latitude and longitude can be entered in either decimal degrees or degrees minutes seconds format. We do our best to parse this and convert it to decimal degrees, but you may need to use one of the many online conversion utilities, a good one can be found at http://rcn.montana.edu/Resources/Converter.aspx. If all you have are degrees, minutes and seconds the preferred format to enter this data is dd mm ss[NSEW]. For example a postition of 48° 11' 21"N 112° 8' 4"W would be entered as 48 11 21N 112 8 4W. The same position in decimal degrees would be entered as 48.189414 -114.134712. The absence/presence of a − sign denotes N/S or E/W.
State. This is the state in which the field is located.
County. This should be the county that the field is located in, not your country of residence.
Environment. Select the environment of the field, either dry land or irrigated.
Comments. Any notes about this field.

Create Traps

To enter a new trap click on the "Create New Trap" button. You need to enter a unique id for the trap and the latitude and longitude for the trap. Latitude and longitude are entered in the same manner as when entering them for a field, but the trap's latitude and longitude are seeded from the latitude and longitude of the parent field. Note that only the trap id field is required to enter a new trap.

Entering data

From the "My Data" menu item, choose "My Traps". To enter data for a trap, click on the trap name. This will take you to a page which allows you to enter data for that trap.

Entering an observation

On the trap data page, click the "Create New Count" button. You then have the ability to enter an observation. An observation consists of the following:

Date. The date the observation was taken.
Adults. The number of adult alfalfa weevils collected.
Adult Sweeps. The number of sweeps which netted the adult weevils.
Larvae. The number of alfalfa weevil larvae collected.
Larvae Sweeps. The number of sweeps which netted the weevil larvae.
Cut Date. The date the field was cut, if it has been cut since the last observation.
Stand height. Stand height in inches.

Remember, if you make a mistake, you can edit an observation by clicking the "Edit" button to the right of the observation to be changed.